Zogby Poll: US Catholics say pope should not resign

I think that he should call a general council to speak to all the church over the heads of the Vatican curia etc. This may allow the Spirit to speak directly with a voice of penitence and renewal.

If, and that is a BIG IF, the Pope allows the Spirit to speak and move within him and the heirarchy, he should remain Pope and move the institutional church in the direction of allowing the voices of the church (that's us in the pews) speak and vote about how the church moves forward; gives a greater, active role to women (ie ordination); married priests. He needs to move the institutional church away from the style of a monarchy which has ruled OUR church for too many years, decades, centuries!!!

The whole Church hierarchy has done a poor job on sex abuse. While the U.S. has done a lot to deal with abusers and now has a reasonable set of policies in place, the ongoing position of the Bishops as a whole has been, Deny, Insist it's a media problem, Insist that there is some relativist reason why it's not really a problem, Hide when possible, Hope things go away if they wait long enough and continually insist that there is never a penalty for a bishop who hides what has happened.
The ongoing influence of Cardinal Law in the very Vatican is a case in point.

Benedict has a much better record than any other Bishop, Cardinal or Pope but while he was faster than most to realize there was a problem, he's in very slow company.

Polls such as this one are disturbing on one level at least. Why should Catholics be asked if Pope Benedict XVI should resign before any investigation into his culpability has been completed? As of now he should not. If found guilty then the question should be asked.

One of our founding principles in this country is innocent until proven guilty.

I really do not trust polls of any type. They fail to ask the right questions and they do not have a wide enough net to reflect the real opinions that are out there. I maintain that a very large number of Roman Catholics think his resignation would be the best thing Joe Ratzinger could do for the Church. The roads that lead to Ratzinger on the child sexual abuse crisis and its' cover-up are many. He has damaged the Church in a way no other pope has for many centuries. I believe it is time for him to return to Germany.

This survey is too small to be significant. I'd be curious about which dioceses, and even which parishes, were included in the "sample size of 750" from which the bishops' and pope's approval ratings were gleaned. Our parish, for example, has at least twice that many families (not individuals)and would have reflected very different results. How I wish more real and extensive data were available!

And what would the numbers have looked like if individuals who have already left the church over issues generated from the bishops and pope were included?

When I read commentary by anonymous or near-anonymous individuals ("ReallyFaithfulCatholic" "ThomisticPhilosopher" et al.)on NCR's website -- and the more vitriolic a comment, the more likely it tends to be anonymous -- I wish that full names, e-mail addresses, parishes and dioceses were reflected in comments, and only those comments where authors were willing to ID themselves and stand by their words were published.

Susan Lersch
susan.lersch@yahoo.com
St. Gertrude, Chicago

Every practicing Catholic and Church leader should read CONFRONTING POWER AND SEX IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: RECLAIMING THE SPIRIT OF JESUS, by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, PUBLISHED BY THE published by the Order of St. Benedict, Collegeville, MN.
Bishop Robinson's ideas on how Church leadership needs to be reformed reflects the holiness and baptismal rights of the entire Church, and is certainly influenced by the Spirit, as was Vatican II.

The title should be "Majority of US Catholics Want Pope to Remain as Pope". Wouldn't that be a more accurate statement? Your bias against our Pope is obviuos.

Why would we want B16 to resign when he would be in the behind the scenes dictating who his replacement would be?

Let him complete his papacy.

The next conclave will clean things up and totally change the direction of the church without any "strings attached" or misplaced loyalty to a living pope.

You can throw a dead pope under the bus i.e. JPII but not a living one.

When his conservative chief architect Cardinal Schonborn talks about optional celibacy and female deacons you know change is coming at the next conclave.

Are these the same American Catholics that think George Bush was the most "pro-life" president we ever had? The babies of Baghdad might disagree with that as the children of abuse might be appalled at the lack of compassion in the church purportedly grounded in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Once again, power and the security power promises to the fearful trump integrity and care.

Whether this particular pope is competent to remain is less significant than the history of insensitivity, inauthenticity, and cowardice that have characterized the Vatican for the past 200 years. Where are "those who have ears to hear"?

WHAT DOES R-A-C-E MEAN? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

It's not clear to me how the percentages stack up: shouldn't each column add to 100? How can one draw any conclusions if the columns add to 192 Percent?

The big news is not stated:

--an astoundingly low prcentage (less than two-thirds) of Catholics support the pope remaining in power; I bet that never happened before!

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The Pope Should RESIGN. All control of finances donated to the Church by Parishioners, should stay within each parish under the control of a Paris Community Group designated by Parishioners. They would distribute the funds as the community voted upon.
This is the ONLY WAY to rein in the profligate hierarchy.

I would support the calling of an Ecumenical Council to address this topic, including at a minimum the following:

1. A global confession of guilt for sins both of commission and omission by the clerical arm of the Church, and a call for forgiveness.

2. An "official" end to the independent and secretive financial activities of the Bishops within their own dioceses, calling for joint review and accounting by clerical and lay members, with limitations on the spending authority of the bishops.

3. Re-addressing and emphasizing the roles broadly defined as "clerical" and "lay" in the life of the Church focused on mission and not hierarchical sustainability.

How disappointing!

A poll of this kind seems predictable, shabby and -- meaningless.
Such a poll cannot have been conducted with serious concern for survey methods, proper sampling, and the other concerns that necessarily precede and surround good surveys.

