17. Jesus was on the side of the anawim (those without a voice). When have you or your dictates ever been on the side of the anawim?
18. Are you a Christian? (A canon lawyer who spent years in Rome told me that to understand you I had to first realize that you are not a Christian.) Can you prove it to us please.
19. Are you the first Grand Inquisitor to be elected pope? What does that tell us about the state of the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history? How does that feel to be treading such fresh ground?
20. A Native American woman who is also a Roman Catholic went to Rome a few years ago for the beatification of Blessed Tekekwitha. It was her first visit to the Vatican and she was looking forward to it. However, she came back shaking her head saying, "there are evil spirits in that place." Was she correct? Have evil spirits taken over the Vatican at this time in history?21. Why do you denounce Buddhists as "atheists" and "autoerotocists?"
Why do you condemn Hindus? Protestant churches? Pagans? Goddess worshippers? Native American believers? Feminists? The practice of Yoga? (You write that it gets you "too much in touch with your body").
Is your church--mother of Inquisitions and Crusades and anti-Semitism--without sin and the holder of all spiritual wisdom? Why did your church never excommunicate Hitler?
22. Why do you forbid Catholics to talk about God as Mother? God as Child? Original Blessing instead of Original Sin (which is not in the Bible)? God as female as well as male?
Reverend Fox finished that article by saying,
" A New Reformation can happen swiftly. It is already underway. The Internet can help feed it. The myths that have kept the Roman Catholic Church afloat for 1800 years have been washed away. (The historical Jesus never said: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church." That came later.) Maybe the new version of Christianity need not be Peter based (Roman Catholicism) or Paul based (the Protestant option) but Mary Magdalene based. Any takers?"
It's been almost eight years since Ratzinger became pope. The child molestation shame of the Catholic church has been exposed. The pope apologized, but that was after it came out that he'd help protect child rapists. And he still has not done all that should be done to stop the horrors.
The Cardinals and Bishops in the US continue to act to support right wing candidates who do all they can to gut the care and protections and safety nets for the poor.
Looking at a recent video of Ratzinger, he looks very haggard, perhaps ill, perhaps dying. I've always believe he was an evil man who had done much wrong in the world. I have little hope that he'll be replaced by anyone much better.
Today, most of the world's Catholics are in the third world-- South America, Africa, Asia, yet it is likely that another European white man will be chosen.
The Catholic church is one of the oldest, most powerful top-down domains of power on the planet. There's no reason that it has to stay that way. As Matthew Fox has written, it could embrace the archetypal feminine and become Mary Magdalene based. It could become a bottom-up faith that empowered people rather than one that has a history of domination and power.
The Catholic church has hundreds of millions of good people still in it, even though it expelled good people like Matthew Fox and many other Liberation Theology priests. It IS possible that the Catholic Church could become a beacon of light in a corporatized world that is losing its soul. Ratzinger was a pope that kept the church with the darkness. Considering the hierarchy that now exists, it is not likely that the church will find a leader who embraces the light of social justice, women's and gay's rights, who sees the threat of corporatization to humanity and earth's soul. Let us pray that the man the cardinals choose will not be worse than Ratzinger, as hard as that is to imagine. And may we find a blessing that they accidentally chose someone, like George Herbert Walker Bush did-- David Souter-- who turns out to be very different than what they expected, in a positive way.
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