Thanks be to God.
Already the left media in the USA (J. Rob)is denouncing the selection of Joseph Ratzinger as new pope. CBS News called him “God’s Rottweiler,” an obvious play on his German nationality. That term was echoed by other networks and news agency, indicating that the term is part of talking points distributed by anti-Catholic liberals in the United States.
A couple of weeks ago, people argued with me about who the Cardinals would choose. I said, “the German.” Everyone else I spoke with said, “the Brazilian.” In the end, God chooses the man who will best serve his divine purposes. In the case of John Paul I, it seems the Cardinals disagreed with God’s choice, and God called him home 33 days later.
Benedict XVI is seventy-eight. He is much more of a chief executive than was his predecessor. Still, by all accounts Ratzinger is very personable and warm man who will win many loyal followers as we learn more about him.
The losers in his selection are the renegade priests and nuns who have tried to turn the Catholic church into a secular morasse of socialist psychobabble. If there’s anything the church needs it’s to start acting Catholic again. Benedict XVI seems just the pope to do that. In the final Mass before the conclave began, then Cardinal Ratzinger homilized:
“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” he said, speaking in Italian. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards. (AP)
For more on that sermon, see Touchstone’s MereComments blog. Among other excellent writings, MereComments has this about “progressive” Catholics:
We are pleased, to put it mildly, to see the election of a pope who is probably the worst nightmare of certain “Catholic” groups such as Call To Action. CTA held a prayer service over the weekend at a local retreat center here in Chicago. The local TV cameras were there, and CTA was featured in a couple of reports about “local Catholics” who were meeting together to pray about the papal election. A clip showed a dozen or so men and women standing around what looked to me like an altar, while the report went on about how they wanted a pope open to the ordination of women, various sexual orientations, and the usual laundry list of liberal unCatholic causes. Another TV station just showed a few seconds of video, noting only that some Catholics were meeting for prayer about the election, without quoting CTA at all. Their prayers were definitely not answered in the way they wanted them to be.
I’m bogged down with deadlines right now, so please see Michelle Malkin for updates on reactions to the new pope.
UPDATE: The DemocraticUnderground concensus is that Ratzinger is a “knuckle-dragging conservative Nazi.” Translating from DUese, what they’re really saying is “Benedict XVI is sort of an ordained William F. Buckley.” Again, thanks be to God.