There are many who are deeply affected by the clerical sexual abuse scandal and the related scandal of the Church's hierarchy's abuse of its powers. They cannot be seriously helped by such a poll.

Why should there be a survey of this sort? It clearly reminds me of surveys of whether there should be Mothers Day, whether terrorism is evil, whether there should be oil drilling in the Atlantic, and whether people like taxes. Some such surveys (oil drilling), done correctly, can have momentary value within limited political circles; others (taxes, terrorism and Mothers Day) are sheer fluff.

NCR's decision to parade such a poll of fluff at its upcoming conference is disappointing. The issues of clerical sex abuse and the problems with the hierarchy's misuse of powers and poor decisions in the past, all deserve more careful discussion.

Vincent of Valley Forge

I could not care less what "some" say. The Pope should not resign, cannot resign, will not resign. Even Catholics can be misled by the common herd media. I would limit such a vote to Catholics who have read at least one of Benedict's encyclicals. Only then would they know the great person they are talking about. There is more wisdom and common sense tied up in his writings than in all the media editorials and commentaries combined.

The Pope should resign. He has set the Church back ...

Sandra Slater

I wonder at the validity of this survery. What would happen if the survery was given to priests and those who work for the church. I feel that the majority of Catholics have no idea of what is going on in their church.
For instance.......the new Sacramentary......most people have heard nothing about it. There are many other issues that could be mentioned.

I believe the pope should resign; the church needs to start over to become the church of Jesus again. Royal robes & ring kissing needs to stop!!

Of course I think the pope should continue as the leader of our church but I think he should remove Cardinals Law & Burke from appointing Bishops for the U.S. He should also remove cardinal Sodano and anyone that took money from Maciel. MM

Of course I think the Pope should remain as the head of our church,but I think he should remove cardinals Law&Burke from having anything to do with appointing bishops. He should also remove any of those Bishops or Cardinals that took large sums of money from Maciel.

MAM

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We could get an even worse Pope.

How did the pollsters find these little more than 700 Catholics to predict the reactions of the entire US Catholic population?

Statistically random phone calls/emails or asking those in the Sunday pews??

Please, the Church will not change, for better or for worse. It muddles through, lumbering along, stuck with a medieval monarchy and a sly bunch of cardinal bureaucrats in a system where no one can lose his job. Yes, I said his, not his/hers.

Hans Kung for Pope!

Some how and I don't know statistics, these numbers don't ring as truly representative. If indeed the conclusions are accurate, they make me feel a little nauseated based on what I have read so far as the facts which lead right up to the Pope's desk either as Cardinal and/or as Pope.

Who financed this research? Who selected the participants? Are Roman Catholics supposed to support keeping this pope based on what 705 people are saying? How can 705 people represent the 65 million of us in the USA and, oh by the way, there are 1,000,000,000 RCC's world wide. I wonder how the African wives of AIDS patients who cannot wear a condom respond? How many victims or family members of victims of abuse or women who have been denied personhood in the RCC were included in the data collection?

Is this data now to be used as a defense for the abusers? or an argument for acceptance of this Pope and his minions? For "The scandal is behind us, business as usual for the men in power?"

What I want to know is why do Roman Catholics in this data collection seem willing to accept the spiritual and emotional and sometimes physical deaths of their children? Why is there is no relentless anger about the destruction of children after birth as there is about abortion? My anger of my broken heart cries out for a "scorched earth" response. This world wide-systematic abuse must be eradicated and its leader must be replaced with those who hold all of life as Sacred.

No,the Pope should not resign! The pedophiles should have gone to prison and the bishops reprimanded and counseled.

For those thinking the next conclave will result in changes: JPII and B16 have appointed every Cardinal that will participate. Right now we're not even supposed to talk about the possibility of women's ordination because of that letter JPII wrote. You have to crawl before you can walk, let alone run. Change will come slowly. We will have to wait until future priests are ordained from today's youth generation, Gen 21, to see significant change. New ordainees from Gen X are generally conservative; JPII and B16 are their heroes; just look at the return of pre-Vatican II chasuable, chalice veils. JPII and B16 really swung the pendelum to the right. It has to start to drift back to center before moving left.

The question about whether or not the Pope should resign, is, in my opinion, way too broad for most people to think about. The ramifications would lead to restructuring the ways and means of the hierarchy in the Vatican, and I think the Holy Roman Catholic Church is a long way off from being open to any restructuring. Defending the faith has morphed into defending the religion......

I've read everything lately, even the correspondece between bishops, cardinals, priests, etc which were used to write the NYTimes articles. (check the NYTimes online -every letter written on Cardinal Levada and the deaf school in Wisconsin issue) and I am finally completely resigned that I will never give a nickel to the Church again. I attend Mass, participate in Just Faith (social justice), contribute to Catholic Relief Services, Bread for the World, my local crisis nursery and I will find other social justice ministries (and nuns and their work) to contribute to. But I will not contribute to the salaries of any priest, deacon or diocese collection. I do not trust the corporate Church, the arrogance buried under the expressed humility is real, shocking and centered on image. Image = money. For me the image is sorely tarnished, and my years of listening to those bishops will now be balanced by trusting the truth as I and those I respect see it. It's an "old boys club" and as a woman, I will treat the clergy as any person I meet on the street - greet them and move on. Who cares about the priesthood anymore???