Power to the Papal!!!!

Just sounded funny to me. I don't particularly care how much power the pope has. However, there is a new one. Pope Benedict XVI took office today. He's formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a hard-line orthodox traditionalist. The Reuters reporter who wrote this story apparently couldn't find anyone who believed he would actually be a hard-line orthodox traditionalist Pope.

"Somewhere a mending of fences must have been happened in the conclave," said Father Gerald Fogarty, history professor at the University of Virginia in the United States. "They probably think of this as a transitional papacy."

John Wilkins, former editor of The Tablet in London, said Ratzinger could be different as Pope from his previous work.

"You never quite know how a pope is going to develop," he said. "You can't just draw a straight line from Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Ratzinger as pope."

Every quote in the story reflects the hope or belief that he will be a transitional or transformational pope that those in the MSM have been crying for since JPII died. Somehow, I doubt that the rush of the Holy Spirit will infuse him with the sudden desire to embrace gays, female priests and liberalization of church doctrine. I don't understand how one can read his resume and doubt that he will be just as unyielding on Church tradition or doctrine as John Paul II.

Some highlights:

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires," [Cardinal Ratzinger] declared at a pre-conclave Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

"Ratzinger's stern leadership of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the modern successor to the Inquisition, delighted conservative Catholics but upset moderates and other Christians whose churches he described as deficient."

"In that office, Ratzinger disciplined Latin American "liberation theology" theologians, denounced homosexuality and gay marriage and pressured Asian priests who saw non-Christian religions as part of God's plan for humanity."

It, of course, remains to be seen whether he will be as effective a pope as John Paul II. His age (78) may cause him some difficulty in continuing JPII's jetsetting lifestyle, and it's possible that his continuation of JPII's policies and strong stance for age-old morals will draw youth the way John Paul II did or if JPII's draw was more personality and charisma then policy and dogma.