{"id":183504,"date":"2013-02-11T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/02\/11\/play-him-off-keyboard-cat\/"},"modified":"2013-02-11T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T01:05:00","slug":"play-him-off-keyboard-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/02\/11\/play-him-off-keyboard-cat\/","title":{"rendered":"Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/mNKhJuV.gif\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"390\" \/>For the first time since 1415, the Pope Benedict has announced that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/pope-benedict-to-resign-citing-age-and-waning-energy\/2013\/02\/11\/f9e90aa6-743b-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html\">he will be abdicating<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Citing failing strength of \u201cmind and body,\u201d Pope Benedict XVI stunned his closest aides and more than 1 billion Catholics by resigning on Monday, becoming the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years and ending the tenure of a formidable theologian who preached a gospel of conservative faith to a fast-changing world.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Keeping with his reputation as a traditionalist, Pope Benedict delivered his resignation \u2014 effective Feb. 28 \u2014 in Latin, to a private church body in Vatican City. \u201cI have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,\u201d he said. \u201cFor this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of bishop of Rome, successor of Saint Peter.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The decision by the 85-year-old German pontiff sets up a pivotal leadership contest in the marbled halls of the Vatican that is coming sooner than observers expected. Although questions about the pope\u2019s health have long swirled \u2014 he was occasionally filmed nodding off during mass \u2014 he seemed committed to continuing a papacy that has divided Catholics and non-Catholics alike.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The question is whether it&#8217;s about his health, or whether, as <a href=\"http:\/\/digbysblog.blogspot.com\/2013\/02\/papal-cuts-why-is-really-resigning.html\">as Digby suggests<\/a>, that revelations from the case of former Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, where Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (it used to be called the Inquisition) was directing the (non) response to the church&#8217;s sexual abuse scandal.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll look forward to seeing Jon Stewart&#8217;s take on all this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time since 1415, the Pope Benedict has announced that he will be abdicating: Citing failing strength of \u201cmind and body,\u201d Pope Benedict XVI stunned his closest aides and more than 1 billion Catholics by resigning on Monday, becoming the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years and ending the tenure &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1009,978,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-government","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}