{"id":6518,"date":"2005-02-03T09:40:59","date_gmt":"2005-02-03T14:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2005\/02\/03\/retirement-plans\/"},"modified":"2005-02-03T09:40:59","modified_gmt":"2005-02-03T14:40:59","slug":"retirement-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2005\/02\/retirement-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

FUTURE popes will have to retire at a fixed age, under secret plans being discussed by Catholic cardinals, ending a tradition of service until death that has lasted 2000 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to senior church sources, cardinals have discussed among themselves the need to choose a future pontiff who is open to a retirement age, probably 80.<\/p>\n

They do not want a repeat of the past few years, when the ill-health of Pope John Paul II, now 84, has forced him to take an increasingly light role in directing the church, responsible for the spiritual welfare of 1.1 billion believers.<\/p>\n

The church has in effect been run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the ultra-conservative head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But Cardinal Ratzinger, whose nickname is John Paul III, is considered too old, at 77, to succeed him.<\/p>\n

Also at the heart of every decision is Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the celibate Opus Dei member and qualified doctor who is the Pope’s media officer and most trusted adviser [Source<\/a>]. <\/span> <\/p>\n

Religious reporting is notoriously unreliable and this article is no exception. The headline for this story is just plain misleading "Church calls halt to popes for life." Some alleged source gives away secret plans that future popes "will have to retire" is just mistaken. A new Pope could decide to retire at a fixed aged, but any decision he made would not be binding on any future popes. This article is just plain silly with Opus Dei references and saying that Cardinal Ratzinger is actually pulling all the strings. I have never heard of Cardinal Ratzinger being nick named John Paul III. I wonder if their is any veracity in this or if this is just another piece of bad reporting by agenda journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FUTURE popes will have to retire at a fixed age, under secret plans being discussed by Catholic cardinals, ending a tradition of service until death that has lasted 2000 years.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}