New Pope Probably Getting Ready To Announce Vatican III, Mandatory Gay Marriages

Man, we are pretty jealous of the person who got to write the headline for the AP article on the big Pope Francis and His Cardinals Jamboree this week, because they somehow slipped "Pope Opens Big Week With Sex, Divorce On Agenda" past their editors. Believe the hype of the headline, though, because our current fave pope, New Pope, is taking on the many many third rails of the Catholic Church, most of which involve whom you have sex with and when.

Meetings this week between Pope Francis and his cardinals will deal with some of the thorniest issues facing the church, including the rejection by most Catholics of some of its core teaching on premarital sex, contraception, gays and divorce.

German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has called for "changes and openings" in the church's treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics, will give the keynote speech Thursday to the pope and cardinals attending a preparatory meeting for an October summit on family issues.

Can you imagine how mad-making this is to the conservative wingnut wing of the Church! A keynote! On how we maybe shouldn't just shun and/or stone people who get divorced! This is some fucking progress, people.

All of this dialogue is pretty critical, actually, if the Catholic Church is going to stay alive, as the Pope and his Merry Band of Bishops have found out that Catholics pretty much universally reject the whole "going to hell if you suck a dick or get divorced or use the pill or are a dude who likes a dude" stance that the Church has hung its hat on for so long.

Francis scheduled the summit last year and took the unusual step of sending bishops around the world a questionnaire for ordinary Catholics to fill out about how they understand and practice church teaching on marriage, sex and other issues related to the family. [...]

Bishops themselves reported that the church's core teachings on sexual morals, birth control, homosexuality, marriage and divorce are rejected as unrealistic and outdated by the vast majority of Catholics, who nevertheless said they were active in parish life and considered their faith vitally important. [...]

German and Swiss bishops released similar survey results earlier this month. German bishops reported this: "The church's statements on premarital sexual relations, on homosexuality, on those divorced and remarried and on birth control ... are virtually never accepted, or are expressly rejected in the vast majority of cases."

BOOM. That's what we're talking about. The faithful no longer agree with the Church's teachings on these issues and the Church is rethinking its stance. You know what's coming, don't you? VATICAN III, BITCHES.

We've been speculating about this for a long time, and we legit think we are getting close to an announcement about it. All the signs and portents are there: surveying the faithful, convening a summit of the Church leaders, chatting about destroying capitalism and loving teh gheys and washing some Muslim feet. Not-so-new-but-still-shiny Pope is going to drop the hammer soon, and it will be glorious. Priests will marry, thrice-divorced ladies will take communion, and the pope will forcibly mass gay everybody in Vatican Square. We cannot wait.

Bets in the comments as to what day he finally announces.

[ AP ]