Attention Twitter fans: are you having trouble deciding what to say about the news that ill health is forcing the pope to retire? Here’s a quick list of Top Five 3-Word Responses to the news:
5. It’s a start.
4. What, no cops?
3. Prayer failed, eh?
2. He deserves it.
4. What, no cops?
3. Prayer failed, eh?
2. He deserves it.
And the number one response:
1. Alderaan is avenged.
His ill health was the excuse he was told to use, but I think “He was pushed”
I always thought he was elected to be a caretaker pope while the cardinals sorted out who they really wanted. Apparently he’s lived too long and now he has to go to make way for whomever the real powers in RCC Inc have decided they want at the top. Whoever it is will be younger, more conservative and even more downright nasty than the Rattenfaenger. I hope it’s not that snake Ouellet!. But I’ll miss the wonderfully expressive pictures of Ratty that Barry Duke publishes over at the Freethinker.
I doubt that this is the case – Joseph Ratzinger was an ambitious man through his whole life. I highly doubt that he’d let himself get used. Moreover, the cardinals are all men either appointed by JPII or Benedict at this point – and of the ones that JPII appointed, Ratzinger would have had a lot of input especially in the mid to late 90s after JPII’s mind started to go.
I think it’s most likely that he’s realized he has two choices – retire or find himself being propped up and used the way he and others used JPII as he was deteriorating. For a guy as ambitious as Ratzinger was, it would have to be fairly humiliating to be a puppet Pope. Better to retire and let one of his hand-picked minions take over for him – it isn’t like they’re going to do anything differently than him. If anything, they’ll have a higher probability of being able to “put the past behind them” with regards to the ongoing criminal conspiracy to aid and abet sexual abusers in the church than the guy who was neck deep in the cover up for years.
My favorite comment to his retirement was on Slacktivist. “I am retiring so that I’ll have more time to search for my Precious that was stolen by that nasty Baggins.”
At least he didn’t use the “time with family” excuse.
No love for “Fuck the motherfucker”?