Who did they expect, Polly Toynbee?

So, it seems that the Catholic Church has missed an opportunity. An opportunity, that is, to bow the knee to secular modernism.

How rude of the red hats to elect Joseph Ratzinger when there were so many progressive candidates available for the job. Bill Clinton, for instance, he’s pretty free these days. Or what of the admirably qualified Michael Portillo? Passed over, yet again.

It really is is intolerable. Once more the world asks “is the Pope a Catholic?” and once more the Church unimaginatively answers in the affirmative.

It’s not as if they weren’t given every opportunity. Did the world’s media not gather round the last Pope’s death bed? Did the liberal commentators not pay generous, if carefully qualified, tribute to the great man? Indeed they did. And what does the Church give them in return? Benedict XVI!

There’s something rather odd about the disappointment of the secular Left. Why should they care who’s Pope? Surely, to them, religion is an irrelevance at best, an adversary at worst. And, in particular, Roman Catholicism, whose very existence is an affront to the progressive creed. So what could they possibly want with the Church, other than the pleasure of consigning it to the scrap heap of history?

And yet it is clear that the secular Left is consumed with Pontiff envy – and for good reason: The Catholic Church is seen as the last viable transnational institution. In the last few decades, all the prefered options have failed in one way or another. First to go was Communism, discredited long before the last Pope gave the rotten edifice a good hard shove. The loyalties of many on the left transferred to the European Union, once reviled as a capitalist club, then upheld as a bullwark against America, now an embarrasment of economic stagnation. Most recently, the United Nation became the number one hope for the future, but the UN’s manifest uselessness, cluelessness and corruption have taken the legs of that one too.

And that just left the Catholic Church: 1.1 billion members, a presence in every nation, opposition to capitalist excess. Hmmm.

In the science fiction novels of Kevin J Anderson, the elite rule through a puppet monarchy and a puppet religious leader – known as the Archfather – who presides over a bland, multifaith religion called Unison. This is the sort of thing the liberal left would love the Catholic Church to evolve into, a spiritual embodiment of liberal leftism. Inconveniently, the Catholic Church has its own beliefs, which it takes seriously because it believes them to be divine revelation.  And so when commentators wrote of their hope for a Pope who would show flexibility on this, that and the other (mostly the other), what they were really saying is that the Church should not only admit it has taught falsehood, but also that its entire basis for staking a claim to the truth is  also false. In doing so, the commentators failed to follow their own arguments to their logical conclusion: in such a situation of ‘flexibility’ the Church would not only become an empty vessel for others to fill, but a broken vessel fit for nothing.

When Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting in the wilderness, the Devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and offered them to him “if only thou wilt bow down and worship me”. Now, I’m not equating the liberal left to Satan, or the Pope to Jesus. But let’s just say that in electing Benedict XVI the Church has turned down another tempting offer.

Comments

[James Mawdsley]

Fantastic! And not only a transnational institution, but a transgenerational one too.  Does the UN really link us with the 1950s? No, because the UN has lost the backbone which it had in 1950.  But the Church links us with 2,000 years worth of generations, so that the person who takes Mass in Dublin 2005 shares the experience with Russia 1914 and Palestine 33.  What else on earth links people so deeply and widely? Nothing else.

[JonnyB]

"Why should they care who's Pope"...?

Umm... well... maybe they're like - concerned and that - y'know - about all those people dying of AIDS in Africa.

Just a thought. Seems a bit more plausible than the fact that they're envious about the Catholic Church being the last viable etc etc etc etc etc.

But I guess I'm wrong, just being a simple bloke and not a political type, like.

[Tom Greeves]

Many issues are shades of grey, and some are fearsomely complex. But one issue that seems crystal-clear to me is this notion that the recently deceased Pope is to blame for the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Roman Catholicism is perfectly straightforward on this matter. Sexual activity is only legitimate if it is an expression of love between a married couple. If everyone shared that position, STD rates would fall through the floor.

The Pope and his predecessor do not have some default position along the lines of 'you shouldn't be promiscuous, but if you do, for goodness sake don't wear a condom'. Anyone engaging in sexual activity proscribed by the Catholic Church has ALREADY demonstrated that they have little regard for what the Pope has to say.

The 'blame' for the AIDS tragedy in Africa lies elsewhere. Thabo Mbeki can step forward and take a bow for a start, for refusing to acknowledge that HIV and AIDS are related.

[Edward]

You can give African women all the condoms you want and it would make very little difference.

The real problem is the disempowerment of African women, who are not in a position to force their partners to use contraception in the same way that most western women are.

The Catholic church is not responsible, it has no power and the power to persuade - African governments fattened with corruption have contributed far more to this problem by obfuscation, misinformation and in the case of Mbeki out right lies.

The real question is one internally for Catholicism, now that it is no longer a secular power, where does its responsibility lie, for the souls of Catholics,for christians, for everyone? The election of Pope Benedict gives the church the possibility to take a short breather and have a look at itself.

Also Ratzinger is a genuine intellectual unlike Johann Hari, Polly Toynbee etc

[EU Serf]

Funny how the Pope - No Sex before marriage - is guilty for the aids epidemic, whilst Mbeki - sex doesn't cause aids isn't.

No wonder you have to be an intellectual to be a lefty, its far too confusing for me.

[Prudence]

WHY should anyone suppose that the propagation of ‘condom culture’ throughout Africa could halt the spread of AIDS, when it has so signally failed to arrest the escalating epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in this country?

I am not a Catholic, but it is clear to me that the Pope is right on this (and on most other moral and cultural issues).