Pope

The Pope  is essentially the head of the Roman Catholic Church and Leader of the Vatican. In some restricted conditions the Pope is considered infallible. The Church says that in some very rare cases what the Pope teaches can't possibly be wrong. That means that if he's proven wrong, we imagine the universe is uncreated. In most situations the Pope is clearly a very fallible human being, and the universe remains very much intact. In all situations if you don’t believe the irrational and unfounded religious teachings the Pope’s liable to make mistakes and many popes have been extremely corrupt or misguided.

Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII failed to take a stand against mass murder in Croatia during World War II although he knew many Roman Catholic clergy and laity were involved in those murders. This was one of many failures to act or take a stand agtainst Genocide.

Pope John Paul II
They were considering fast tracking Pope John Paul II to become a saint. Well if they do they’ll need to come to terms with Pope John Paul II’s criticism of modern Capitalism,. So a saint doesn’t feel comfortable with capitalism and that might have a negative effect on rich influential supporters of Roman Catholicism. They’ll also need to come to terms with Pope John Paul II’s work covering up priestly child abuse,. So a saint helped paedophiles to escape justice that will have a negative effect on rich and poor alike.

Of course once he became pope Ratzinger covered up child abuse as diligently as his predecessor. 

The present pope
In advanced countries even ordinary Roman Catholics are more and more dissatisfied with the present pope. There is no evidence that we know sugesting the present pope Benedict XVI, was complicit in anything as bad as mass murder but he is accused with evidence of complicity in different evils.

A problem with Paedophilia
There are strong allegations that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is now the pope was more interested in covering up child abuse allegations and in protecting abusive priests than in protecting children, see this example from information that the BBC provided Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'.

Anybody consider Ratzinger a rat? 

Possibility of Arrest for Crimes Against Humanity
Professor Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens explored the option of having the Pope arrested under the same legal principal that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a British visit in 1998 and charged with crimes against humanity. Richard Dawkins is quoted below.

(...) I did NOT say "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" or anything so personally grandiloquent. You have to remember that The Sunday Times is a Murdoch newspaper, and that all newspapers follow the odd custom of entrusting headlines to a sub-editor, not the author of the article itself.

What I DID say to Marc Horne when he telephoned me out of the blue, and I repeat it here, is that I am whole-heartedly behind the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's proposed visit to Britain. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horme, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article here

Fr Lawrence Murphy
There is evidence this priest abused over 200 boys and picked on vulnerable deaf boys. Murphy abused repeatedly over several decades and was not denied access to children during this time. Ratzinger helped to cover it all up, as a head of State Ratzinger is immune from prosecution over this. 
 * Pope accused of failing to act on sex abuse case
 * Pope Joseph Ratzinger ignored inquiries from concerned church officials about ongoing sexual molestations by priests.
 * Thomas: Uncovering the cover-up by the Catholic Church
 * For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse
 * Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

Fr Peter Hullermann
Fr Peter Hullermann, a vicious sexual predator on children was allowed to continue as a priest. Unusually for the Roman Catholic Church they tried to restrict his access to minors but he flouted bans.
 * German sex abuser priest suspended for breaching ban
 * Peter Hullermann News

German abuse generally

 * Vatican accused over German sex abuse allegations

A problem with AIDS
It looked very much as if the Pope would rather people died through AIDS than allow them to use condoms or any other form of birth control. The Lancet suspects that. Protestants, especially protestant Fundamentalists, also sometimes prefer if people die from preventable diseases; this includes innocents like babies born to infected mothers, and it's unlikely that the Pope is the only Roman Catholic who cared more about restricting condom use than about preventing disease and death. See:-
 * AIDS
 * STD
 * Christianity and the Commandment not to Murder

The pope has modified his view
The pope has recently qualified this and now says prostitutes of either sex, even transsexuals can use condoms if the primary purpose is to prevent life threatening infection. Note that preventing a baby being born to an unsuitable prostitute mother is not sufficient reason in itself to use a condom.

A problem with Nazism
The current Pope used to be Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and is German. It’s not his fault he used to be in the Hitler Youth as he was forced to join and was only 14 at the time. Ratzinger was forced to join the Nazi Luftwaffe later. 

We can’t reasonably hold either of these issues against Ratzinger or Pope Benedict XVI. None the less there is a problem when Benedict XVI reinstated a Bishop guilty of Holocaust denial without bothering to check information that was readily available. 

"The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Williamson will not be allowed to perform priestly functions if he does not recant. He said the pope was unaware of the comments when he rehabilitated Williamson and three other members of the Society of Saint Pius X."

Has the Nazi indoctrination the unfortunate Ratzinger suffered in his youth influenced him more than is comfortable? The World War II Disney cartoon below shows how boys during Ratzinger's youth were indoctrinated to become good Nazi soldiers. In the film a Nazi teacher picks on a boy named Hans because his name isn't something more Nordic or German. Nazis preferred names like Kurt or Werner. Young Joseph Ratzinger may have suffered similarly.

It should be noted that there were members of the Hitler Youth who strongly disagreed with Nazi ideologies and belonged to the Resistance movement, practicing non-violent, passive resistance. Ratzinger wasn't a member of the resistance, passive or otherwise...


