# Who are the front runners for the next Pope?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-front-runners-for-the-next-pope/536498>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 18, 2010, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-front-runners-for-the-next-pope/536498 "2010-04-18T01:10:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-front-runners-for-the-next-pope/536498/41 "2010-04-21T02:07:03Z")

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> [@Frank](#):
>
> John Paul II has only himself to blame for that. His personal view of ecumenism was not reflected in his actions. He spent his entire pontificate turning the church into a bastion of cardinals, bishops, and priests who, if they did not kowtow to his direction of conservative Catholocism, were punished.
> 
> He wasted no time after his election; for example, Fr. Drinan was ordered to remove himself from the U.S. House in 1980 - all priests were ordered to remove themselves from electoral politics - and it only got worse. The goal of JPII was to entirely reverse the movement of the church that took place during the reigns of John XXIII and Paul VI, and he succeeded completely.
> 
> In my opinion, it wil take the church a century to recover from the disaster that was JPII.

Hmmm . . . How challenging would be the logistics of sneaking massive doses of LSD into the Cardinals’ provisions at the next Conclave? Can the Swiss Guards be bribed?

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**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-the-front-runners-for-the-next-pope/536498/42 "2010-04-21T04:34:50Z")

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> [@Frank](#):
>
> John Paul II has only himself to blame for that. His personal view of ecumenism was not reflected in his actions. He spent his entire pontificate turning the church into a bastion of cardinals, bishops, and priests who, if they did not kowtow to his direction of conservative Catholocism, were punished.
> 
> He wasted no time after his election; for example, Fr. Drinan was ordered to remove himself from the U.S. House in 1980 - all priests were ordered to remove themselves from electoral politics - and it only got worse.

Father Drinan was an unintended casualty, though. Vatican policy ordering priests to remove themselves from electoral politics wasn’t intended to silence people like Father Drinan (although they obviously weren’t fond of his position on abortion), but people like Father Fernando Cardenal and the other liberation theologians who joined the Communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua and gave religious sanction to the Sandinistas.

And John Paul II’s curia were at least as harsh to dissidents on the right as on the left, cracking down on Lefebvre and the Traditionalist Catholics. John Paul II was generally supportive of Vatican II, but he rejected calls to go farther.

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