Talking to a Catholic friend this morning, I predicted it would be a Latin American. Woohoo!
I just dug out the Oddschecker.com list I’d printed out on Feb. 27, and I see that the betting on Bergoglio was 33:1. At that point he was eleventh on the list of most likely papabile.
Francis is a good name for a Pope. I wouldn’t put “I” after it until there’s a second, though.
I wonder what impact, if any, this will have on Argentina’s saber-rattling over the Falklands? I don’t think even an Argentine Pope would want to be seen as encouraging militarism.
Exactly. Some reforms are possible, and if they are economic justice pushes it can be a great thing for those of us who want that promoted. The RCC doesn’t have to change what it believes to change the impact it has on the rest of the world. A shift in focus can do a lot.
In the US, for example, if the RCC were pushing strongly for economic reform there are voters and politicians who would pay attention. The church has been obsessing about sex for years, but that isn’t the only thing they can stand for.
Yea, I think the best that can be hoped for from a liberal Catholic perspective is that the new guy will emphasize social justice and economic issues more and life-style and sexual issues less. No possible Pope is going to actually abandon the current Churches teachings on those issues, and its obvious that that isn’t what “reformer” means in this context.
In any case, its nice having a Pope who doesn’t look like he’s about to fry people with force-lightening.
“We come to pray for all who have fallen, sons of the Homeland who went out to defend their mother, the Homeland, and to reclaim what is theirs, that is of the Homeland, and it was usurped.”
While watching the ceremony I was just wondering about that. Would he refer to the Falklands or to Las Malvinas ? As an Argentinian he wouldn’t dare pronounce the word “Falklands”.
I’m sure I did at some point, but I clearly forgot.
However, there seems to be some undercurrent of disappointment that the new Pope is…a believer in Catholicism as it exists, rather than someone who dreams of making it more similar to the evolving morality of the secular world.
No one from France, Britain, or Italy would refer to the nation between France and Poland as Deutschland. People do tend to speak in their own languages.
I would expect the first few non-European popes to be, if anything, even more twisted about sexuality. For one thing, that’s how you get to the top of the pyramid if you are an Other – by out-nutting the nuts. Think of Maggie Thatcher. But for another thing third world representation will also require bringing third world sensibilities into the church mainstream, and some of those are going to be creepy.
In the long run, anything that might break down the Groupthink inside the church hierarchy is a good sign. At least he doesn’t have to run for re-election.
Yeah, that’s not surprising. It is funny that he wasn’t able to stop gay marriage or adoption in his own country. Didn’t he condone the use of condoms to stop disease? If so at least it’s a small step in the right direction.
Except Argentines call the islands the Malivinas even when speaking English or in English language press releases. For practical purposes he’s no longer Argentinian, he’s the Pope. His office is supposed to take precedence over any national loyalty he has.
Well, I expected indeed most of the same old, but at least they elected someone with more a more humble outlook; still there is a lot to investigate if there are some skeletons from the military junta days in Argentina; still, I think that we will see progress in the social justice front and some movement on the contraceptive issue.
The choice does speak of the strength that South America has nowadays in the Catholic world, and yet, even there Catholicism is having trouble with many of the faithful joining protestant churches or no church at all. Even with a Pope from the region I do expect that more people will leave Catholicism if they see no changes coming.
And as regards the Pope, lets give him a chance, he certainly did seem to be going for the ‘humble man of the people’ aspect with his speech from the balcony.
On a sidenote I was watching the BBC coverage, I don’t know if they had their own translator or if it was from Vatican footage but you’d think he’d know the English translation of The Hail Mary…
Well, then it’s a matter of what language would he be using – if the official communiqué is in Italian or Latin you’d use that language’s standard term for the islands, and when speaking you’d be elliptical about it and refer to “the issue of the South Atlantic” or “the longstanding territorial disputes”.
Of course in my particular fantasy is he’d take advantage of now being Pope to send to his hometown crowd a message to the effect of: “Hey, how about we get over ourselves, dudes?”
Rocco Palmo phrased it as “and, for the record, we’ll temporarily need to keep noting the number for the benefit of the wider world”, so perhaps that means it’s not official.
