Pope Benedict to Resign for Health Reasons

yahoo ^

[traumer]

Pope Benedict XVI is to resign from the head of the Catholic Church on February 28, the Vatican confirmed in a statement on Monday, after he said he no longer had the strength to fulfill his duties adequately.

A Vatican press conference started at 11.40 a.m. London time. A Vatican spokesman said the decision "took us by surprise".

[Colofornian]

This neglects the way that the office of bishop developed from the equivalent of chief Rabbi to prelate

The only reason that "bishop" began to be thought of in the singular in the early church is because the church was "one" in every city. Except for the Gnostic sects & various other heresies, there was no denominationalism.

So the bishops were known as the bishop of a given city.

They represented the "one church" for the entire city, even as individual groups of Christians met in homes...and eventually, when persecuted, in caves, etc.

The "flocks" of Christians themselves had plural leadership. Ordination didn't begin to kick in til Hippolytus'...and is NOT covered in the NT.

[Elsie]

What I am saying is for someone to say that because someone doesn’t get healed, regardless of who they are, somehow that is evidence for them to conclude we’re stupid for believing in God, is ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure I did NOT type a 'because' in any of my replies.

Is there an IMPLIED one that you've found?

[bramps]

The point ‘that’ individual was sarcasticly making, imho, was that you’d think that God would heal the pope since he is somehow, according to Catholics, on a different, higher plain than us mortals. ( I think did good for someone new to the conversation)

[RobbyS]

I think you read too much egalitarianism into a society which was instinctively hierarchical. As to ordination, well, there was in Acts mention of the laying on of hands. I certainly see no “democracy” in the New Testament. At the same times, the forms used for the bestowing and transmission of authority would be constantly changing until their was some uniformity from place to place. The coloration would different. Just look at the liturgical differences among the many eastern churches, the differences of architecture and other art forms.

[RobbyS]

In case you did not notice, the Vatican discarded most of the old caesaro-papal stuff in recognition of the end of the territorial authority of the popes. Ironically, the notion of the pope as royalty began to go away with Pio Nono, a man of modest birth, who was anathema to the liberals of the 19th century, but was totally approachable “out of costume.” Pius XII, whose pictures convey an austere and unapproachable persons, was in person the polar opposite. It was said that until you got ten feet away, the illusion held, but then, the smile appeared and this ebullient, charming man was before you, speaking English with something like the accent of an Italian peddler in NYC.

[EDINVA]

The decision to resign took the spokesman by surprise, not Benedict’s failing health, Or were you trying to be cute?

[RobbyS]

There were Catholics, even priests , who were Nazis. Just like today when there are Catholics like Nancy Pelosi. It is instructive,however that among the first people rounded up and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau were socialists, communists, trade union leaders, and Catholic priests.

[RobbyS]

If one compresses the history of a thousand years into a few paragraphs, one inevitably distorts that history. The pope were left being the only signifiant figure in Rome after the emperors moved out, and of course after the western emperors vanished, at least until the time of Charlemagne. Rome over the centuries changed from a political and economic center to the city of the pope. What happened to Detroit happened to Rome, and almost as quickly. It was/is, not naturally a center of trade or transportation. One of the stupidest things done by the Italians was to rob the pope of his city and make it a national capital. It does not even serve, really, to tie north and South together, for these were and are, really different countries. Milan is a European state, Naples is virtually Africa. IAC. history and the papacy are the only things that kept Rome alive for fifteen hundred years. Otherwise, it would have gone the way of Ephesus and Athens. Rome became the center of the Latin Church. The papal states came into being after the intervention of the Franks, and provided material support for Rome until the 19th century. More than the popes, the leading Roman families were the actual rulers of these states. Cesar Borgia come ver close to making them into a significant kingdom. But the idea fixee in Rome was that the pope has to have this territorial buffer or they could not survive, except as puppets of a powerful king. The displacement of the court to Avignon is evidence. The perceived spiritual power of the papacy, which also gave it political power as a kind of balance wheel, was great, because after Gregory’s time, it was also the center of a great missionary movement. Just as Jerusalem had been to the Jewish diaspora, Rome became to the western Christians, and like the Temple, it gathered money from all over the place. The wealth of the Church was great, like that of the Temple. But again, all this is a matter of historical accident.

[Elsie]

You GOT it!

[Elsie]

The decision to resign took the spokesman by surprise, not Benedict’s failing health, Or were you trying to be cute?

---

Moses said:

Psalm 90:10

Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

So my question is: Should we pray for 'healing' to those who have reached 70? or 80 at the max?

[daniel1212]

Thanks for the concise historical overview, but my response was not intended to encompass the entire period of Rome or the occasions which enabled her secular power, but it helped reveal in what sense and conditions she was always “willing to concede the secular power to the state,” and the contrast btwn her use of the state in being conformable to it, and the NT in doctrine and example.

[daniel1212]

I watched a show on the Military Channel about the Catholics helping Nazi war criminals escape after WW 11. Had never heard of that.