 * Walt Disney - Anti Nazi Cartoon - Good Quality

Out of touch
The pope is over 80 and in most companies they would think a man that age is too old to do the job properly. The Pope is out of touch with the modern world.

Medical opinion
The Pope is out of touch with medical opinion. The respected British medical journal, The Lancet accused the Pope of distorting science over his claim that condoms shouldn’t be used to combat AIDS.

"'Whether the Pope's error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear, (....) When any influential person, be it a religious or political figure, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record,'"

Doctors feared the Pope's comments could increase AIDS disastrously and urged the Pope to admit he was wrong. As shown above he has suggested at least partially that he was wrong.

French Catholics
The Pope is out of touch with French Catholics. 80% of French Roman Catholics think their church is wrong over abortion, divorce and homosexuality and over 40% even want the Pope to resign. The majority also disagree with the church over remarriage after divorce. Just under half thinks the Pope defends the Roman Catholic Church badly. 

Resignation
The pope can resign but some sources suggest he probably won't,  another source puts the odds of the pope resigning as high as three to one. Popes have tended to die rather than resign. Many liberals pray for the former, Liberals oppose the Death penalty so believing liberals are unlikely to pray for the pope's death, they would gladly accept his resignation.

Benedict IX
There are several precedents for papal resignation, one notable case was Benedict IX, a mediaeval pope who resigned and was reinstated several times because his worldly lifestyle scandalised very many people, see Biography: Benedict IX and The Man Who Sold the Papacy: Pope Benedict IX, The Weekly Bastard.

There is in theory nothing to prevent our present Pope Benedict XVI followingthe example of his predecessor with the same name by leading a scandalous lifestyle by resigning.

No right wing conspiracy
If the Pope were both as powerful as and as much a threat to Conservatives as some recent American presidents, there would no doubt be born a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' to endlessly persecute him, prosecute him for sexual abuses and cover-ups, and attempt to impeach him. Since he is neither, he is allowed to remain untouched by lawsuit or impeachment, to the credit of an invisible vast right-wing conspiracy. This has caused many true liberals a crisis of conscience; many fear that failure to act against the Pope for his sins will cause their souls to spontaneously combust, for which there is currently no Roman Catholic healing rite available.

Death?
Well when Pope Benedict XVI was first elected he predicted a short reign, i.e. an early death. Did he know something was wrong with his health? Did he want to die early? Did he expect facts to come out which could turn him into a problem for the RC Church if he stayed alive? Will Benedict die conveniently as John Paul I did? Will embarrassment surrounding Benedict XVI end with his death?

John Paul I died, why?
Something went wrong with former Pope John Paul I who lasted barely a month and rumours abound. Was John Paul I murdered? Did John Paul I take his own life? Did he accidentally or intentionally overdose on his medication? Did the former Pope refuse treatment for a life threatening heart condition because he wanted to die? This would be marginally different from suicide or euthanasia according to convoluted ethical teaching and perhaps according to Roman Catholic teachings as well, see  Declaration on Euthanasia. Alternatively was the Pope in good health after all? 

Popes with dementia seem to die, why?
One would expect the elderly men who become Pope to develop Alzheimer or other types of dementia from time to time but somehow that doesn’t happen. Alternatively when Popes develop dementia they die conveniently before anything is obvious. There is not a procedure for removing a demented pope unless the pope willingly resigns and no easy recorded case when a pope was demented.

"No one can depose the Pope even if he's immoral or loss his marbles."

Don't ask us how The Vatican tries to justify what looks close to suicide or murder, we're not Vatican insiders and don't know.

Pope Benedict XVI looks set to survive
Pope Benedict XVI probably won’t die conveniently as too many people remember John Paul I and the Roman Catholic Church won’t want yet another set of rumours. Ratzinger and the Roman Catholic Church don't have that easy way out of their difficulties any more. Pope Benedict XVI will probably stay alive and will try and find some way or other to deal with the various mistakes he’s made and the problems he’s caused.

Ratzinger hasn't spoken recently about suicide except to condemn assisted suicide in February 2010. Now what happens to Popes with dementia? Is this condemnation yet more RC hypocrisy? From his opposition to suicide we can assume, he wasn't tempted then, he was firmly resisting temptation then, there's no way he'd admit he was tempted then.

Speculation
A great deal of the above is a bit speculative but there is the unanswered question, 'Why don't popes with dementia survive?' also, 'What really happened to John Paul I?' Something is happening involving the deaths of at least some popes that the public doesn't know.

The Japanese Samurai were totally unconnected with the Vatican but the tradition of Sepuku there shows how far human beings can be brainwashed to accept their own deaths. There seems to be a tradition that demented popes die before anything is too obvious and that tradition goes back the start of the papacy. Among Romans suicide was seen as an act of courage in extreme situations, The Bible says little about suicide so early Roman Christians may have accepted Roman traditions about killing themselves or allowing themselves to be killed. Popes have been priests since early manhood and have been Vatican insiders for decades before taking up that office. Popes have been in the organisation so long that they can be brainwashed to the extent that Japanese Samurai were.

Videos

 * Proving that the pope has never read the Bible Video