Posted on 09/27/2011 10:58:47 AM PDT by NYer
I hope and pray this is just a rumor!
Popes don’t resign. They die.
I thought the Pope was supposed to die in office...never heard on any resignation? How does the Pope who is renowned to be infallible, resign from being God on earth? Does he become fallible after that?
This raises so many questions to me...
Me too! Amen!
I would think that any pope who resigned simply because of reaching a certain age would be setting a precedent which future popes would have a hard time ignoring. Resigning because of incapacity to carry out the duties of the office would be a different matter.
Pope Celestine V resigned because he didn’t think that he was suited for the office. Dante put him in hell as a result, but he was later canonized. (Dante has not been canonized...but he does have a very nice tomb in Ravenna.) Gregory XII resigned to help end the Great Schism (there were two other men claiming to be pope but he is generally regarded now as the rightful pope...but people at the time couldn’t figure out which was the true pope).
or something like that.
In 1595 Saint Malachy wrote a prophecy describing, quite accurately, each future pope to come. The final Pope on the list is the one following Pope Benedict.
Pope Celestine V
Been discredited so many times it's not even worth a new thread.
Unless he has some horrible illness, I don’t see this happening. I pray that is not the case, and this is just a rumor.
Assume that the Pope decides to resign because he feels that his faculties/strength/ability are beginning to ebb, and he wants to exit on his own terms, while still reasonably capable. The BIG question is how effective he could be in helping to choose his successor. College of Cardinals is an interesting place at election time..
There have been a handful of resignations and retirements in the last 2000 years, most famously Pope Celestine V , who retired to become a hermit, and is a canonized saint. Oh, and Pope Gregory XII (14061415), who retired to end the Western Schism.
No problem with the infallibility thing, which is not a "personal characteristic" of a Pope. It is a characteristic of the Church. It exercised by the Pope himself, only when he is, in very rare and formally limited circumstances, defining a doctrine on faith or morals in the name of the Church.
I hear that before NYER somebody post over the weekend about Pope retiring next April I think just rumor right now
Can Pope retired I know they could be overthrown that the series Borgias told me LOL!
</sarcasm>
Ping for later.
So, what has been discredited, that it was published in 1595 or that it correlates with 112 successive Popes?
The Pope is only "infallible" on certain issues. He can make mistakes:
"Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidelium, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics. This dogma, however, does not state either that the Pope cannot sin in his own personal life or that he is necessarily free of error, even when speaking in his official capacity, outside the specific contexts in which the dogma applies."
The Pope is not God on earth.
"The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church (which is composed of the Latin Rite and the Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the see of Rome). In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle.
The office of the pope is known as the Papacy. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is often called the "Holy See" or the "Apostolic See" based upon the Church tradition that the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul were martyred in Rome."
(from wiki)
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