The Blue Board

You act like the church doesn't politicize itself more than anyone else ever could.

Yep. It'd be a lot easier to treat the church as a non-political entity if they didn't meddle in politics constantly...

I'm hoping the next pope will finally come to terms with the whole birth control situation. It's not a big deal in the US, but people are spreading AIDS like crazy in Africa because the Catholic Church doesn't approve using condoms.

Also, I hope the next guy doesn't systematically cover for child rapists. That'd be good too.

I don't think anyone considered it a real possibility. As I said early in the thread, it's been almost 600 years since the last time a Pope resigned. The Pope had said in an interview (a couple years ago, I believe) he'd be open to considering resigning, but I don't think anyone within the Church made much thought of it.

Yes they should just change their stance on these things, like a political party trying to stay relevant. I mean it's not like their position is based on anything, it's completely arbitrary. They should get Gallup to conduct a poll and base the positions of the Church on the results of the polls on various issues.

No way do they go more tolerant. I mean, new guy might be less Hitler Youth but there are laws and rules that will never be changed. JP 2 was a softer, mellower pope but it's not like the church's views ever changed on things like homosexuality, abortion, birth control... etc

Hopefully the new guy will take the sexual misconduct stuff a little more seriously though. They need to find out why these boys are suddenly finding it necessary to report that they're being molested. Clearly just telling them not to tell anyone is no longer working.

You guys do realize that almost every kid growing up in Hitler era Germany was a Hitler youth, right?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_029.pdf

• A much higher proportion of married than of never-married women use a contraceptive method (79% vs. 39%). This is largely because married women are more likely to be sexually active. But even among those at risk of unintended pregnancy, contraceptive use is higher among currently married women than among never-married women (93% vs. 82%).[2]

You could not be further from the truth.

As for the church's 'solution', Natural Family Planning:
• Only 2% of at-risk Catholic women rely on natural family planning; the proportion is the same even among those women who attend church once a month or more.[5]

The church doesn't have to change their stance on anything, but they risk further reduced influence and membership. Already in Europe christianity and catholicism is well into its decline phase, and the US isn't that far behind. If the church wants to take a hard stance on contraception, that's fine - it will just make them irrelevant faster.

Then people won't show up. And the pope won't have anyone to pay for that funny gold hat of his.

And, if you're wondering, the church considers condom use, in or out of marriage, as a mortal sin.

It would be far more humane of them to make this change. Not politics, its just logic.

This is the direction I would like to see my church go in. No one is asking you to agree with my opinion.

Unless your goal is to have more people following you, then forcing your members to spit out kids like sunflower seeds makes more sense.

Meh who cares

Well not believing in Jesus is the cool thing these days, and clearly the trends are that less people will be believing in him in the future. So maybe the Church should be a trendsetter and denounce Jesus so it could be more relevant and contemporary. Gotta keep up with the times.

Ignoring the obvious facetiousness of that statement, what exactly bothers you so much about change? You said once in a thread you missed the way America was in the 1950's (another topic obviously). What is so wrong with progressing and adapting and evolving?