Reflections On the Papal Process

Although I’ve been a Catholic for nearly a decade now, in many ways this past month I have felt like a baby Catholic.  And, despite the sorrow for John Paul II and the joy for Benedict XVI, mostly I’ve felt like a baby greedily sucking in the drama, the pageantry, the history, and — most of all — the world reaction.

I may or may not have more to say later about certain reactions from non-Catholics, but what has impressed me the most is how important the past month has been to the world.  The world has known that something monumental has been happening in its midst and it has been watching.  While we might quibble with or heckle down some of the watchers’ commentaries, I think it says something significant about the Catholic Church that this transition has meant so much worldwide to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Can you imagine anything like this surrounding a shift in leadership in any other religion — Christian or non-Christian — anywhere else in the world?  The only possible comparable might occur when the Dalai Lama passes on, but I think much of that will be because of his personal appeal to the world; it won’t be because of the office he holds.  In other words, while many around the world will genuinely and sincerely mourn the Dalai Lama, I doubt there will be much worldwide speculation on who will succeed him.  There certainly won’t be an equivalent to this past week’s coverage of the Vatican and the election of the new Pope.  And it is astounding that the only marginal comparable of which I could fathom is a man who is not only a non-Christian but also a non-monotheist.  No other Christian or non-Christian, monotheistic or non-monotheistic, religion offers a worldwide office and leader of such importance to the secular or religious world.

It says something of the importance of the Church and the papacy to the world that the world knows that these are events of such monumental importance that they must be covered in-depth.  There may be fundamental disagreements between the world and the Church, between the world and the Pope; but the Church and the Pope will never be irrelevant to the world.  And, for me, that is confirmation that Christ is still active in the world today and that the world subconsciously recognizes him in the Catholic Church.

For a baby Catholic like me, that’s a huge comfort.

Randomly Flexible Modalities

When you are a student at MIT and you are in the mood to play a trick on someone, you can’t just Vaseline their doorknob or fiddle with the settings on their spell checker. People expect a little higher grade of tomfoolery from future code writers. So, when these two MIT chums got more bored than usual they decided to play a hoax on the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics! No, seriously!

They sat down and wrote this nifty program that randomly generates scientific research papers, including charts and diagrams and tech-speak so jargon-bloated and convoluted that it’s difficult to distinguish from REAL scientific gibberish (I learned a little of this kind of thing myself, when I took a seminar in Grant Writing) and their paper was accepted for presentation at the conference!

They are now trying to raise money to travel to the conference and give a randomly generated talk on their paper. The event organizers aren’t too excited about that, though, and may not let them in. The paper is hilarious to read because you know it’s fake, and the story also has a link you can follow to randomly generate your own scientific treatise!

GET THE STORY.

The Best Defence…

Already conservatives are on the defensive, trying to calm the irrational fears of the fringe (theological) left of the Church, assuring them that Pope Benedict won’t be that bad. Even FOX News has been sucked into this. Just now I saw a piece all about the concerns of "many American Catholics" that the new Pope is too authoritarian and traditional.

Hel-lo-o-o-o? You could just as easily frame the story this way: "Many American Catholics Elated at Conclave’s Outcome" or "Many American Catholics Eager For New Pope’s Likely Reforms". Why let these shrieking harpies set the agenda?

I confess, I did check in at BeliefNet last night just to revel in Andrew Sullivan’s perplexed rage. His most telling comment was comparing Benedict XVI to JPII. How does Sullivan think the new Pope will stack up against the most beloved figure of modern times? He laments that he will be "even more hardline" than JPII.

Let’s hope pray so!

READ SULLIVAN’S RANT HERE, if you can stomach it. I found it most enjoyable.

Hillary: Less Than Advertised?

HillaryHillary Clinton is being treated as if she’s a political supergenius.

Y’know, you hear all those stories in the press about how she’s "cleverly repositioning" herself to fool voters into thinking that she’s not a shieking, hard-left harpy in anticipation of the 2008 elections, in which she will be a virtually unstoppable juggernaut because she’ll have pulled the wool over the American public’s eyes so completely that we won’t remember she was ever a hard-left harpy and won’t notice all the hard-lefties supporting her in 2008 giving each other all the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" signs as she says things to further her non-hard-left harpy image.

What a supergenius politician!

OR IS SHE?

Ratz!

Ratzinger_1That’s what I’d be saying if I was disappointed.

But I’m not!

I’m delighted!

YEE-HAW!!!

God bless Benedict XVI!

Man, he wasn’t even done with the Urbi et orbi and I was wanting his first encyclical already.

Good money it’ll be on relativism and hook directly into apologetics.