If you do not worship these men then what difference does it make if they resign rather than stay in the job for life? I see the benefit in not having people resign helter skelter but anybody who hits 80, 90, 100 has earned the right to take a break. If you want them to stay in office longer then pick younger people. Being the pope is a job, no matter how important a job you might think it is. Everybody should have the right to retire from their job. Even the queen of England can retire. Though nobody wants her to because then her son would be king.
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The whole thing is bizarre. Pretend you were a space alien coming to earth for the first time, didn't know anything about humans at all and the entire Roman Catholic Church history was explained to you - hah! A huge group of hundreds of millions of people shouldn't be lead by a tiny group of nearly dead old men.
For a Pope that has been very conservative and actually regressive in some ways (I refer to the new Mass) this is one of the most progressive things he has done. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about why he has retired but if you give some people half a chance to bash religion, their confirmation bias will take over and nothing will get in the way of a good story. I'm happy to take it at face value until there's reason not to - and I'm not saying such reasons won't come out.
Esbboston, you could say that about almost any country or corporation.
Oh, and regarding worship, the Pope is no more (or less) worshipped than, say, Barack Obama or Steve Jobs. Rank and file Catholics to not automatically follow the Pope any more than the average Israeli would follow Benjamin Netanyahu.
A big difference being that the vast majority of Israelis voted for or against Netanyahu's party. What percentage of Catholics voted for the last pope?
And conspiracy nuts will always believe whatever they want to believe. No amount of logic will ever make any difference.
Speaking of conspiracies, Bill's second comment was in the spam folder until I moved it. Maybe it was that Obama remark. Or maybe God put it there on purpose.
And, coincidence or not, they are voting for the next pope right now.
Simple majority or absolute?
The Catholic church is hardly unique among religions for not being a participatory democracy. Do you vote for your local Rabbi?
Yes actually. The community chooses the rabbi. They are not thrust upon us. But more importantly, my rabbi is not a head of state.
I wouldn't expect Catholicism or any religion to be democratic. But when you compare a pope with a PM, democracy becomes an obvious difference.
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