Bishop Tom Burns

I am indebted to Protect The Pope for the following quotations:

The aptly named Bishop Tom Burns (if true, thank you Torquemada!), Bishop of Menevia, has said, that following Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, it was time to reform the Vatican’s“monarchical style and turgid bureaucracy” and introduce greater consultation and a “root and-branch review of the method of appointing bishops”. He told  The Tablet:“Conservatism has had its day. It doesn’t work. Despite all Benedict’s efforts, the Church is losing its place in society – yet the search for God and meaning remain high.”He added: “It’s time to reopen the doors and windows for a new blowing of the Spirit, a freedom of speech to search for ways ahead that will address key issues like remarriage after divorce; re-examining ethical issues; developing a simpler and humbler Church stripped of status and elitism.”

‘The papacy has become invested with a mysticism of its own, as if to become pope was to be elevated to a higher level of ordained ministry than that of bishop, like a unique fourth rank above the threefold sacramental ministry. By that logic, he had to die in office, precisely as his predecessor John Paul II had done so agonisingly in 2005. But if one can resign from it, it is not a sacramental status. Sacraments are indelible and irreversible.’

Eamonn Duffy writes:

But Benedict’s resignation speech carefully and all but explicitly distances him from a crucial aspect of John Paul II’s vision. Catholics have always believed the popes to be, by divine  institution, first among bishops, the visible centre of Catholic unity, and the court of final appeal in disputes about doctrine and morals.But since the mid nineteenth century the popes themselves have become the focus of heightened religious emotion and sometimes dubious doctrinal speculation. Papal infallibility has been (mistakenly) understood as a personal quality, giving the pope unique access  to the mind of God. The office of pope has been imagined as different in kind from that of all other bishops.’ [...]

‘That simple, rational and at one level unchallengeable statement is a momentous game-changer. In articulating it, Benedict has parted, tacitly but decisively, with two centuries of ultramontane spiritualisation of the papal office and its responsibilities. From this apparently most conservative of popes comes a radical insistence that the pope is a functionary, and when he ceases to be able to discharge his function, then he must consider his position.’

Robert Mickens writes:

His resignation has the possibility of demythologising an institution that has too often been conflated with quasidivine attributes. If it were to set a precedent,it could have all sorts of consequences that would unfold only over time.

Protect the Pope comment: Nowhere in The Tablet on the abdication of Pope Benedict do the contributors show any appreciation of the fact that for faithful and loyal Catholics the pope is first and foremost the ‘successor to St. Peter’.  This focus of Catholic devotion isn’t an invention of the past 200 years but has been a central element of the Catholic Church since the beginning.  As the bishops acclaimed at the Council of Chalcedon on hearing Pope Leo’s defence of Christ being  true God and true man,  ’”We believe, as Leo: Peter hath spoken by Leo”.  There is a profound spiritual dimension to the office of the Successor to St Peter that is not shared by any other bishop in the world. To reduce Pope Benedict to an ecclesial functionary shows a real lack of Catholic understanding.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/issue/1000348

Questions:

Is "the Spirit" one and the same as the "Holy Spirit"? Why do so many liberals omit the "Holy"?

What other "key issues like remarriage after divorce" are to be addressed - homosexual "marriage", adultery, troilism, bestiality, pederasty, euthanasia, abortion?

Why don't these "experts" ****** off and join the bona fide heretics in the Church of England, or elsewhere?