{"id":196,"date":"2008-12-30T17:09:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T17:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/jump-into-the-catholic-pool-20.html"},"modified":"2008-12-30T17:09:45","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T17:09:45","slug":"jump-into-the-catholic-pool-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/jump-into-the-catholic-pool-20.html","title":{"rendered":"Jump into the 2009 “Catholic Pool”!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspired by William Safire’s annual Office Pool of predictions for the coming year, I am herewith inaugurating a “Catholic Pool” for 2009. Safire’s 2009 NYT pool column<\/a> ran last Sunday, and you have to hand it to him for keeping it going even though he has an almost unbroken record of guessing wrong. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on his part; perhaps it is the peril of being a conservative in a bad decade (or generation) for Republicans.
\nIn any case, I shall not be critical, as I am jumping into the deep end myself. And I’ll even go all the way and post my answers in the “extended” reading tab at the end. Feel free to post comments and suggestions, but above all, record your own answers. We’ll check back in a year…<\/p>\n

2009 CATHOLIC “OFFICE” POOL<\/big><\/strong><\/div>\n

ONE: Pope Benedict XVI’s anticipated visit in May to the Holy Land will be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Derailed over ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians;
\nb) Hailed as a breakthrough as the pope’s visit leads to an unexpected truce;
\nc) A source of renewed Jewish-Catholic tension over the upcoming beatification of Pope Pius XII and Benedict’s remarks on the Holocaust;
\nd) A breakthrough in Jewish-Catholic relations as Benedict makes a public examination of conscience over the role of the German church in World War II.
\ne) Longer than expected, after the Pope unexpectedly “converts” to Judaism and takes the name B’nedict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TWO: Pope Benedict’s first visit to the African continent in March–to Cameroon and Angola–will be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) The spark that helps bring down the Mugabe regime in nearby Zimbabwe;
\nb) Overwhelmed by coverage of an American-led force sent in to remove Robert Mugabe;
\nc) Dominated by criticisms of evangelical and Pentecostal “sects” by Benedict that elicit comparisons to his Regensberg speech on Islam;
\nd) Dominated by headlines about the papal in-flight showing of Cardinal Arinze’s favorite movie, “The African Queen” in which the scenes depicting the Germans are deleted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

THREE: Pope Benedict XVI will create a new flock of cardinals, with the “Jesuit hat” recently vacated by the departed Avery Dulles, SJ, going to:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Fr. Thomas Reese;
\nb) Fr. Joseph Fessio;
\nc) Fr. James Martin;
\nd) Fr. Edward T. Oakes;
\ne) Diogenes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FOUR: The next Archbishop of New York will be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory;
\nb) Military Vicar Archbishop Timothy Broglio
\nc) Bridgeport Bishop William Lori;
\nd) Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee;
\ne) Cardinal Edward Egan, who will repeat as archbishop;
\nf) Blogger Rocco Palmo<\/a>, who will announce his own appointment three weeks before the Vatican does.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FIVE: Relations between the U.S. hierarchy and the Obama Administration will be characterized by:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) A battle over Obama’s first nomination to the Supreme Court;
\nb) Cooperation rather than confrontation on abortion-related issues;
\nc) Clashes over Obama’s support for civil unions for homosexuals and a modification of the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy on gays in the military that the bishops argue infringes on their trademarked seminary practice;
\nd) Episcopal infighting over whether to invite the Obamas to join a Catholic parish in Washington so they can be denied Communion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SIX: The next great battle in the “Liturgy Wars” will be over:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Kneeling to receive communion on the tongue;
\nb) Moving the “sign of peace” forward to near the start of the Mass;
\nc) The pope’s decision to allow or bar women as fully-recognized lectors;
\nd) Banning any song with the words “gather” or “people” in them more than once;
\ne) “Re-introducing” Aramaic into the Mass;
\nf) New regulations on how many inches of lace must be worn on an alb.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SEVEN: The next great theological debate will be over:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) The Virgin Mary as Co-Redemptrix;
\nb) Donatism: Was It Really So Bad?;
\nc) Remote material cooperation;
\nd) Material remote cooperation;
\ne) John Henry Newman: Gay or Just Good Friends with that Fellow?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

EIGHT: Following on the embrace of Galileo, the Vatican will surprise the world by rehabilitating:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Gustavo Gutierrez, a Dominican priest and a founder of Liberation Theology;
\nb) Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest who was burned at the stake after leading a crusade against “immoral” Renaissance art;
\nc) Giordano Bruno, a Dominican priest who was burned at the stake for advocating free-thinking ideas and heresy;
\nd) Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest and canon lawyer who is a leading critic of the hierarchy’s failings on sexual abuse;
\ne) Non-Dominican Charles Darwin, who 150 years ago published scientific claims that almost mirrored that which the Church has always taught…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

NINE: The biggest name to become Roman Catholic in 2009 will be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) George W. Bush;
\nb) Philip Seymour Hoffman;
\nc) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad;
\nd) Mel Gibson;
\ne) David Gibson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TEN: The biggest name to be canonized in 2009 will be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Pope John Paul II;
\nb) Pope Pius XII;
\nc) Pope John XXIII;
\nd) Pope Pius IX;
\ne) NCR’s John Allen<\/a>, after he is credited with a miracle of bilocation. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ELEVEN: In his long-awaited encyclical on social justice<\/a>, Pope Benedict XVI will:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Continue the theme of his previous encyclicals and highlight charity, or love, as the sine qua non<\/em> of social justice;
\nb) Declare that charitable actions that are not motivated by or in comformity with divine Truth as incompatible with Catholic faith;
\nc) Forget to mention social justice;
\nd) Begin with the words, “Can’t we just be friends?” leading to the unusual official title, “Possumusne esse amici”. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TWELVE: In a surprise move, the College of Cardinals will:<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) Expand their numbers by including the first non-ordained member since the nineteenth century;
\nb) Meet to discuss contingency plans for a papal retirement;
\nc) Lengthen the cappa magna to a minimum of fifteen feet;
\nd) Offer courses for credit;
\ne) Change the official color of their robes from “red” to “bright red.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My answers…<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n1) B and C
\n2) A
\n3) None of the above: A nice gesture would be scripture scholar and longtime theologian at the Gregorian, Gerald O’Collins, SJ.
\n4) A
\n5) A and B
\n6) A, B and C
\n7) C
\n8) All of the above, except D
\n9) Not touching that one.
\n10) C
\n11) A and B
\n12) B (with a move to continue debating C)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by William Safire’s annual Office Pool of predictions for the coming year, I am herewith inaugurating a “Catholic Pool” for 2009. Safire’s 2009 NYT pool column ran last Sunday, and you have to hand it to him for keeping it going even though he has an almost unbroken record of guessing wrong. Perhaps it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nJump into the 2009 "Catholic Pool"! - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/jump-into-the-catholic-pool-20.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jump into the 2009 "Catholic Pool"! - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Inspired by William Safire’s annual Office Pool of predictions for the coming year, I am herewith inaugurating a “Catholic Pool” for 2009. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}