I’ve been browsing articles about the new Pope off and on all day…have to say, I’m a bit disappointed. They seem to have picked the most staunchly conservative of the candidates.
Bits and pieces from CNN’s profile:
The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, was one of the most powerful men in the Vatican under Pope John Paul II, a strict enforcer of church doctrine who earned the nickname “Cardinal No.”
[…]
Ratzinger became known as “Cardinal No” because of his drives to crack down on the liberation theology movement, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and calls to ordain women as priests.
[…]
Ratzinger has said modernity led to a blurring of sexual identity, causing some feminists to become adversaries of men. He labeled homosexuality “an intrinsic moral evil.”
He argued that Muslim Turkey did not belong in Christian Europe and issued a document saying that Catholicism was the only true religion, questioning the validity of other religions, even Christian ones, even as his Pope John Paul II was trying to reach out to other faiths.
[…]
He rejected a 1993 pastoral letter co-written by fellow German Cardinal Walter Kasper that encouraged divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to return to the sacraments.
Y’know, in the church I was brought up in, I was taught that we were supposed to be accepting of others different from us. That we were supposed to love all people equally. To do unto others as we would have done to us. That Jesus shunned the powerful and spent time with the weak, downtrodden, and humble masses.
Of course, I wasn’t brought up Catholic.
“Graveyard” by Webley, Jason from the album Springman Records Sampler (2003, 3:57).