Added Friday 17th August 2012
The Roman Catholic Church needs a new Pope, preferably below the age of 60. And that means the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Even if you exonerate him - and I don't - from being the latest in a line of Popes since Paul VI to traduce Vatican II, he has trumped his unjustly admired predecessor's incompetence. JP II was beneficial, in descending order of magnitude, for the world, inter faith dialogue, Christian unity and the Catholic Church but the current Pontiff is just about equally bad for all four, but it is the last that concerns me here. Ratzinger, a supposedly competent theologian, is disastrously wrong over the status of the argument about celibate clergy; his in admission of debate on female clergy is scandalous; his meddling with the Vatican II vernacular tradition is divisive; his dispute with The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is self-destructive; is inability to handle child abuse scandals is catastrophic; and the corruption and incompetence of his Vatican gerontocracy is humiliating.
If the Pope will not come clean over his true attitude to Vatican II, decree clerical celibacy to be a matter of church order rather than doctrine, allow an open debate on the ordination of women and appoint lay Cardinals of both sexes (they do not have to be ordained) to reconstitute a competent Vatican administration to deal with child abuse and corruption, then national episcopal gatherings should call for an Ecumenical Council and if the pope refuses they should suspend allegiance to the man while continuing to revere the office.
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