I was just relaying a joke, I neither expect God to protect anybody nor even believe that God exists.
Oh, for the love of St. Pete. Is this the best quote you can come up with to prove why your irrational contempt of this man has some merit?
Lame.
Sayyyyyy I heard that he was in the Hitler Youth also as a kid!!!
“He’s pining for the fjords.”
Apparently God answered him like I sometimes do my children: “I did listen to you. I just didn’t agree with you.”
He prayed not to become Pope…oh, really? I hate that kind of self-serving crap. It’s sort of a reverse brag. Nobody gets to be Pope unless they’ve spent years and years and years “campaigning” for the job. It’s the same way when they talk about Queen Elizabeth and King George. “Oh, no…we don’t want to be king and queen…! But, if we have to…” The new Pope can bite me…hard!I
Seems like there’d be a lot less animosity towards His Popliness if they could just find a photograph of him where he didn’t look like evil Robert Blake from Lost Highway.
“I’m in your Vatican right now!!!”
Plus he’s a misogynist. He couldn’t make a call for peace himself; he had to make some broad do it.
Baloney. If that were really true-he would have found a way to step aside many years ago and NOT be one of the ramrods directing JPII’s positions over his tenure.
And he is not all that old for a Pope. I would think that if he attained Cardinal a l"lo-o-o-ong time ago", he would be that much more entrenched and rigidified in his position.
This guy is a policy maker --a Vatican mover and shaker–in recent times. Spare me the “humble” stuff. He is right where he wants to be–and glad to be so.
I do hope that it becomes a case of “be careful what you wish for”–the Bishop of Rome’s job has been known to change hearts and minds of those who sit on that throne. Let’s hope it happens again, and he does become truly humble with the power that has been vested in him.
But I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Well, that’s it. Reminds me of an Onion headline: Crippled child’s prayer answered. “No,” says God.
Well said, apart from the last bit (in my humble opinion, blah, I never asked to be a Member of this board, double-blah, when I was 26 I was scheming and ambitious, now that I’m 46 I want to live a life of ease (“life of ease!”) without the recognition or approbation of others, treble-blah).
The man who became George VI, christened Albert, if I recall correctly, when his older brother decided to give up the throne for the woman he loved, had a stammer and was by all accounts not an ambitious or power-hungry man. There is no evidence to suggest that he orchestrated his brother’s love affair or influenced the PM unduly when a decision had to be made about what to do. So, I don’t (humbly - blah) think Bertie/George VI can be compared to Uncle Joe/Benedict.
By the way, I thought there was a prohibition on joke threads in the Pit. Let the discussion continue.
Really? You’ve never stuck it out on a task or a job because a boss you respected asked you to stick around? Unless you have evidence that the several requests to retire never happened, I suspect you are really letting your disagreeent with his policies color your view of the person.
Actually, he is really old to be elected pope and he is actually older than most recent popes have been when they died. John XXIII was an exception, being one year younger than Benedict XVI at election–and also elected deliberately to be a short-term pope. However, the age at election for the popes going back to 1800 have been (working back), 59, 66. 66, 77, 63, 65, 59, 68, 68, 54, 63, 68, 63, and 59. At 78, Benedict is very much an old man to have been elected.
Aren’t people (even men) living longer than they did two hundred, or even one hundred, or even fifty, years ago? Especially those who watch their diet, exercise well, and enjoy the benefits of the best of western food and healthcare.
If I played the deathwatch game here, I wouldn’t be putting Joseph on my list any time soon.
The idea that he’s a kind of stopgap (the dot after the dash) is to me a bit of wishful thinking by those who are uneasy, even perhaps a little embarrassed, about his views and vision.
It is entirely possible that he could live to be 110. However, if you read the speculation of observers both in and out of the church before the election, (heck, even before JP II died), you will see a lot of commentary that JP II’s successor would be chosen to be a short-term interim pope to let the situation “cool down” before the next “full term” pope was elected. In his opening address the to the conclave following his election, Benedict referred to his papacy as being probably a short one. (One of the reasons that John XIII was viewed with such surprise was not just that he convened the Second Vatican Council, but that he was not expected to do anything but hold his place until the “real” next pope could be chosen.)
