Any thoughts? I'm curious as to who'll be elected the new pope, and if it's gonna be the first non-European pope. And if he'll have less criminal views on birth control, women, abortion, condoms; etc. Doubt it tho, change is a slow process and the papacy is a thoroughly conservative institution.


EDIT: hey...since when am I a minor 'diety'? *points at title*

Lol, first time i notices that too.

Who'll be the next pope: no idea. No Danneels though.

Finally dead. Now before a new fossile gets elected, let's all go to Afrika and tell the people there to fuck with a rubber, before the new pope can forbid it again.
By the way, a new pope is elected by the cardinals, and the cardinals are elected by the old pope, so I doubt we'll get a very liberal one this time.

Odds on the next one being black and female?

Woman: zero (women are not even allowed to become a priest)
Black: very close to zero, not enough candidates.

I think that was a retorical question

The problem in Africa is that you can't forbid condoms since they have strange habits. Like when a man dies, his woman goes to someone else, but in the mourning period everybody fucks her. Or something. Dunno anymore, read it once and it thought WTF , no wonder aids is such a big problem there. First the church should try to change those habits.

I feel happy for that man to be honest. Much like the other topic on euthanasia, he's been alive and in bad condition for a long time now, even If he was fighting to live, at least now he hasn't got to fight anymore.

That man was probably one of the most influencial men in the world, and I dare say that thousands upon thousands are morning. Does anyone have a link to the reports?

http://abcnews.go.com/

it's the main page there.

Fuck knows who the new pope will be.

that guy's been dying for years and years. It's about time it finally happened. No offense to the guy, he seemed fairly cool (for a pope). I could care less who replaces him...the papacy is one of those institutions that affects my life about as much as the Robert Mugabe.

True but in some ways he did try and help the world. And J I think they have being trying to change the tribal customs of Africa since the missionaries first came there. The Mau Mau was formed due to people trying to ban female circumcision.

Trying, yes, hard enough and in an efficient way, no.

Thought that counts.

I seriously doubt the new pope will changes his views on immoral actions and practices.

Actually the catholic church approves only 1 form of birth control, its called "natural family planning"

Please eloborate on that 'natural family planning', the details i mean, how the catholic church views it. There must be some serieus holes in that theory.

ow damn i'm late

I guess that's having sex at the right moment. So only when you can get a woman pregnant, otherwise it isn't done just to gain the Catholic Church more souls.
For some reason the Catholic Church thinks sex is evil, although I can't remember to have ever seen that in the bible.

Heh, there's a lot of the Christian/Catholic doctrines that isn't anywhere in the Bible. It nowhere says that girls should be virgins when marrying, for example. (it doés say that they shouldn't be mothers yet, but that's a whole different ballgame)

But anyway, what I wanted to know is what you, as an outspoken catholic, think about these issues 11b:

->sex before marriage
->birth control

You're right about the new pope not being radically different than this one, of course. Like I said, change is slow.

@ Satis: why you kinda liked the pope? Because of his fiery speeches against the communist regimes (which were pretty cool)? or his cool display in Nicaragua? He was there for the wrong reasons, but his 'silencio!' was pretty kewl.