I wish a toast to this big step towards the end of the Catholic Church… an icon of conservatism and religious hypocrisy.
Ratzinger is as fundamentalist as they come… he will bury what is left of the RCC… and hopefully evangelicals won’t pick up the slack too much. He is quite a politician to have pulled this off… and in many ways its a continuation of the last papacy without the “charisma”.
I’d rather seen someone more open minded… but alas hopefully this bodes the end of the Vatican’s power. Faithful will run away in droves.
Based on a limited knowledge base it sure looks to me like the Church is willing to go where superstion still largely rules society and not pay too much attention to the places where superstion is losing ground.
I’m actually looking forward to Mel Gibson’s take on this guy. On the one hand, you’d expect him to rejoice at the election of an arch-conservative. On the other hand, he’s already made that vicious movie about Papa Ratzi…
I really don’t think much will change, if what I’ve read is true. The Roman Church will increase its marginalization in Western Europe, and increase its influence in Africa and perhaps other places, like Latin America.
Something of an X-factor in my mind is the US, where liberal Catholics have been steadily trickling away, but conservative Catholics are growing the demographic. Which is the greater trend, in terms of numbers? I don’t know myself, but when you look at the exit polls in FL from the last election, for instance, it seems the Latino component of US Catholicism is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and will likely supplant the formerly predominant ethnicities (e.g. Irish, Italians), if they have not already done so.
Maybe his politics aren’t that much more conservative than JPII’s but he always seemed quite a bit more venomous in his writings. Maybe he’ll tone down now that he’s pope and not the enforcer of the orthodoxy, but if not I think you’ll find out very quickly that it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. If he doesn’t change a lot he’ll rapidly alienate much of the West. Especially Europe. But then as someone already pointed out, maybe he’s already given up on Europe.
I am going to cautiously say that he MIGHT tone down the rhetoric, considering now that HE’S the one who’ll be responsible. I don’t think he’ll make any ex cathedra statements, (hopefully!), at least not about women in the church, because it’s his ass on the line now. Before, he could just stand behind JPII and say, “Well, HE said it!”
He also doesn’t have nearly the charm or charisma of the late pontiff.
Who does? The man was a rock star. Hell, even I thought he was cool. Every time I saw that picture of him carrying the Koala, every fiber of my being said “I like this guy.”
JPII was a PR giant, there’s no question. In his prime he was handsome, robust, almost absurdly articulate, incredibly charming, exuding a warm benevolence and self-confidence of the sort I think comes along once in a lifetime, if not longer. Playwrite, poet, linguist, top-flight theologian, wordly intellectual…JPII was nothing short of an astonishing figure. For all his faults, he accomplished a great deal that was undeniably good, for the Church, and for the world. Plus, he made it look good. Filling his shoes is an impossible task, and I think anyone would be something of a letdown after a generation of John Paul II.
The rather considerable letdown Ratzinger presents liberals is, I think, probably mitigated by the seeming inevitability of his election.
(Okay, they changed the picture at Wiki almost immediately, but in case anyone wondered, for a brief few minutes, the picture under the new pontiff’s entry was of Emperor Palpatine.)