Due to the diversity of Rome i am sure you had members helping Nazis while some others were helping Jews, but my focus was on papal sanctioned torture of mere theological enemies, and which RCs were to obey then just as they are to obey Rome now, which now condemns the use of torture, i think mainly due to her loss of her unholy secular power,.

[daniel1212]

notion of the pope as royalty began to go away with Pio Nono, a man of modest birth, who was anathema to the liberals of the 19th century, but was totally approachable “out of costume.” Pius XII, whose pictures convey an austere and unapproachable person The notion of the pope as royalty and its pomp never should have begun: "...they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. " (Matthew 23:5-7)

List of some of the papal tiaras still in existence

Pope Paul VI was the last to wear wore the tiara, his tiara a number of times in 1963, before, in a dramatic act in November 1963, laying it on the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in a gesture of humility to symbolise the papacy's surrender of any claim to temporal power. He never wore it again. It was announced that the tiara would be sold and the proceeds of the sale given to charity. However, Francis Spellman, Cardinal Archbishop of New York intervened and arranged instead for the tiara to be bought by the Catholic Church in the United States in 1968. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiara_of_Pope_Paul_VI)

There is no certainty about what the three crowns of the Triple Tiara symbolise, as is evident from the multitude of interpretations that have been and still are proposed.

The most famous occasion when the triple tiara was used was the papal coronation, a six-hour ceremony, when the new pope was carried in state on the sedia gestatoria (portable throne - see image of Pope John XXIII, left), with attendants fanning the pontiff with ostrich-feathered flabella [based on the Byzantine imperial ceremonies witnessed in medieval Constantinople] to the location of the coronation. Traditionally, coronations took place in St Peter's Basilica.[34]

At the moment of the coronation, the new pope was crowned with the words

Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns and know that thou art Father of princes and kings, Ruler of the world, Vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Though not currently worn as part of papal regalia, the continuing symbolism of the papal tiara is reflected in its use on the coats of arms of the Holy See and the flag of Vatican City. Until the reign of Benedict XVI the tiara was also the ornament surmounting a Pope's personal coat of arms, as a tasseled hat (under which a 1969 Instruction of the Holy See forbade the placing of a mitre, a second hat)[8] surmounted those of other prelates. In a break with tradition, Pope Benedict XVI's personal coat of arms has replaced the tiara with a mitre. This particular mitre contains three levels reminiscent of the three tiers on the papal tiara.[9] However, in the coat of arms of the Holy See and of the Vatican City State the triple tiara is kept. See also Tiara of Benedict XVI (2011). Presented to Benedict XVI on 25 May 2011 by a group of Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_tiara)

[Colofornian]

I think you read too much egalitarianism into a society which was instinctively hierarchical. As to ordination, well, there was in Acts mention of the laying on of hands. I certainly see no “democracy” in the New Testament. At the same times, the forms used for the bestowing and transmission of authority would be constantly changing until their was some uniformity from place to place

Well, I know you read too much institutionalism into the early church. I mean, no church buildings...altho on occasion you find them utilizing what would be a public hall of sorts ... in the few communities that had one...or had one available for that purpose...given the persecution often going on.

There were no formal literal "business" offices per se, pre-empting the opportunities for a layered bureaucracy.

The church was more informal than formal; more organism than organization. It wasn't brick & mortar because it was never intended to be that...the very Greek word for "church" was ekklesia or ecclesia -- which means called-out ONES...

The church is flesh & blood...not your institutional stench that you oft see emitted from some quarters...

[metmom]

No, I’m not trying to be cute.

If his health is that obviously failing, why should it come as a surprise to anyone that he would resign?

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Yes, and if he were really God he would have gotten down from that cross."

--Wormwood, Junior Tempter

[daniel1212]

God did normally use apostles for laying on of hands in ordination, but used a “certain disciple named Ananias” “a devout man according to the law,” to lay hands on Paul in conveying the Holy Ghost, and who baptized him as Paul confessed the Lord Jesus he now believed in. (Acts 9:10-17; 22:12-16)

And then you have the Ethiopian Eunuch confessing Christ by being baptized by Phillip the deacon/evangelist in Acts 8, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost in Acts 10 of Cornelius and co. without any laying on of hands, and then being water baptized.

Which ought to keep us from getting secure in structure and ritual, without wholly jettisoning all, but to focus on substance. As with the bronze serpent, men tend to overly venerate and to trust in things God uses as instruments for grace, and to focus more on the external, but while Peter wanted to build a dwelling for Jesus, “suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. “ (Mark 9:8)

[Elsie]

bttt

[RobbyS]

The institution became more than men and women when its was described in writing. That’s the assumption that Luther anf the Reformers made. Only they assumed that the structure was fixed once and for all. But the fact that the Testament was written in Greek tells us that things were already beginning to change, that the church was no longer a Jewish institution—although more so than we tend to think now, for the Judaism of the diaspora was not exactly that of the Holy Land where Jesus did his ministry. And of course, with the linchpin of the Temple pulled out, it would soon change radically, the fence around the Tora hardening into something like the stone wall the Talmud would make it.

[RobbyS]

Any believing Christian can baptize. As for Paul, his commission was confirmed during his visit to see Peter and James.