Resignation of Pope 'a total shock'

“What is the point of the pope anyway?

To see all this worship towards this idol is a disgrace, shame upon those who worship him and forget God.”

“Alfredo - Very true. Instead of the Catholic church scaring children with purgatory (which incidently, is actually made up by the catholic church ie not mentioned in the bible), the new scare tactic would be: "if you're bad, you will be put in the care of catholic priests" - that should scare any child!”

“I find the notion of all religion quite repulsive, fake and contradictory, and especially hypocritical"
there is no old man in the sky, haven't you heard of the story about the kings new clothe?”

“@Judas - why did he resign? Like all good Catholics he decided to pull out before it was too late.

I imagine he's fed up with dealing with the disgraceful mess that is Catholicism and has decided he'd rather play golf, or that he wants to live somewhere where he can use is credit and debit cards.”

“Jesus was a simple and charitable man. What on earth is all this about. The clothes, the gold, the paintings and the idolizing of the pope (a mere man) how far removed from its intentions. It is now a joke. I find the notion of this religion quite repulsive, fake and contradictory.”

“Admittedly, this is highly unusual. I suspect there is more to this story than we are being told. The Catholic Church and particularly the Vatican have quite a long history of cover-ups.”

“Wow, the pope has resigned big deal and then another Pope takes over.”

“an old man with an imaginary friend resigns, big deal”

“Here's a question. Why did this Pope 'resign' rather than 'retire'? It makes you wonder.

In a previous TiG article, it states: "He (Ratzinger) took charge as one of the biggest scandals to plague the Catholic Church - that of child sex abuse by priests". - Please lets call it what it actually is; it was child rape.
I know we are overwhelmingly decent people. We are opposed to covering up the rape of children. We are opposed to telling Africans that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. We are opposed to labelling gay people "evil". The vast majority of us, if we witnessed any of these acts, would be disgusted, and speak out.
We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.
There are people who will tell you that these criticisms of Ratzinger are "anti-Catholic". What could be more anti-Catholic than to cheer the man who facilitated the rape of your children? What could be more pro-Catholic than to try to bring him to justice? This is only one of Ratzinger's crimes. When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can't contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don't work.”