Pope to step down 28 February per Italian news and BBC

[Peace Patriot]

169. The Vatican doesn't live in the last decade. It lives in the 10th century.

And I don't think you understand the patriarchal hysteria--indeed, insanity--of the MEN of the Church hierarchy in their insistence that the Pope has a "lineage" back to St. Peter. They mean it LITERALLY. To them it is spiritual DNA, linking the current papal monarch to the last papal monarch to all the previous papal monarchs, back to St. Peter. That's why it has been nearly unthinkable for a pope to "resign."

And, having a pope resign--i.e., this one--the first to do so in 600 years--means that something is very much amiss in this MONARCHY. Or that is a very safe assumption. It ain't old age or infirmity. Popes DON'T "resign" for that reason. And exactly like hereditary kings, St. Peter's DNA weathers every scandal, every crime, every horror, every mortal sin, and even vast numbers of scandals, crimes, horrors and sins. Spiritual DNA exists in a rare ether that is not affected by worldly concerns.

I know there are some current instances of WORLDLY monarchs "resigning." That is not relevant to the Papacy. The Papacy is GOD's monarchy, in their view. And, among the things that this male establishment has asserted is that THEY "crown" worldly kings. They have more authority than any worldly monarch.

The official Church literally exists in an early Medieval era. That is how popes, cardinals and bishops think; that is how they behave; those are the kinds of laws and social rules they adhere to--and the rewards in that extremely top-down, monarchical system are doled out on the basis of medieval fealty, deference and obedience TO A MONARCH.

Thus, it is strange, to say the least, for this monarch to "resign." And it seems very unlikely that his "resignation" is for the reasons he states--age, infirmity. Could be. But--given the huge scandals of his REIGN--it is probably not true, and is instead connected to personal culpability in one of the two big scandals we know about--the child abuse scandal or the CURRENT (not 1980s) Vatican banking investigation, or perhaps some other. That is a good guess, that he has done something so discreditable that he was forced to resign. Another possibility is that the cumulative effect of his mismanagement of these scandals has so reduced Church revenue that a power faction among the cardinals has forced him out. The Vatican and its cardinals lie like Bushwhacks. You really can't believe anything they say--so all this talk about how "surprised" everybody is, is probably nonsense. It was a forced "resignation" for one reason or another. And the gravity of the crisis was such that overturning 600 years of precedent and the "DNA" back to St. Peter was the lesser 'evil.'