Quote Originally Posted by JustMe
Greetings:

Why on earth did they elect someone that's almost dead already?

Apparently they've decided that these little transitions of theirs get them a ton of good PR, and they want to have them more often.

I heard an interesting answer to this question tonight on the news. He suggested the church picked someone of that generation to essentially carry the church through a transitional period. I'm not catholic, nor an authority, but I thought that interesting. Frankly, I'm not sure why people are really surprised about the choice of pope.

I guess it is easy to place a political lens on religion. That seems to be the immediate response to anything.

I am not religious at all, and I've never read the Bible. But it seems to me that if you are Catholic, an individual like this should not be surprising. Plus most religious people I know embrace religion for guidence or to potentially better themselves. Most aren't on a mission to save unborn babies or depraved homosexuals... they just want to go to church. (naturally there are plenty of exceptions to this)

My roomate in college was a straight friend from high school - he considered himself a pretty devout catholic, and he would have sex with his girlfriend using contraceptives in our dorm room. I figure many others like him learn to overlook or reconcile old church techings with modern life.

Frankly, so many of my friends' lives have spiraled into sad stories of depression, debilitating drug and alcohol use, and other bizarre directions I can appreciate people who earnestly try to productively organize their lives to rational degrees.

Steve