Other: Religion: Ritual
Democratically elected Pope   (+3, -3)  [vote for, against]
Wide world open elections for choosing the next one

Men, women and gay are welcome to vote. All beliefs are invited to participate. Choose your more appealing bishop, campaigns will start soon
-- piluso, Feb 11 2013

Pope Johnny http://www.flickr.c...ineibysylvieoct2011
[xandram, Feb 17 2013]

I nominate Richard Dawkins.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 11 2013


Who will make the smoke come out of the chimney?
I think I like the idea. +
-- xandram, Feb 11 2013


If it's not Dawkins, I'd nominate (in order of preference) the patron saints of SETI, of nostalgia and of grammarians, namely St. Ience, St. Imental and St.Ence.

St. Ree, patron saint of guardsmen, just failed to make the list.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 11 2013


The majority of votes should be "No Confidence". It's the catholic church; no-one cares, and with the current leader gone, just let it wither and die. It's become irrelevant.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Feb 11 2013


"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes."
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 11 2013


Bless you.

What?...
I thought he was sneezing.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 11 2013


Not sufficiently well hung yet, [Max].
-- UnaBubba, Feb 11 2013


Given the current crop of democratically-elected leaders, or those comprising the past 100 years or so, I'm not certain this is such a good idea.
-- RayfordSteele, Feb 12 2013


News today is that there may be a case to answer, of child abuse.
-- UnaBubba, Feb 17 2013


As above, so below.

If heaven isn't run democratically, then why should its representation on earth?

That being said, most religions model heaven on the prevailing political model; so when the Greeks existed as a bunch of fighting city-states, their Pantheon kind of reflected that as well - the traditional Chinese heavenly model is very bureaucratic with lots of civil servants and heavenly officials, and the (initially) Monarchical (later Imperial) Abrahamic religions are similarly organised.

As below, so above.

I'm not entirely sure what model heaven would take nowadays, you could describe the whole general mish-mash as "Democracy" but I think you need to use that in the modern sense, rather than the classical one.
-- zen_tom, Feb 18 2013


The model used in the Catholic Church is a lovely hybrid of technocracy, dynasty and democracy: anyone can join at the bottom level (assuming they are male) but progress is by a combination of talent, patronage and plotting. Being, at the top of the tree, largely impervious to forces from without, the only way to strangle the Catholic Church is from the bottom, choking the supply of talent in the protopriestpool. Bottom-strangling is hard.
-- calum, Feb 18 2013


//St. Ience, St. Imental and St.Ence.//

When they get around to canonising L. Ron Hubbard, presumably he'll be St. Ology?
-- Wrongfellow, Feb 18 2013


By 'canonising' I hope you mean in the sense of being fired from a cannon?
-- DrBob, Feb 18 2013


To paraphrase Tom Stoppard, if a joke's worth telling once, it's worth telling twice!
-- DrBob, Feb 18 2013



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