Not the George Ringo They Wanted

It's official: the editors of the Marquette Tribune disapprove of the selection of Pope Benedict XVI.

This group of about a dozen 19, 20 and 21 year old journalism students considers itself a better judge of Cardinal Ratzinger's qualifications for office than a group of 117 Church officials who each have decades of theological study. But besides that fact, the article makes accusations about the new Pope that are unwarranted.

The editorial spends the first five paragraphs claiming that a European Pope will fail to care for non-European Catholics, such as Africans, Asians and Central Americans. This ignores the fact that Jonh Paul II was a European who still managed to speak out about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, violence in the Middle East and other worldwide issues.

The editorialists write:

However, his record as John Paul II's confrontational head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith indicates that he may not prioritize the true crises in the Catholic Church right now.

His former job was to enforce the correct teaching of Catholic faith and morals. In that role, he had no reason to become involved in any official way with other issues. There are other Vatican offices to deal with those. As a new international figure, Benedict will be forced to face issues around the globe. This is similar to accusing President Bush of not facing the issue of high federal taxes while he was governor of Texas. It was not within Ratzinger's jurisdiction.

At this point, the writers pause for a moment. "Perhaps we are rushing to judgement." With that qualifier out of the way, they continue on with their next accusation.

Cardinal Ratzinger's comments Monday indicated his vision for the future church is an all-out culture war machine in Europe and North America that is the rough equivalent of Don Quixote attacking a windmill. . . In a Western marketplace of ideas, intellectually intricate doctrinaire Catholicism cannot compete with the instantaneous self-gratification of secular humanism. This calls for a change in emphasis that the church just refused to take.

Western Europe, the traditional homeland of Catholicism and the birthplace of most Protestant denominations, has become one of the least Christian areas of the world. Church attendance is dropping and fewer and fewer people classify themselves as Christian.The Catholic church's goal should be to win back the millions who have fallen away from their faith.

It may be a lofty goal, but that doesn't make it foolish or pointless. To suggest that Catholicism should change its beliefs to fit whatever the modern person wants to hear is deadly. The Church is supposed to be a beacon of a morality that remains, in spite of the turbulence of the rest of the world. If the Catholic church simply becomes reflection of what the Western Modernist mind wants to believe, it will no longer serve any purpose at all. What the Church needs is not to change, but to remain strong and explain its beliefs clearly to the masses. Cardinal Ratzinger was considered one of, if the the greatest, theologians in Catholicism today. That makes him qualified like none other to show the modern (wo)man how the Church remains relevant to the world today.