pvineswinger
Swinging on Vines
Git back up on yer pedestal...elaine said:
Who said you could come down?
Pope Dead?
- Thread starter CityGrl
- Start date
Who said you could come down?
Dymphna
Loyalty, Friendship, Love
Don't worry, it'll be a while before they get a new one. First, they have to gather all the Cardinals from all over the world, third world, included. The logistics of making hotel and airline reservations take time. Imagine all those guys in potentially gun concealing robes getting on planes.Nickel said:
AND they all have to have equal accomadations, because any one of them could be the next Pope, and heaven forbid, some underling should offend the wrong one. Then you get them all together, all of them secretly disagreeing with each other for years, but putting on a brave face because JP2 ultimately had the last say. Then they have to hem and haw for a couple of days, maybe a week, because they each want to be in a position to get their agenda forward without offending the one who ultimately becomes Pope.
Then once they get over that stage, they'll fight. Whoever they choose will be setting the agenda for a long time, so this is their chance to decide what the tone of that agenda will be.
Of course, all of this will go on behind closed doors. You will able to look forward to endless news reports on the color of the smoke coming from the chimney in the Vatican. (for those who don't remember, the color of the smoke indicates if a decision has been made)
Tonio
Asperger's Poster Child
I remember all that from when Paul VI and John Paul I died in 1978.Dymphna said:
I have an idea--PickThePope.com. Every Cardinal gets an SSL login with PGP and 2048-bit encryption. For the rest of us, the site has streaming video of the smoke coming from St. Peter's.
K
Kizzy
Guest
Tonio said:
That about sums it up.
I had just done my Act of Contrition, when John Paul I died. It was a massive funeral, televised on just about every channel.
C
canuk woman
Guest
Ehesef said:
come on spit it out
C
canuk woman
Guest
elaine said:
oh so does that make you the paris hilton of this forum??? BTW check your user cp
C
canuk woman
Guest
CityGrl said:Man, I started this thread and while I was gone, canuk woman threw up all over it.
Can't...stop...laughing...
hey i'm serious about the situation that's going on in rome
oh, but wait...I forget we are talking about the same religion that started the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition... 
MLE
flibberdejibbit
Ken King said:
I just read a fascinating short bio about the pope if anyone is interested...(already OBE, but still interesting)- from 'Knowledge News':
____________________________________________________
Today, news is fixed on the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II lies in "very serious" condition. Our thoughts are with the pope, too. Hard as it is to remember now, the young Karol Wojtyla was a strapping fellow, eager to ski and kayak and hike. Here's what his life was like before he became pope.
Today's Knowledge
Before He Was John Paul, He Was Karol
On May 18, 1920, Karol and Emilia Wojtyla welcomed the arrival of their second son and named him Karol Jozef. The family lived in Wadowice, a small town just south of Krakow where Catholics and Jews lived side by side. When Karol was 8, he lost his mother. Three years later, his older brother also died.
Portrait of the Pope as a Young Man
Karol grew up to excel in academics and athletics. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, he was studying literature and philosophy in Krakow and exploring a passion for theater. After the Germans shut down his university, he saw his professors rounded up--some deported, others executed--and Poland's Jews sent off to death camps. Auschwitz was less than 50 miles away.
Karol took a job as a stonecutter, but then personal tragedy struck again: his father died in 1941. Karol Sr.'s last wish was that his son become a priest, and Karol soon began training at an underground seminary in Krakow--secretly, since the Nazis had outlawed religious study. From 1944 until the end of World War II, he had to lie low to escape the notice of the Germans, who had begun rounding up Polish men.
From these experiences, Karol became convinced that moral purity is best attained through suffering. Later in life, when addressing arguments that priestly celibacy should be relaxed, or that other dimensions of Catholic life should be made less difficult, Wojtyla would return to the idea that some things in life are supposed to be hard.
On-the-Job Training
Once Karol entered the Catholic church, his rise through the hierarchy was steady. He was ordained in 1946 and continued to study, earning doctorates in theology and philosophy. He became a bishop in 1958, archbishop in 1963, cardinal in 1967.
A priest in the Polish church faced plenty of obstacles. When the Germans were thrown out of Poland at the end of World War II, the Communists took over, and the new regime was every bit as authoritarian as the old--and even more hostile to religion. A rising star, Karol grew proficient in the difficult balancing act of resisting the government's periodic crackdowns on religion without inviting even harsher reprisals.
The great turning point in his career came at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The young church leader from Krakow, relatively unknown outside his native land, attracted attention by arguing forcefully that the church should explicitly condemn anti-Semitism and officially reject the view that Jews are responsible for Jesus's death.
All Roads Lead to Rome
When Pope John Paul I died in 1978 after only 34 days in office, Cardinal Wojtyla traveled to Rome to help elect a successor. On the eighth ballot, his peers elected him to lead their church. He was the first non-Italian pope in more than 400 years and the first Slavic pope ever. At age 58, he was also the youngest pope in generations.
In 1981, he was shot twice by a Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca. He recoved within months, and resumed his arduous schedule. He even went to his assailant's prison and forgave the man who tried to murder him.
Throughout his papacy, John Paul has been a traveling man. In the past quarter of a century, he has made more than 100 trips outside Italy. Plenty of people have traveled to him, too. The Vatican estimates that an astounding 17 million pilgrims have traveled to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome to see John Paul over the years. Many of his followers are there with him today--physically or spiritually or both.
Mark Diller
Updated April 1, 2005
Want to learn more?
Visit St. Peter's, the pope's home church
http://stpetersbasilica.org/images.htm
