Popes shouldn't resign. What’s up with that?

(As I said in my first post, I polled some men I know, and they responded with their problems with the Catholic Church they currently have.  The titles of these posts will be the problem or confusion, and the blog itself will be the answer)

Been a lot of buzz around this lately. I'll answer this first as it seems most pressing, even though as far as your salvation goes, the pope resigning is a very minor worry. Nonetheless, people are acting this is the first time we've ever had a new pope.  Granted, the pope doesn't resign every century, but it isn't like this hasn't happened before.  As I am sure you have heard, a pope hasn't resigned since 1415.  For some perspective, at that time, the New World hadn't been discovered yet, Protestantism didn't exist, and the Gutenberg Press hadn't been invited, therefore, no bible in every home.  The Church has been around for 2000 years, so there is nothing new under the sun.  Thus we have laws and protocol for these things. 

Sede Vacante translates to “the Seat being vacant”, in reference to the fact that no one is currently sitting on the Chair of St. Peter, the first pope.  There are 4 ways this can happen: 1. The pope dies (most common)   2. The pope resigns  3. The pope is declared ipso facto (beyond doubt) insane  4. The pope is ipso facto heretical, and/or preaching against the Church (like openly worshiped an idol, kinda like Solomon did).  These have all happened before (with the insane one being before there was good documentation, so that is a rumor, but as a rule, it is still smart.  Can’t have an insane leader). In total, the Church has reasonable record of 9 popes resigning.  In addition to the pope being able to resign, Canon 332 §2 says “If it happens that the Roman Pontiff [the Pope] resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone”.  So technically, if someone tries to push the pope out of his office, its invalid, so even if he agreed, it wouldn't matter.  Kind of a fail-safe to protect against the State interfering with Church affairs.   And you thought Separation of Church and State was to protect the State; well not originally at least.  It also says that he doesn't need anyone’s approval to do this.  He’s the Pope!  He does what he does.

Which leads me to my next point.  Being the leader of the Church has a lot of power with the title.  Some might call it too much for one man.  Men throughout history have tried to ascertain, thru unethical means, the papacy. That’s why we need all these rules.  There is a phrase I've seen around that I feel has a lot of truth to it. “Those who want the papacy don’t usually get it, and those who get the papacy don’t always want it”.  The pope has a lot on his shoulders.  He is accountable to God to get all the souls of the world, not just Catholic ones, into heaven.  Priests worry about the all souls in their church’s jurisdiction, the bishop has to worry about all the souls in their diocese (a collection of churches in one area), but the pope has the world.  That’s daunting.  Now, they won’t be able to get everyone to heaven, but they must do all they can.  Because of this fact, it has long been thought that some of the deeper pits in hell are laced with bad Bishops, who had a job to save souls, and dropped the ball.  Yes the pope has a lot of power, but to quote Uncle Ben “With great power comes great responsibility”.

Now why did Pope Benedict XVI resign?  Well, the man is 85.  He is the 4^th oldest pope, ever.  Or at least that is documented since 1295.  They didn't keep good notes back in the day.  Could you imagine your grandpa, at age 85, traveling the world every month to host talks and bless people, as well as have the mental ability to run the Church?  I can’t.  My grandma is 82 and she is out of it.  You can’t leave her alone, or else she’ll fall over and break all her bones, and talking to her is like talking to a very distracted preteen.  I am not bashing the pope in any way, but man has limits.   B16 has been keeping it together fairly well, and has conceded that even though God ordained him as Pope, he is no longer able to properly fulfill that position.  A very humble move, I think.  Now is a momentous time. Let us await the arrival of the next pope and all God has in store for His church thru him.