religion, society, social-norms, catholicismSupposedly there is a rumor that, in order to insure that the Pope is actually dead, as opposed to sleeping, he is hit with a silver hammer in the forehead.
According to the Wikipedia article,
The death of the Pope is verified by the Cardinal Camerlengo, or Chamberlain, who traditionally performed the task by gently striking the Pope’s head with a small silver hammer and calling out his Christian (not papal) name three times
Now aside from the fact that I am indeed not the Camerlengo, as an atheist, do I run too high a risk personally to participate in such a ritual; i.e. would it be seen as socially irreverant, disrespectful, or excessively irreligious for me as a non-Catholic and atheist person to be the one to perform the ritual?
Considering the history of the papacy – which includes numerous pretenders to the title as well as several noteworthy schisms – this is one ritual where they wouldn’t trust anyone who isn’t lock-in-step with church doctrine to make the “official” determination that the pope is dead. That might even include some Catholics, but almost certainly includes anyone who isn’t a Catholic… And an atheist, well, I don’t think I need to go too far into how much Catholic leadership respects secularism.
It’s my understanding that there are some protestant sects who believe that Benedict XVI is the penultimate pope and that, whoever his successor will be, will preside over the end of Catholicism. That could almost give some adherents to this belief a motivation not to be truthful and report a premature death.
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