I’m not sure that being “short” will be enough if, in just a few months, he decides to wield the ex cathedra club on some of his pet issues. JP II already had to issue a statement contradicting then Cardinal Ratzinger when JP II declared the issue of women priets “closed” and Ratzy rushed to promote the declaration as infallible.
Just because some liberal Roman Catholics would like to see Joe die before he can do much harm doesn’t mean that the men with power want that too. If I was a cunning cardinal, I think what I would do would be to appoint an old man in the rudest of health - thus sending out the signal that this is a stopgap pope who can do no harm in spite of his hardline stance on various divisive social issues - and then put my hands together importunately to request the Lord to let him live long in the land. No one seriously believes he’s going to challenge for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records by living to 110, but there’s every chance for a bloke in his state of health that he’ll live till, say, 85.
He’s a year younger than my dad, and he’s still going strong despite a cancer scare when he was 50. Why? Well, I’m no doctor or psychologist, but they’ve convinced me that if a man, rather than retiring and losing his self-esteem, keeps himself busy and active (like my dad, and like Joseph), then he’s got a much, much bigger chance of living longer.
I don’t think these scientifically-based insights will have escaped those extremely intelligent fellows residing in the outskirts of Rome.
Not really, in the sense that somebody who makes it up through late middle age (i.e. somebody who’s typically in the running to be Pope) has about the same life expectancy then as now. (Of course, surviving to that point was a lot harder back then – infectious disease and bad nutrition contributed heavily to childhood and young-adult mortality in the bad old days.)
First off, I have no contempt for the man. I respect most holy people that aren’t too self-serving. They do their part to keep the masses under control. And both Popes that I have any memory of seemed like gentle, peaceful men. So please don’t misunderstand my OP. All I’m doing is mocking his comments, as I would do with any transparent as heck comment made by any public figure.
Let’s breakdown his exact words, assuming that the English translation is accurate.
“As slowly the balloting showed me that, so to speak, the guillotine would fall on me, I got quite dizzy”
"I had thought I had done my life’s work and could now hope for a peaceful end of my days.
“So with deep conviction, I told the Lord: ‘Don’t do this to me. You have younger and better men who can do this work with a very different verve and strength’ … Evidently this time He didn’t listen to me.”
My translation: I didn’t ask for the job. I’ve done so much for the Big Boss already. Surely HE could find someone else to handle it. But alas! I guess God really, really, really wants me and only me (not that guy and not that other guy either, only ME!) to be Pope. Oh well, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it. Every time I’m out, they PULL me back in!
Right. So a feisty old bugger like Joe has as much chance as making it to a ripe old age (barring acts of God or assasinations) as GB Shaw, who made it to his mid 90s before conking out. And, going back a bit, and comparing Joseph with John Wesley (who lived till he was 87, dying on the cusp of the 18th century), he’s got a decent chance, whatever his family history, of getting another ten years, given the advantages he’s enjoyed over Wesleyan-era folks in terms of nutrition and healthcare.
Based on all the evidence we have, to what age do you think Joseph will live? Just a ballpark figure.
And your dad is still running an association with 1.1 billion members and has administrative oversight for several thousand semi-independent branches (diocese).
This is not some “liberal death wish” issue. (In fact, I have not seen any of the noted members of the left wing of the church even comment on the pope’s life expectancy.) The matter has been discussed by pundits and commentators on church history–most of whom are either on the right-center or are outside the church, completely.
The pope’s going to do what he is going to do and I am not going to either speculate or worry about it. The issue came up as a sidebar to the hysteria that accompanied the central theme of this thread. It is a simple fact that the pundits (in all their wisdom) had declared the probability of a short term pope. It is a simple fact that Benedict’s first address alluded to his expected short term. If he now goes on to set a record for longevity and activism that puts JP II to shame, then that is what will happen. I am not praying each night that God stops depriving Himself of the presence of one of his saints. I merely responded to the factually inaccurate claim that he was “not that old” for a pope.
Also, I want to point out that I didn’t put this in the Pit. It was moved here. I put it in MPSIMS because I had no intention of roasting the guy. I thought it was funny that the Pope could expect to make such a comment and not have someone call Bullshit on him.
Using a similar system to what Tom did above, I looked up the age of death of every Pope since 1800. Their average age of death was ironically 78.