Is the Pope Catholic? Does he have a left wing?
Jimmy Akin links to a Times of London editorial:
Journalists and pundits for whom the Catholic Church has long been an object of anthropological curiosity fringed with patronising ridicule have really let themselves go since the new pontiff emerged. Indeed most of the coverage I have seen or read could be neatly summarised as: “Cardinals elect Catholic Pope. World in Shock.”
As headlines, I’ll grant you, it’s hard to beat God’s Rottweiler, The Enforcer, or Cardinal No. They all play beautifully into the anti-Catholic sentiment in intellectual European and American circles that is, in this politically correct era, the only form of religious bigotry legitimised and sanctioned in public life. But I ask you, in all honesty, what were they expecting?
However, the editorial also delves into the nature of the Roman Catholic Church, which transcends the human limitations of secular politics:
It has been fun...to watch as the cardinals’ deliberations have been portrayed...as a classic left-right battle between conservatives (bad, of course) and progressives (good). But it bears little reality to the way the Church’s leadership really thinks about its future....
[Pope Benedict XVI] defies easy characterisation in political terms. He was one of the intellectual driving forces behind the reforming Second Vatican Council. He has, like his predecessor, spoken out strongly against the war in Iraq, and indeed against the use of military force in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. He is in the broad church of prelates who...essentially regard modern capitalism with moral disdain....
And it’s not really evident that churches that have made the kind of accommodations with modernity that are urged on the Vatican have fared all that well. The Church of England is a mostly genial institution led, in Rowan Williams, by a good and holy man, but I don’t get the sense that the post hoc validation of modern social mores that the C of E has been practising for some time has led to a religious awakening among the British....
In the days leading up to the conclave the buzzword, if the Holy Spirit can be said to have such a thing, was Continuator. The cardinals wanted to anoint someone who would represent continuity with the dead Pope’s firm restatement of the church’s doctrines and values. There was no one who better offered the prospect of a reaffirmation of that papacy....
Much attention has focused on the previous 15 popes called Benedict. But it is worth remembering that the first St Benedict was not a pope, but the founder of the monastic order that bears his name. Benedict is the patron saint of Europe. His principal legacy — the Benedictines — was critical in planting the roots of Christianity throughout Europe in the dark, post-Roman period of the 6th and subsequent centuries. Without Benedict, Europe may not have been the centre of Christianity in the Middle Ages that made it the birthplace of modern civilisation.
The conclave clearly shared the view of John Paul II that Europe confronts another similar challenge — the lure of relativist, materialist secularism that is steadily stifling the Church in its birthplace. In choosing this Benedict, from the heart of Europe, they have demonstrated the Church’s intention to meet this challenge, not with compromise and accommodation, but with the unbending affirmation of the universal, eternal truth.
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