Comments on the new pope

The best comment I have heard so far is that Pope Benedict XVI is John Paul II without the charisma. I do not think his doctrinaire positions are going to stem the losses of Catholics in the West to areligion or more progressive denominations. Meanwhile, "more of the same" is not going to keep Catholics in the Global South from converting to Pentecostalism. In other words, I think the Church is in trouble. But we'll see what policies he undertakes.

However, I do not think electing such a conservative pope is an aberration. It's probably the shape of things to come. As the Atlantic Monthly laid out in The Next Christianity, the major churches are growing fastest in the Global South, and these Southern Hemisphere churches are very conservative by Western standards. As northerners in Europe and America advocate for liberal reforms, the southerners who already make up the majority of the Catholic Church are intensely conservative. This is a recipe for schism.

Star Tribune: Benedict XVI: Pastor or enforcer?

Salon: "The church will continue to suffer": Father Andrew Greeley, Michael Lerner, Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Fox, Amy Sullivan, John T. McGreevy and others weigh in on the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI.

...and remember, "You may not be interested in Christianity, but Christianity is interested in you."

Update: As a born Catholic, I have been amused by the mostly Protestant religious conservatives' new-found admiration for the Church. Weren't you just telling us all that we aren't really Christians? Alicublog has been thinking along the same line, but his post on it is far more sarcastic than I could ever be:

The attraction of the True Faith for wingnuts amuses those of us born into it, though I imagine it is a deadly serious matter for the world's Hewitts, who find the mission of the Church identical to that of American conservatism -- that is, not just a containment of but an end to homosexuality, adultery, and indeed every sin but covetousness, which modern Catholicism has enshrined as a positive virtue.