Francis is the new Pope and more reasons why Pope Benedict resigned [View all]

[Nasty Jack]

Will the newly chosen Pope Francis stop the Church's shrinking? Paul Gorrell is a Ph.D., heads up an executive coaching and leadership development firm located in New York City, and spent five years in the Roman Catholic priesthood. He says the Catholic Church is shrinking and points to the former Pope Benedict as one of the problems in a recent essay for Religion Dispatches. Gorrell said:

The focus of Pope Benedict’s reign has been to draw sharp boundaries that strictly define what it means to be a Catholic, what it means to be a priest, and how the Church should reconfigure itself in order to exile members who are not true believers.

Pretty stringent for some modern day Catholics, many of which want the church to mellow out on issues like abortion, gay rights, sex before marriage, Priest celibacy, to name just a few. Many questioned his interpretations of Vatican II, in comparison with his traditionalist beliefs. Many Catholics did not accept Benedict's claim that:

"Protestant churches are not 'true' churches, judges priests on their identity (gay priests must leave) rather than their actions, stops dialogue on any topics that do not meet the Pope’s approval (such as the possibility of women priests), sheds gay people from its ranks and fights against their rights, ignores the diminishing number of priests and the effects of this shortage on Church communities, and calls on Catholics to form the 'perfect society' resembling the ecclesiology of Opus Dei.

Some have been basically excommunicated in that a number of American politicians were asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights.

Pope Francis has his work cut out for him, a job that many of the Conclave Cardinals interviewed said they did not want.

Read more here: link:http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/1059/the_incredible_shrinking_catholic_church|