According to St. Malachy, isn’t Benedict the second-to-last Pope?

Coyote D. on November 30, 2006 at 8:22 PM

Yes, or the next to last. If you combine that with the rest of events, it indeed becomes scary or hopeful, depending on your perspective.

It would also preceed the end of days.

In either case, prayer helps.

Sometimes it’s not good to shake the cage too hard, AP

He was meditating on a nice pork roast with a goblet of Communion wine.

And BTW, the pope is not my pope. So I really could care less about what that dude does.

Yup. It Reeks.

I’m glad I’m not Roman Catholic. This will be difficult to defend.

Congratulations on not being a Catholic you must be very proud. It’s not a difficult faith to defend quite the contrary. Pope Benedict has been the only public figure that has seriosuly questioned Islam. We’ve all done it ourselves but then the Pope hasn’t attempted hiding behind a pseudonym on a message board. He addressed millions of people at great personal risk to himself.

In the eyse of Muslims, this is the Roman Catholic Pope ‘defering’ to Islam and a sign of submission and weakness. This just encourages them to disregard our overtures of peace and continue fighting.

Everything and anything is regarded by jihadists as a sign of submission as far as I can tell. The Pope is not a warlold and it doesn’t fall to him to defeat the jihad. The fact that they regard any behaviour short of aggression as a sign of weakness is a sign of their desire to conquer the West.

The Vatican is a tiny patch of land, mid-way down a peninsula, on the edge of continent in which it’s reported that the majority of the young, vigorous part of the populace will shortly be muslim. It seems the Pope can do one of five things: deny the predicted course of Europe, ignore that predicted course, prepare an evacuation, try to accommodate, or pray to God for intervention.

While Vatican City has been the traditional home of the Pope he should consider re-locating. Italy seems especially vulnerable to the jihad and probably won’t be safe for the future. I imagine he’ll end up in America or Australia.

1. I don’t think the Pope is gonna become Muslim.

2. You can thank the Catholic mission to subdue “all things for Christ” for Christmas, Easter and even halloween. If you don’t like it you can all be Jehovah’s Witnesses and you will fit right in.

3. As the vicar of Christ he is simply showing respect for the religion and which, for most, at it’s core is a search for God. I don’t think he’ll be marching around the kaaba anytime soon. But try getting a high profile Muslim to participate in a mass or even a good ole timey hymn sing… forget about it.

Is this actually a story? Does anyone give a flying Shiite about what direction the Pope prays?

Lest we forget, Pope-in aint’ easy…

’nuff said.

At first glance, yes it looks bad. Perhaps he was praying for God to destroy Mecca, or for Muslims to convert to Christianity…who knows? I said, perhaps.

Yes, the only thing that can save Christianity is that sliver of hope that the FREAKIN’ POPE prayed to god to destroy Mecca rather than peacefully praying with other religious leaders.

Good grief people… here’s something that many of you may not realize. Catholics can face any direction they want when they pray! Respectfully joining in their service doesn’t make him a muslim any more than I am Catholic for having done the kneel-sit-stand stuff when I visited a Catholic service.

Sneering at your readership is a good way to lose your readership.

And without readers, there goes your advertisers.

Stick that conspiracy… in your pipe and smoke it.

Humn … funny, still Catholic, not an atheist. Guess I’m just stupid that way. I view the Pope’s actions as being respectful without capitulating. After all, doesn’t matter what direction we face when we pray.

Yeah, what Carin said.

By the way, Turkey should’ve been removed from NATO as soon as they refused to let us roll through their territory on the way to Iraq.

The Pope says they’re violent (which they are) nobody’s killed by his words (although some Christians are killed by muslims angered by those words) but HE has to be respectful to THEM.

So, if they kill our people, we have to be nice to them, and if we insult them by telling the truth … we have to be nice to them. Got it.

This is a case of Shame Society and Guilt Society.

There’s only one way to deal with a Shame Society. Ask Japan how we’ve been known to fix this kind of mess.

We need to start splittin’ some freakin’ atoms. The city state of Troy was located in what is modern day Turkey. Let’s put a nuke in a big black square rock that looks just like the one in Mecca and say it’s a gift from the Greeks.

Yes, but was the Pope praying no one would spot the ham sandwich he had up his sleeve?

Dusty on November 30, 2006 at 5:40 PM

Best of thread, Dusty.

At least they didn’t try to get him on all fours with his bottom up and his forehead on the floor.

Humn … funny, still Catholic, not an atheist. Guess I’m just stupid that way. I view the Pope’s actions as being respectful without capitulating. After all, doesn’t matter what direction we face when we pray.

I remember taking my shoes off as that was the custom. Being a visitor I did want to show respect.

My visit was, very obviously, waaayyyy before I learned about what Islam really is and the politics of the day.

I bring this to attention because when I visit churches with friends, I pray. I pray when I’m in temple. If I were invited to a mosque, I would not hesitate to pray there either. I would, however, say MY prayers, not the host’s, and they would be silent.

I would not spit in my host’s face, nor would I dishonor what the building is, a house of God. (I won’t get into the Allah is the Moon God mode here.)

Now, we can all discourse on the politics of the Pope’s visit, the potential reconcilliation with the Orthodox, the defense of Christians in the Dar al Islam, but for him to pray in a mosque is no big deal. Facing the Kaaba? Um, maybe not. But there is too much politics attached to the visit and if you think that the shitstorm that erupted due to his Regansburg (sp?) speech was big, imagine what would have happened if he did something even “more disrespectful?”

I think, under the circumstances, Benedict did OK.

It seems to me the tax placed on non-muslims will make a middle course impossible in the long run.

Especially given that we don’t know what he was praying about…

Pablo on November 30, 2006 at 6:14 PM

“Please God, let them finally become the religion of Peace they claim to be. Please let that be my legacy”.

Some of the comments here are really insulting. The Pope has not converted to Islam. I can’t tell if some of these comments are jokes, or are just smears against the Pope and hence all Catholics.

The most respect he should show is to take off his shoes, look around, and say, “Mighty nice wallhangings. Pray? No, no, ha ha, I’m Catholic, didn’t they tell you? Thank you anyway.”

Do you really want to be in the business of telling the fricking Pope where he should and shouldn’t pray? I know that sort of question is waaaaay above my pay grade, and I don’t want any part of it. Especially given that we don’t know what he was praying about…