Pope Benedict resigning Feb. 28, voting underway

[thebluefood]

Depends on the issue you are talking about ... even with a relatively liberal Pope I don't think the RCC is going to go so far as recognizing ordinations or even opening up the Eucharist ... if thats what you are referring to.

No, nothing like that. I'm just talking about relations between Rome and Protestants, especially mainline Protestants. From where I can tell, Protestants and Catholics are on good terms in an unprecedented way. I just don't want the next Pope rolling back the clock and damaging that.

I also wanted to post this op-ed from the Post's website.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...7adb_blog.html

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but the Catholic Church is not going to change its teaching on any of the fun stuff (contraception, female “ordination,” homosexuality, abortion, etc.) with the next pope.

Nor will it ever.

When news of the pope’s retirement broke, Nicholas Kristof pondered on Twitter: “At some point, the church will accept contraception and female and non-celibate priests. Could it be in the next papacy?” Countless groups issued press releases clamoring for a “progressive” pope. The Rainbow Sash Movement called for the next pope to stop emphasizing “purity.” The Women’s Ordination Conference announced it would hold vigils and raise pink smoke to raise awareness of the need for “female priests.” I can’t wait to see what Maureen Dowd will say.

So while most Catholics worldwide heard the news of the pope stepping down and gave him a giant, global air-hug, a few dissenting groups used the news to get attention by banging their pans and loudly rejecting church teaching and disrespecting the head of their faith. It was unkind.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

No, nothing like that. I'm just talking about relations between Rome and Protestants, especially mainline Protestants. From where I can tell, Protestants and Catholics are on good terms in an unprecedented way. I just don't want the next Pope rolling back the clock and damaging that.

I don't see anyone really changing the level of cooperation there is now between Catholics and Protestants - at least not in Western countries. For one reason, they are largely aligned politically at this point - at least on the issues that the Catholic heirarchy really care about. It's not like the Southern Baptist Convention is suddenly going to come out in favor of employers having to provide for contraception in their health plans.

[ixcuincle]

[Elessar78]

WaPo:Pope struggled to lift sacred secrecy of Vatican finances

VATICAN CITY — Inside a 13th-century monastery in a sleepy village north of Rome, Father Salvatore Palumbo was allegedly serving more than one higher authority. Italian prosecutors say a Ferrari-driving lawyer who defrauded insurance companies used the priest as a front man, with Father Palumbo stashing the illicit cash inside the secretive Institute for Works of Religion.

A.k.a., the Vatican Bank.

The arrests over the past six months of Palumbo and the 34-year-old lawyer, Simone Fazzari, highlight one major source of the scandals and power struggles that observers say contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation this week — the murky world of Vatican finances.

With ATM machines offering transactions in Latin and a castlelike headquarters protected by spear-toting Swiss Guards, the financial arm of the Vatican has never been a run-of-the-mill bank. But a sense of crisis has been building around it and other Vatican financial dealings.

Italy last month barred its own banks from doing business in the Holy See, citing a lack of transparency by the city-state’s financial apparatus that has routinely declined to release data on accounts held there by church bodies, clergy, foreign embassies and lay entities related to the Vatican. The move cut off credit card processing at Vatican commercial sites including the Sistine Chapel, effectively forcing them to go cash-only. This week, plastic was finally welcomed again in Vatican City, but only after church authorities cut a deal with a Swiss firm that is not subject to European Union banking laws.