Plan B Forum

I would have wished that his dying would have been prolonged for years of unrelenting and excruciating physical and mental torment.

I think it is safe to assume the last few years have not been kind to him - I see this every single day in my work, but happening to a mostly nice person. A Catholic, by coincidence - a nice lady who suffered in a miserable 72 year marriage because it was the rules. She’s free of the marriage now, but imprisoned in her bed and chair by many painful ailments at 96. Old age is not kind to many, rest assured.

Scooter wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:54 pm

I would have wished that his dying would have been prolonged for years of unrelenting and excruciating physical and mental torment.

How's that go again, Scooter?



-"BB"-

In 1986 he decided that I was "objectively disordered" and declared any expression of my love to be an "intrinsic moral evil", and he has never wavered from that position since. He blamed me for the brutal gay bashing that I endured, saying that it was "not surprising" that LGBT people were attacked when they fought for protection from discrimination, something for which we had "no conceivable right". Fuck him, and fuck you.

This cartoonist apparently shares your sentiments about Pope Benedict, Scooter.

She’s free of the marriage now, but imprisoned in her bed and chair by many painful ailments at 96. Old age is not kind to many, rest assured.

Sure, but whatever his physical condition, I'm sure he had a much more comfortable old age than the vast majority of older people in the world. The guy had unrestricted access to free medical care (with the doctors coming to him) and servants attending to his every need 24/7, providing whatever is needed. We're all (well most of us anyway) going to get older and physically challenged, but often that the least of our concerns compared to the cost of living onward.

I'd rather die younger, but if I had to be debilitated, an ex-pope is not a much better way to endure it than budgeting social security.

My client is on social security but she doesn’t want for anything - hospice and Medicaid is providing all the medical care she could possibly need with nursing visits 2x/week. Until recently she got a massage every week! She lives in her daughter’s house so has zero costs associated with rent/utilities. Apart from paying for a Purewick system out of pocket (Medicaid won’t cover it) so she doesn’t have to sleep in diapers, she spends the rest of her social security on ordering in tasty foods from all the area Portuguese restaurants - but she’s never really happy with the food because it’s not as good as what she used to cook when she could use her hands and arms and stand on her feet for any length of time.

Honestly if I’ve learned anything from doing this work for the last 7 years it is that money doesn’t compensate once you are in a position where you cannot stand up unassisted and you need another person to wipe your anus after you defecate, and your entire life is restricted to a bed and lift chair and wheelchair. I’ve worked for folks on Medicaid and comfortably wealthy people living oceanfront and the debilitating effects of old age are a great equalizer. If I was in that condition and rich as Croesus, I’d trade it all with an indigent day laborer just to have the possibility that exists when one is able bodied. Health really is everything.

I worked in a nursing home a couple of summers so I have no doubt that is true, but I'd still rather be rich than poor. Sure, medicaid helps the destitute a lot, but many do not have the luxury of living with a child rent free and have to use most of the social security (and/or savings) fo basic living expenses--there are no people cooking for them or waiting on them hand and foot (at best they might get meals on wheels. Sure, I'd bet Benedict would rather have been young again, but he still was treated a lot better than he treated many others (and I'd bet he had a lot of other people looking out for him and making sure he was treated properly and humanely). Many people don't have even that.

Scooter wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:54 pm

I would have wished that his dying would have been prolonged for years of unrelenting and excruciating physical and mental torment.

I hope he died alone, with no one to hear his last confession.

Can a priest not forgive his own sins/hear his own confession? I thought I read once that he could if there were no other preists present (like in theold days when parishes were far apart and had only a single priest.