ot: 1 min of silence

[Frederick_d_Ohlmann]

In my opinion his death a good event for two reason :
_he stop suffer
_he will no more be manipulated by others. I can't think that he was really taking any decision.

[Intimidator]

I agree with Dogscoff and Frederick......
I really felt sorry for that man the last year. Really, really sick as he was, but still on 'the job' as catholic world leader...... IMPOSSIBLE.

[El_Phil]

Uhhh what is 'The Job'? Alot of world travel, speeches, the odd blessing to crowds and...

It doesn't seem the world's toughest job, especially as he'd had decades to establish his position on any important issue, so it wasn't as if he had to make difficult theological decisions about complex issues, he'd already made them.

However you've got to admire the man for keeping going with all that he's been through and to keep on going right to the end. Glad he's got some peace now.

[Intimidator]

El_Phil said:
Uhhh what is 'The Job'? Alot of world travel, speeches, the odd blessing to crowds and...

It doesn't seem the world's toughest job, especially as he'd had decades to establish his position on any important issue, so it wasn't as if he had to make difficult theological decisions about complex issues, he'd already made them.

However you've got to admire the man for keeping going with all that he's been through and to keep on going right to the end. Glad he's got some peace now.

Oh yes , I admire the man......but that's the whole point: After his life as an pope and his devotion, My opinion is that he deserved it to stand down and life/die in peace.
But I know (or I hope) it was his own decision.....

Inti,

[dogscoff]

Interesting link RD. However I still think it's likely (or at the very least, possible) that he clung on out of duty rather than preference. From that Wiki page RD supplied:

Abdication is considered dangerous by some Catholic thinkers, as it leaves open the possibility that those who dislike the new Pope will claim that there was a conspiracy to oust the old one and that the new Pope might therefore be an Antipope

The solution should be to set an arbitrary retirement limit: All popes must retire at age X, or when certain medical conditions apply. Then there would be no question of them having been 'ousted'.

[Caduceus]

dogscoff said:
The solution should be to set an arbitrary retirement limit: All popes must retire at age X, or when certain medical conditions apply. Then there would be no question of them having been 'ousted'.

Good luck getting *that* through the College of Cardinals.

Heh.

We'll see how long it takes to see white smoke...

[dogscoff]

We'll see how long it takes to see white smoke...

I read a few years ago an article somewhere about the most likely candidates for his successor. I seem to recall that at least half of them were black.

Imho the catholic church has done more to increase bigotry over the years than to counter it, but I think the election of a black pope would send a poweful message that you don't have to be a white guy to be an influential figure in the western world. (Although it probably helps )

Big question is, how long before we get a *female* pope?

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I SAID it could be 10k years or more..... sheesh.

[El_Phil]

Well remembering all that took a while, so I didn't actually see your newer post before I finished.

If your kicking it out that far then no-one's can claim to make a stab based on anything other than guess work. So here goes

I'd guess that once most of the solar system is colonised and/or terraformed that's when asteroid mining is going to come into it's own. Loads of cheap fusion or cleverer power, funky hi-powered lasers or some clever anti-matter explosives to break the buggers up and robotic processing plants. Let's be honest with enough power to throw at a problem you can normally solve it.

Finally once you've gone to all the effort of terrafroming a planet you're going to want to keep it nice and clean, so planetery mining isn't going to be popular.

[dogscoff]

{going to mars} But we are talking a massively expensive project...

The answer is both simple and on-project: The Catholic Church should fund the next Mars mission. They've got loads of money, and a mission like this could really help improve their image of being out-of-date and out-of-touch. Nothing would bring them up to the cutting edge like a boundary-pushing science project.

I'm sure some justification could be invented: extra real-estate needed for the vatican, searching for heaven/ God, want to test the power of prayer at relativistic speeds... someone will think of something.

Once they've put the money in, tried the hardware and proven the concept, the rest of us can follow in their footsteps and colonise Mars.

It's not actually such a crazy idea: Way way back the church used to be at the forefront of astronomy and the sciences- until scientists started getting burned alive for discovering the wrong things anyway.