New Pope Elected

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Re: New Pope Elected

In that era under that regime he didn’t have a choice, all youth had to participate and according to his biographer he didn’t attend a single meeting, later he deserted after being scripted into service.

Again:

Josef Ratzinger was born in Rhode Island. The son of a police officer who was anti-Nazi. In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and setled in the town of Traunstein. When Ratzinger turned 14 in 1941, he joined the Nazi Hitler Youth. According to his biographer John Allen he was not an enthusiastic member. He requested to be taken off the rolls and reportedly refused to attend a single meeting. In 1943, at the age of 16 he was, along with the rest of his class, drafted into the Flak or anti-aircraft corps, responsible for the guarding of a BMW plant outside Munich. He was then sent for basic infantry training and was posted to Hungary, where he worked setting up anti-tank defences until deserting in April 1945. In 1945 he was briefly held in an Allied POW camp, where he attended de-Nazification classes. By June he was released, and he and his brother (Georg) entered a Catholic seminary. On June 29, 1951, they were ordained by Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich. His dissertation (1953) was on Saint Augustine, his Habilitationsschrift (second dissertation) on Saint Bonaventure.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cardinal_Ratzinger

Palace In The Sky
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Re: New Pope Elected

Once Germany went to war, all German kids were pretty much forced to join the Hitler Youth otherwise their families would draw the attention of the Gestapo for not being patriotic enough. Later in the war, membership was compulsory.

At any rate, what is interesting is that Ratzinger in the past has gone on record as saying that it is better to have a smaller church of dedicated conservative catholics than to liberalise the religion to keep membership up.

He favours making the church a conservative counter-culture, which would directly compete with Islam's position in western societies. Currently, in most western societies Islam is the most visible conservative counter culture against society's liberalism.

If Ratzinger/Benedict's policies last long enough, Islam and Catholisicm in the West will be fighting over the same target market - people spritually disappointed by liberalism.

Frankly, I had been hoping for a liberal Pope since that would have involved compromising the Catholic Church's conservative stance and left Islam in a stronger position as the undisputed leading mainstream conservative faith.

Right now, in terms of easily accessible conservative faiths, Islam and Catholocism are directly competing. A liberal Catholic church would allow Islam to monopolise the counter-culture faith conversion market.

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Actually Josef Ratzinger was born in Marktl, Germany.

http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios-r.htm

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Actually, this guy used to head the Inquisition (or rather, the organisation formerly known as the Inquisition). He must be pretty hardcore conservative.....

For years I've been itching to see if the Vatican would ever flex its political muscle by ex-communicating politicians who defy its will, like they did in the good ol' days.

I'd love to see the reaction of a liberal Catholic politican in the west who, upon announcing that he's voting to allow gay marriages for instance, is warned by Benedict XVI that unless the guy votes against it, then he'd be excommunicated and condemned to hell.....

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I don’t think of it as a competition, by any stretch. Both will actually complement each other, indirectly. Right now, you see muslims branded as anti-liberal, but when they see 1 billion catholics also shaking their heads at the neo-liberal mantras of relativism etc, Islam, is no longer the one out of place here.

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Re: New Pope Elected

MS, if the church ever tries to blatantly get involve in politics there will be a major backlash.

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Surya - I wondered about that, thank you, it didn't fit in with the bio, was actually going to go and research further. Rhode Island is where I was born.

M_S - the Pope is no longer a major influence in politics. He can advise Catholics to vote along the lines of faith, that's it. Too many lessons learned by too many people in the crusades, etc.

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btw shouldn't it be new pope selected becasue they selected him from a group of cardinals rather than having all the catholics vote for him?

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Nice point, but I guess the counter-argument will be that the cardinals voted him in and he was competing against other cardinals in the voting process.

Practically speaking, a ‘selection’ is usually when a person or a group of persons appoint someone to a position (for example, Admin selects you as mod for Trash forum). Election is when you have to compete with Pinstripe uncle for the position and all Gupshup members above the mental age of 6 will vote. By the way, the example is purely for explanation purposes and should not be construed as a sign of future moderatorship (of Trash Forum or anything resembling a forum). For the record, we don’t have a Trash forum either.

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Can you relax the age lower mental age limit to 4, so Sadi Sobi may also vote?.

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You can also compare it with the electoral vote system in US. Since majority of American are too dumb to elect a president directly so the Electoral College does the job.

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Electoral college is something different as they are elected only for the purpose of voting for the President, whereas Cardinals are not elected. A better analogy will be that in any elections, you only allow certain people to vote.. for example, only adults over the age of 18/21 who are citizens and those who have registered to vote.

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No problem Minah_Pa, I too could not believe he was born in RI.

On a different note, shall the prediction of St. Malachy true. Is this Pope the second last Pope.

The man who made this prediction was St Malachy, an Irish bishop and clairvoyant. While on a visit to Rome, St Malachy is said to have fallen into a trance and seen a vision of all the popes to come. Writing in the year 1139, he described each of them in a single, sometimes cryptic, but ultimately apt, Latin phrase. And so far he has been remarkably – even eerily – accurate.

For example, he described Pope Paul VI, who held the position from 1963 to 1978, as Flos Florum, which means ‘Flower of Flowers.’ Paul VI’s coat of arms, as it happened, featured three fleurs-de-lis, or iris blossoms.

His successor, John Paul I, who was Pope for one ill-fated month before he suddenly died, was described by St Malachy as De Medietate Lunae, or ‘Of the half moon.’ People were puzzled by the description at first, but after he died they realised that he had come to power at the time of the half moon and died by the next half moon.

The late John Paul II was described as De Labore Solis, or ‘Of the eclipse of the sun.’ It turns out that he was born on May 18, 1920 during a solar eclipse.

The next Pope, whose name will be announced shortly, is described in the prophecies as Gloria Olivae, or ‘The glory of the olive.’ What exactly does this clue mean? We cannot tell as yet. Some believe that it means he will come from the Benedictine order, which is symbolised by the olive.

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so when can we expect a trash forum? can one of the bishops here check for a prophocy hinting at such a thing

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You want us to create a Trash Forum, so you can be "elected" the moderator there?

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as long as it's a pope style ellection where I choose the people who shall vote for me offcoarse

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We already have a trash forum aka Cafe.

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oh offcoarse agent... how about the pak affairs forum lots of trash in their too

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If you call aitedaal pasand liberals as trash than yeah we have lots of trash in pakistan affairs.

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I think that gs should rename that forum.. maybe something like hail mushy's tushy or get out of pakistan forum