Do you feel Negatively/ Positively about our new Pope - to Catholic DU'ers

[cidliz2004]

I have a negative gut feeling - but now that I realized that he fits in the Malachy Prophesy and today is Hitlers birthday and this was the 3rd session and this guy was a former Nazi....just adds to my discomfort....(Call me superstitious, I don't care)

[Squatch]

1. Very positive. Very hopeful.

[seabeyond]

3. why? n/t

[Squatch]

6. Why not?

What can one man do to upset MY faith...MY beliefs? Popes are temporary, the Church is eternal.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Very negative.

[ArtVandaley]

4. Nazi accusations are unfounded, produce proof. But . . .

I am not happy with the pick, slightly scared. I think electing a Third-World Pope would have been great for the world.

[Walt Starr]

5. Well, since I was baptized as a Catholic

against my will I might add, I think it's a sign that the Church is on its way into obscurity.

[patrice]

7. Disappointed.

Years and years and years of sitting in those pews and listening and thinking, "Why don't we have more leadership?" "Who are they afraid of?" "Why don't they talk about all of the injuustices we inflict on Jesus every day?"

It seems like any other business, afraid of loosing market share.

We are the ones who will have to be responsible for the truth.

[Township75]

8. Neither

I am happy a new Pope was elected, but I don't now if I should be positive or negative about this one. Time will tell.

I was slightly dissapointed that a 3rd World pope was not chosen, but I am sure much more must be considered when selecting a Pope than location.

The new Pope gets a clean slate to start from as far as I am concerned and he will be judged with how he performs.

[mirandaod]

9. Not happy.

The last thing this world needs is another fundie. I knew it wouldn't be a progressive, but I was hoping and praying for a pope with a heart for peace and social justice.

My own behavior won't be influenced by this pope, any more than it was by the three previous ones. I just feel sorry for women in the third world who will be more at the mercy of the strict doctrines that are bound to come from this pope.

[RobinA]

12. Well Jeez,

Isn't the Pope by definition a fundie?

[cidliz2004]

10. As always the extreme conservatives closes the door on others

So, just based on his stance on church doctrine will make people less hopeful for the church in general.

The fact that he has a weak heart makes me hopeful.

Sorry if that sounds bad, but such a conservative really won't be good for church in the long run.

Another thing that I have against this guy is that he is known as the "enforcer"??? Isn't that kind of what 43' was pegged as during 41's campaign?

[GreenArrow]

11. lapsed Catholic, but...

I feel sick to my stomach.

[cidliz2004]

13. Me to

Funny way to feel about a faith that I was "born" into, but really never believed in. I remember from a very young age questioning why this and why that. I feel that I am a very Christian person and I also feel that my faith is a pretty private thing - more of an inward journey to reach a closeness to God. The Catholic church though, still does interest me - probably because my husband is a practicing Catholic as well as my sister... So I am surrounded by them....Lucky me.

[GreenArrow]

17. yes, it's sad

part of me is very attracted to the Church. Under other circumstances, I would have been willing to be a priest, or even a monk, as the mystical tradition has always held great interest to me. The other part of me is repelled by the aspects of the Church all too adaquately represented by Herr Ratzinger. His selction as Pope is really the wrong direction for the Church to take, IMO.

[Tinoire]

14. Very positive. Very hopeful.

You are Peter and on this Rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

To feel anything but hope is to not believe the Word of God.

PS. He wasn't a former Nazi. As a pre-teen, he was forced to join the Hitler Youth because it had become compulsory. Ratzinger was never a member of the Nazi Party.

You know that his family was persecuted by the Nazis due to his father speaking out against them? Read up on him - very interesting man.
===

From his memoirs...

Cardinal Recollections




Cardinal Ratzinger's father was an officer in the state police. His hatred of the Nazis, whose brutal misconduct often made it necessary for him to intervene, made him a marked man even before Hitler's assumption of power in 1933. A devout Catholic — as was his wife — the father would warn the local clergy when he knew they were under Nazi surveillance. He was relieved when he reached the age of 60 in 1937 and was able to retire.



The road home


Hitler's seizure of the Sudentenland in the autumn of 1938, on the pretext that its German inhabitants were being maltreated by the Czech government, was preceded by "a campaign of lies obvious even to the half-blind." The Munich agreement, which sanctioned this act of aggression, "was clearly only a postponement, not a solution. My father could not understand how the French, whom he so admired, could swallow each of Hitler's successive violations of international law as something almost normal."


The attack on Poland in September 1939, "preceded by the same ritual staged before the Sudenten takeover," was followed by the eery quiet of the "phony war" and then by Hitler's swift victories in Denmark and Norway, the Low Countries and France. "Even opponents of National Socialism experienced a kind of patriotic pride. . . . My father, however, saw with unblinking clarity that a victory for Hitler would be a victory not for Germany but for the anti-Christ, the beginning of apocalyptic times for all believers — and not only for them," the cardinal writes.


(snip)

The future cardinal was now in a minor seminary. Classes became increasingly intermittent as the war intensified. The invasion of France by the Western allies in May 1944 "was a sign of hope for most of us. We had considerable trust in the Western powers whose sense of justice, we hoped, would help Germany to a new, peaceful existence."


(snip)

http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=663

[Zynx]

15. Mixed, but hopeful.

He was dead last in my choices, but at least we know what he is and he may well surprise us when he is actually pope.

[comsymp]

16. Minor nitpick, but

Isn't Hitler's b'day tomorrow?

And I believe it was the 4th vote, not unprecedented.

[cidliz2004]

20. I'll split it with you Right on Hitler's birthday Wrong on what I

actually said. I said the 3rd session. Session being the key word meaning that they met and voted once yesterday, 1st session, Early this morning another session with two votes taken (2nd session), late this morning was the final session with Ratzinger being elected with the 4th vote (3rd Session). I was counting how many times that the Cardinals actually met in "session".

[moobu2]

18. I dont know but it seems appropriate for them to elect a former Nazi

They're all a bunch of crazy delusional people if you ask me.

[Kathryn7]

19. Hopeful