I think that we will now see Benedict as John Paul II-Light: All the authoritarianism, none of the charm.
It is now obvious that the Cardinals (or, at least, the 2/3rds majority who voted for Ratzinger) see the main problem in the Church not to be justice for those who languish in poverty in the Roman Catholic bastions of South America and in the mixed cultures of Africa and Asia. They see the main problem of the Church to be the abandonment of Christianity in the cultures and governments of Europe and North America. They are looking for someone who can re-evangelise Europe. Curiously, Ratzinger’s latest book (unfortunately, I do not know the title) is a study of just this problem. I would study this book to see what direction Benedict’s papacy will take. That is, I would study it if I gave a Ratzinger’s ass.
The Church’s difficulty is that it looks at the situation as: We have the keys of the kingdom and the well of eternal life. All we have to do is sit around and guard it, and they will come. Society and the Roman Catholic Church are _not_ inhabiting a “Field of Dreams”. Spiritual values no longer emanate purely from a religious ethos. Humanists, atheists, Buddhists, and people of all types of creed and none also espouse spiritual values of a most valuable and insightful nature. The challenge that the Church faces today is to make itself acceptable to those who have abandoned it. Ratzinger is probably not the man to do this.
But then…my memory goes back to America of 1968. When Richard Nixon was elected, we were all horrified and convinced that it was the end of American civilisation as we had known it. And yet, Nixon was surprisingly effective in casting aside the Cold War rhetoric of his youth and opening the United States to the People’s Republic of China and to the world at large. Sometimes people’s perspectives change when their job description changes. I do not think that Ratzinger is going to moderate his attacks on those who in his view are heterodox. He is not going to go to charm school. He is also not going to be as energetic in his first days and months as John Paul II was in his first days and months. He will probably not see his 5th anniversary as Pope and almost certainly won’t see his 10th.
Things to look out for:
— What kind of cardinals will he appoint in his first Consistory (which will probably happen before autumn is well-advanced and may happen as soon as June)?
— Who will he appoint as his successor at the Holy Office?
— What will his first encyclical be about and at whom will it be aimed?
— How will he handle relations with other Churches and with other faiths than the Christian faith, especially the Jews, who must privately be wondering whether you can take the boy out of the Hitler Youth but can you take the Hitler Youth out of the boy. He was put in a re-education camp for a while after the surrender of Germany, and he served in the army for two years before deserting just a month before the end of the war in Europe. “His Heil-iness”, they must be thinking. Imagine the double-s at the end of the word replaced by the SS symbolic s-shaped thunderbolts. It’ll look good on protest signs.
Nostradamus predicted that there would be two popes after John Paul II. I put no faith in such predictions; however, it’s possible that Ratzinger can make this prediction come true by what he is, thinks, and does.