Catholic Ragemonkey

A little uneasy
I just can't believe that John Paul II is dead. I knew it would happen some day and, lately, I knew it would happen soon. But still, it just seems strange. I am glued to the television and I look at the cardinals shown and I just can't imagine any of them in white. There is no doubt that I can feel a major absence, a hole with the passing of our beloved Holy Father. I guess none of these feelings is unique -- in the sense that I am willing to bet this is what Catholics go through each time a pope dies (recall the last time this happened I was in Kindergarten and though I remember the death of John Paul I, I had no sense of who he was, what he did, and what a pope was). Today, I realized that I am really nervous about the conclave. It has nothing to do with any fear that the man elected will be a "liberal" or any other such secular political nonsense. It's just that I am nervous about the absence of a pope and how it will be to see another man dressed in white, what it will be like to adjust to saying a new name in the Eucharistic Prayer (assuming the new pope doesn't take the name John Paul), and what it will be like to adjust to a new voice and a new personality.