No sale: Putting all considerations of the new pope's theology and politics aside, the guy just doesn't look like a pope. Too much hair. Not lean or (if fat) smooth-skinned. Ugh!
posted by Quiddity at 4/19/2005 11:27:00 AM
As I bet last week, the new pope is even more radically conservative than JP. This should go a long way toward finishing the alienation of the vast majority of Catholics.
The Americans and Europeans will finally be completely fed up with the church's lack of movement toward modernity, so those branches will wither.
The Latin-American bastions of Catholicism remember all too well Ratzinger's hand in crushing liberation ideology, and his not-too-thinly veiled distain for their clergy. Watch the church shrink drastically throughout central and South America.
The rest of the Third World, where most Catholics are these days, must be disgusted that, yet again, a white reactionary European will be dictating to them. Recruitment--which had been strong under JP--will dry up. Many of the newer converts may decide that this Allah guy ain't so bad after all.
All in all, in picking Ratzinger as the new poper, the College of Cardinals seems to be pushing the self-destruct button.
Oh, and he does look terrible. He's old enough that perhaps his reign may not last that long.
Derelict
Wrong picture, dude. That shot is Walter Mondale with a little aging applied via photoshop. :)
Had the new pope been a non-European, I bet he would have been more conservative.
