Ratzinger. Billmon's got the post you need to read. The only thing I'll add is that, at 78, Ratzinger's is almost certainly intended as a caretaker papacy, and it must be on that basis that a consensus coalesced so rapidly around him. (As Atrios notes, this early in the game Ratzinger had to be a consensus choice, rather than a marginal one.)

There are no doubt a few theological moderates left in the College of Cardinals, in spite of the Rat's and JPII's best efforts—enough that Ratzinger couldn't have been put over the top (in an early ballot) without them. I can't imagine they'd have acquiesced to him, not without a good bit more of a fight than can have taken place, if Ratzinger were, say, ten years younger. Perhaps the hope, on the side not actively pro-Inquisition, is that the destined brevity of the new Benedict's reign will, as they say, sharpen the contradictions—and that by the time of the next selection the situation for the Church will be dire enough to force some kind of reckoning on the back-to-the-11th-century bloc.

Because things can only get worse under Ratzinger. His papacy is likely to promote a significant exodus of the faithful in the Northern hemisphere, and probably a further, steeper drop in vocations—not even JPII's enormous personal cult was able to stanch the bleeding much, and Ratzinger is (laughably!) no JPII from the charisma perspective. (Nor will he be able to do anything to shore up Catholicism's embattled position wrt evangelical Protestantism in South America.) Expect Catholicism in our own country in the next few years to become that much more reactionary, that much more closely aligned with the worst of the Christian revanchist tendencies in the GOP. The old liberal American Catholicism has just had the last nail driven into its coffin.

Konstantin Chernenko, anybody?

posted by michael  2:41:58 PM  
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