proudliberal

I mean its not like he is jesus,is he?I used to be catholic before I spit on the crucifix and crush it under my feet and became an atheist who admires the truths of charles darwin.What purpose does he serve other than a dictator of the catholic church?Its bad enough they have child molesting priests.

Trout

The catholic church is a big organization that had and has lots of political power and money. They need a CEO.

Besides that, not much. The loco plebs will basically worship the guy because they are brain dead but in reality they are prostrating themselves before the equivalent of the head guy at Coca Cola

Matt the Medic

That's unfair. The CEO of Coca-Cola produces a valuable and highly delicious commodity that helps me greatly to make it through my day.

Matt

seebs

It's a tradition; they believe that the Church has always had some specific guy who was regarded as "first among equals" -- the one that the others deferred to on doctrine. So when one dies, they pick another one.

Selsaral

Uh I am sure the fact that they used to burn people alive for saying that they didn't need a Pope had nothing to do with it. /sarcasm.

BioBeing

The Catholics don't need the Pope.

The Pope, on the other hand, would be nobody without the Catholics.

:devil3:

Splarnst

The pope decides who's right in theological disagreements. You need him to decide really important stuff like whether Jesus is part god, part man OR fully god, fully man.

Spitting on a crucifix and crushing it under your feet and saying talking about truths of Darwin sound rather weird to me.

Infiniteguy

i think the Catholic's papal postion traces itself back to the first bishop of the christian church, which in this case would be St Peter. they've always believed that there was a head amongst the circle of those that were supposely close to Jesus or God, that worked as an intermediae inbetween.

so in a sense, the modern day St. Peter would be Pope benedict. =/

kham

EternallyI

It's called respect and admiration for those that are in authority and are admirable in their character and rule. Authority is not always bad. Authority is for leadership and instruction. What if everyone actually just resigned themselves to fulfilling the role that they are currently in and stop blaming others out of envy.