Quick, quick-someone go to Wikipedia and check out the picture that someone put up for the new pontiff!
I can definitely see the resemblance!
Perhaps in Latin America and Africa but in North America and Europe it has lost relevance to many of its members and former members and is shrinking. Ratzinger will not improve that.
Since I heard the news, I’ve wondered if the cardinals chose the equivalent of a corporate hatchetman. Bring in a new CEO, let him do all the dirty work, then send him on his way, taking all the ill-will with him.
Meh. It’ll leave a lot of people dead, so ‘crusade’ works.
This is a terrible choice made only slightly more palatable due to Benedict’s remaining lifespan. The Church needs to reach out, not push away. I fear that his hard line “my way or the highway” attitude is going to further dry up the seminaries. We’re getting the ultra-orthodoxy of John Paul without the personality and charisma to carry it off. Cafeteria Catholics such as myself will find ourselves accepting less church dogma and many will leave the Church.
Really? I was under the impression that it’s been steadily losing ground in Europe, North America, Central America, and South America, and that its inroads in Africa were pretty minor. Can you back these claims up?
Note that in Central & South America it’s been losing ground to Evangelical Christianity, so a move to the right isn’t likely to cause further loss there; but a move to the left might have roped in some former liberation theologist-types who’ve been disillusioned with the Church.
Daniel
No, I would say that crusader is a pretty apt choice of words.
For the last eternity or so, civilization, and co-operation have been progressing, despite religion. Now we have scriptural grounding, instead. Well, guess what? Jihad is scripturally grounded, too. However, it is incompatible to world peace, which many would say is a good thing.
I hereby dub him “Pope Rat I.”
Maybe we should introduce him to the House Majority Leader.
“Bug Man, Rat Man. Rat Man, Bug Man.”
It all depends on how you look at it. It’s certainly becoming marginalized in the industrialized, more secular, world; that shouldn’t be news to anybody. There are divisions with the United States, mostly over the child abuse scandals but perhaps also women and gays, and with Europe too. As an aging and sick man, John Paul II didn’t deal with those things, and I’m not sure the guy who was basically his second-in-command (not young himself) will deal with them either. We’ll see.
Because it will force proper reforms, not just some weak, token things.
Dramatic, radical change is needed to bridge that gulf and stop it widening.
The problem is that this is a ludicrous gamble. The chances are that he could live to 100, or certainly 90, given he seems to be in far better health that the last Pope was at his age.
Another twenty years = another generation of draconian conservatism.
I don’t think it will be that bad. What this vote seems to be, to me, is a vote for the status quo.
I just find it sort of amazing, because it appears to be an admission of defeat for the Church in the Old World. One of JPII’s greatest ambitions was to restore the relevance of the Church in Western Europe, and he arguably failed to achieve that goal. Quite the contrary, some might say. Meanwhile, in the Third World, especially Africa, the Roman faith as grown at a healthy pace. Does this mean the College of Cardinals is comfortable with the current trend, or sees it as somehow inevitable?
It’s gotta be tough, being “Rebound Pope.”
So, with this choice, can we expect some sort of German Inquistion?
I wouldn’t be too sure of his health. Everyone thought JP I was fit as a fiddle…and look at what happened to him?
I wouldn’t expect so.
Daniel
Ratzinger himself appears to be of this opinion, at least according to an analyst I heard talking about him the other day. Apparently he is quite blunt ( to the consternation of some in the church ) in his opinion that the Catholic Church will continue to shrink in Europe in the near future. In that sense he seems a realist as to the effect of his uncompromising conservative stance.
- Tamerlane
No one expects that.
What I find interesting is that in the photos of the new pope greeting the crowds on the balcony, he appears to be wearing the falda, the ornate silk papal alb that was last used by Pope Paul VI. I’m wondering if this means he is planning to reinstate some of the regalia that fell into disuse after Vatican II, and especially with Pope John Paul II, such as the sedia gestatoria and the triregno.
Don’t you think “Benny the Rat” has a nice Damon Runyon flavor?