Over the last days I've been following the media - television, radio, Internet - and the reportage of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the upcoming conclave to elect a new Pope. This morning on AM radio, one of the Jewish broadcasters I listen to said the program would be following and reporting the story as well.
I feel that the election of a Pope is an important event not just for Catholics but all the people of the world. Non-Catholics and Catholics alike are interested in the secret processes, rituals, and politics of selecting a new Pope. Though various names have been mentioned as front-runners, I am also reminded that there can be surprises. Whomever is elected will have to be super-qualified for a very difficult job in an evil world.
Will the next Pope be American (I doubt it!), Canadian (Maybe), African, or from South America? A diplomat? A theologian? A businessman? A saint?
The scandals revolving around the issue of clergy involved in homosexual acts involving adults who consent (but disobey their vows) and child molestation, a horror, in the last several years, have hurt the Catholic Church and will greatly influence this election.
However, I think the resurgence of Anti-Catholicisms by Protestants and others who think the fiction work of author Dan Brown (DaVinci Code, etc.) has possibly more damaging.
I've read Brown's books and I've seen the movies. As fictions I find them interesting and well written GOTHIC NOVELS. In college studying literature I learned that since the Protestant Reformations in Europe fictions in which nuns and priests fornicate and indulge in Black Magic practices have long been popular among those who want to believe novelistic scandal. In other words, nothing new.
The terrible truth that so very many children experience molestation, even infant rape, and that so very many women also experience a rape in their lifetime; the statistics are such that we must know certainly all this evil is not via Catholic clergy! In other words, the revelations of these occurrences will not, in the future, be limited to just this one church or organization. The molester or rapist is usually not a stranger but a step-father or date. They are not just hiding out in one Church.
I would love to live in a better world, a heaven on earth.
It's time that the majority of people who are good, stand to conquer evil, whatever their belief or lack of in God!
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