One more hopeful:
As one who is on a similar wavelength with you regarding the direction our Church should take and the reforms that are needed to prevent its extinction in the West, I find myself far less pessimistic than you on the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pontiff. Perhaps it’s simply because I was looking at the election as a realist. To put a twist on the infamous Rumsfeld quote, you elect a pope with the Conclave you have, not the Conclave you’d like to have. In regards to this election, the Conclave that Western Catholics like me and thee had was an older, more conservative group appointed almost entirely by JPII to reflect his conservative views on doctrine and his populist-conservative views on political and social world issues. The result was about what I expected: an older, doctrinaire Cardinal from John Paul’s inner circle ascending to the papacy.
The political rationale for Ratzinger was predictable, at least from my end. To repeat a phrase that’s been uttered ad nauseum for the last few weeks, after a fat pope, a thin pope. JPII’s successor, based on the way the Church has long operated, would have to be someone who would have a short reign and who was serious and pensive as opposed to personable and charismatic. But, like John Paul, the new pope would also have to be a non-Italian as to recognize the global nature of the modern Church. Further, the last thing the College of Cardinals would want is to elect a transitional pope who ends up being another John XXIII and surprises them all with the Third Vatican Council. Hence, the new pope would also have to be someone they could trust, someone within John Paul’s inner circle whose views were so well known that there would be no surprises while the College deliberated the future of the Church over the next decade.
Once you examine the political parameters that were before the Conclave we had, you can see how few choices fit the bill. I personally thought the new pope would end up being Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop Emeritus of Paris and sort of a kinder, gentler version of Ratzinger with an intense personal story (converted Jew, escaped the Nazis, etc). But, once again, Ratzinger proved a safer, more conservative choice for a Conclave that wanted to continue to debate the major doctrinal and administrative issues facing the Church for just a few more years without commiting to a new direction in any regard just yet.
In sum, Pope Benedict XVI (and I do call him that because, as of now, he is my Pope) has a tough job ahead of him and time will only tell just how he will govern and what he will accomplish. But, based on the current realities of the Church and the composition and disposition of its hierarchy, to expect a liberal reformer from the heart of the developing world who would begin cleaning house and make doctrinal changes on a dozen social issues is but an exercise in idealism. Perhaps someday, but not today. Yet this heterodox Catholic remains eternally optimistic for the future of the Church. Maybe I’m being a bit idealistic too.
One less so:
I share your dismay and bewilderment at the election as Pope of the one man who makes John Paul II look moderate. As a gay Catholic deeply committed emotionally to the Church I love but all but separated from it in thought and practice, I had had great hope that a miracle would occur. That perhaps the Holy Spirit would in fact guide the hands of the Cardinal Electors and that the new Pope would be a man of both deep faith and profound reason but, as well, of modesty and humility in understanding our shared human quest to enlighten the path to goodness and truest, deepest humanity. Surely this headstrong, self-assured, anti-democratic and egotistical little man who thinks he has a personal line on the God-ordained right answer to all our deepest questions – surely he will not be that kind of pope. The Lord works in mysterious ways indeed.
In this case, I don’t expect surprises from Ratzinger. And I think that’s why he was selected. And, please, no one is asking or expecting the Church to revise or reverse over night its peripheral docrines on human sexuality or even how to run the church (celibacy, women priests, etc.). What some of us were hoping for was more openness to discussion of the real problems facing the church, some attempt to square teachings with the actual experience of lay Catholics (the sensus fidelium, as the Second Council put it), and a spirit able to reach out to the poor, the marginalized and the faithless. I hope I’m wrong, but in Ratzinger, the cardinals have chosen someone who will make all these things much harder. This was a statement as much as a selection. And the statement is that the church is circling the wagons. They simply could not have picked a more extreme candidate. And that tells us something important.
The Dish 