Pope Online

I look at several websites as part of my Maryvale studies. This is quite different from wasting my time reading Catholic blogs and assorted rubbish on-line. I don't do that at all.
Oh no.
I review Internet content for academic purposes.

Here are a few goodies about the Pope's decision to abdicate. My own reaction, when I got home from the DIY shop and was told the news - 'He can't do that!'
But he can, according to a revision in Church law dating from 1983 (Canon 332).

Bloke on right is very sound and very helpful to Maryvale students (Mgr Guido Marini, Papal MC)

Here's Father Zed:

Why can the Pope abdicate his office?  The office of Pope carries with it the fullness of jurisdiction in the Church.  The “Petrine Ministry” is a little different from other offices in the Church, but it is an office.  The Successor of Peter does what other successors of the apostles do in that he teaches, governs and sanctifies.  His role also includes being a visible sign of the unity Christ desired for the Church and a point of reference as Christ’s “stand in” or Vicar (vicarius).
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/02/quaeritur-why-can-a-pope-resign-why-isnt-being-pope-for-life/

From Fr Finnegan:

The media don't understand that the Church isn't like a global business or a series of Presidential elections where each candidate has a different manifesto.

Fr Ray Blake is concerned about a bad precedent:
The retirement of a Pope seriously undermines the ancient notion of the mystical marriage of a bishop to his Church, which contains in it the idea of the esse of a bishops relationship being more important than agere. What he is in relationship to his diocese until VII was considered to be more important than what he did, it seems to come from deep in the heart of Catholic/Orthodox Tradition, it could be argued it goes back to the Apostles, hence the Orthodox hatred of "desiring other Thrones", which in the East is seen as kind of simony.
http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/for-better-or-worse-in-sickness-and.html

One of his former altar servers, Dr Tim Stanley, names and shames media misunderstandings:
Some parts of the mainstream media don’t do God and don’t understand people who do. They see everything through the prism of politics – presuming that Christians fall into camps of Left and Right, that Bible-talk is ideological slang or that the tenets of faith are up for negotiation in the same way that party platforms are easily forgotten by the hucksters who ran on them. Some journalists need a crash course in Christianity.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100202815/pope-benedict-xvi-resigns-the-mainstream-media-just-doesnt-get-god-or-catholicism/

Thoughtful piece in the Speccie:
Benedict is an academic, belonging to the grand tradition of German scholarship. He’s used to proper debate of serious ideas, to the careful consideration of arguments before they’re advanced and answered. And bluntly, our age isn’t used to dealing with extended argument.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/02/how-pope-benedicts-wisdom-was-often-lost-in-translation/

Here's Fr Barron (of the Catholicism series) on the Pope's legacy:
http://www.wordonfire.org/WOF-TV/Commentaries-New/The-Legacy-of-Pope-Benedict-XVI.aspx

And from the great Cardinal Arinze (he's probably too old to be elected):

Finally, some thoughts from an Army Padre Fr Charles Gosnell:  "The Pope has resigned. WTF?”

Can everybody just please sit down!      

He wants to ensure that the most able man is at the helm, he by his own words has said he’s not strong enough anymore to carry this burden. So please just hear him, and know who he is before you talk nonsense about a man whose books and Encyclicals you’ve not read and probably never will.

So there you go. The facts and a little reason in the face of media hysteria and conspiracy theories. I hope it does us all a dose of good. So be not afraid, all will be fine. Trust in Him who is our way, our truth and our life. And trust in His promise to us.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2698/can_everybody_just_please_sit_down

Good graphic on location of Cardinals. Many in Europe are there because the Pope is also the Bishop of Rome, so lots of Italians (20 of them):

Just for fun, a shortlist with profiles and odds from a non-religious source:
Click through from current Paddy Power favourite, Marc Cardinal Ouellet.
http://www.businessinsider.com/who-will-replace-pope-benedict-2013-2#cardinal-marc-ouellet-1

And a final word:

 God bless our Pope.