BIG E
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He's 85 and his health is failing. I actually hopes this sets a precedent and future Popes resign when they can no longer mentally or physically do their duties.
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CNN just announced the pope is hanging up his robe. Has this ever happened before?
He's 85 and his health is failing. I actually hopes this sets a precedent and future Popes resign when they can no longer mentally or physically do their duties.
Hm I honestly doubt this is just about health. Or, if it is, it should be something really serious, like alzheimer. Having a pope screaming profanities in the middle of a speech would be quite a sight, but well, it wouldn't be appropriate.He's 85 and his health is failing. I actually hopes this sets a precedent and future Popes resign when they can no longer mentally or physically do their duties.
Hmm... if you believe in prophecy, then we're about to see the face of Peter the Roman.
He's 85 and his health is failing. I actually hopes this sets a precedent and future Popes resign when they can no longer mentally or physically do their duties.
Hmm... if you believe in prophecy, then we're about to see the face of Peter the Roman.
The political science of papal elections
NYU political scientist Joshua Tucker and PM at Duck of Minerva have compiled a good set of political science research into papal elections. . . . unofficially, Benedict was selected in accordance with the wishes of his predecessor, John Paul II. For most of John Paul’s tenure, papal elections were subject to a supermajority requirement, with a two-thirds majority required to finalize a selection. . . . by the middle of 1990 John Paul had already appointed two-thirds of voting cardinals. Assuming his appointees all agreed on a candidate, they could have outvoted any previous appointees from 1990 until John Paul’s death in 2005 and installed a candidate along John Paul’s preferred lines . . .
But as the above chart shows, a funny thing happened in 1996. John Paul II issued Universi Dominici Gregis, a document revising the two-thirds requirement. In filibuster parlance, he went nuclear. As the authors note, the timing here is funny. He already had a supermajority of appointees in the college. This seems to refute the notion that the change was intended to help secure a future pope who would continue John Paul-like policies.
Instead, they argue, what drove revision was a desire to prevent gridlock. There were three likely candidates for pope in 2005 (according to these authors; others disagree). There was Benedict (then Ratzinger), a Vatican insider with a reputation as a doctrinaire conservative. There was Carlo Maria Martini, a quite liberal Italian cardinal and former archbishop of Milan who died last year and supported same-sex civil unions, a right of the dying to refuse medical treatment and the distribution of condoms as a “lesser evil” to AIDS transmission. And there was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, who earned support from cardinals in the developing world and holds fairly mainline Catholic views. Not only did no block have a clear majority, but a “voting paradox” was at work.
The bizarre stories of the four other popes to have resigned in the last 1,000 years
Pope Benedict IX, in 1045: . . . the Rome-born pope resigned so that he could get married – and to collect some cash from his godfather, also Roman, who paid Benedict IX to step down so that he might replace him, . . .
Pope Gregory VI, in 1046: The same man who had bribed and replaced his godson ended up leaving the office himself only a year later . . . when Benedict IX failed to secure the bride he’d resigned for, leading him to change his mind and return to the Vatican. . . . the increasingly despondent clergy called on the German Emperor Henry III, of the Holy Roman Empire, to invade Rome and remove them both. . . .
Pope Celestine V, in 1294: After only five months in office, the somber Sicilian pope formally decreed that popes now had the right to resign, which he immediately used . . . He became a hermit, but two years later was dragged out of solitude by his successor, who locked him up in an Italian castle. Celestine died 10 months later.
Pope Gregory XII, in 1415: . . . resigned so that a special council in Constance, which is today a German city, could excommunicate the Avignon-based [anti-]pope and start fresh with a new, single leader of the Catholic church.