Should the Pope resign?

A very interesting question and one that I have being asking myself since reading calls for his resignation through the weekend and today.  Being a Catholic and one brought up in the catholic tradition of the Infallibility of the Pope, the question set my mind racing.

The pope himself has responded through his spokes men that he would not succumb to pressure. What has led to this call for the Pope’s resignation? The child abuse scandal of course. As Cardinal Ratzinger he is alleged to have facilitated the moving around of pedophile priests.

The Catholic church has through the years being the perpetrator of or has being alleged to be the perpetrator of some of the most heinous crimes in the history of man. the Inquisition, silence over persecution of Jews , and so on. In recent times it is the child abuse scandal that has come to bite it.

One has to bear in mind that the Catholic Church is an institution run by humans, and like all such institutions, it is always subject to human errors and mistakes. A lot of mistakes were made regarding the child abuse and other forms of abuse that may come or have come to light.

In transferring pedophile priest all over the place, did the Church believe their sickness would disappear? There seems to have being a concerted effort to hide heads under sand and pretend the evil was not there. Was it just simply because number of priests were on the decline and all available had to be kept?

What caused the decline in the number of candidates entering into the priesthood?  A lot of people had sat down over the years and decided it just was not worth it anymore. The Church seemed to have being blinded by hypocrisy and was content to let the truth slide in anyway possible.

Well that was my take on it anyway. I was so disillusioned by this hypocrisy that I left the Church for about eleven years. My sojourn led me to various other churches, they were not much better anyway, in fact, my dissatisfaction  only increased and I went back to being a Catholic, Anyway, that’s a story for another day.

The Church, in my view, needs to take a pragmatic look at the way it currently operates.  Why is it that women cannot be Priests? Why were there no women among Christ’s disciples? Was it probably due to the fact that in those times women played a minimal role in activism?

Talking about issues like this could lead to a bit of digression, so back to my question. Should the Pope resign over recent allegations leveled against him? I don’t know. i believe he should listen to his conscience and what it tells him. As a Catholic, I believe and hold firm the Churches dogmas, infallibility, etcetera.

That not withstanding, i would be very uncomfortable in knowing that my bishop knew about a priest guilty of pedophilia, and instead of getting such a priest off the priesthood, he was simply transferred to some other parish were it would be okay to molest little children.

By allowing pedophile priests to roam free, the Church gave tacit approval for their behavior. Thank God, times have changed and people are a lot more assertive than in the past! A lot more children would be in trouble today from priests with pedophilic tendencies.

bishops who are guilty of this tacit approval do not belong in the Church. Cardinals also should not be if they have being guilty of this. Before he became Pope, he was a Cardinal, and if he is guilty of the allegations leveled against him, then let him follow his conscience and do the ‘right thing'.’

The time has come for the Church to start living up to what it teaches. You cannot teach Love and turn around and commit heinous crimes or allow such crimes as pedophilia, where is the love in that? That in my opinion is HYPOCRISY of the highest order and it is time for concise change. Change that would mean millions of disillusioned Catholics will take the step to love the Church again, like they used to. Change that would make us proud to shout out loud that we are CATHOLICS!