Right. This is my delayed commentary on the new pope, and if you're already tired of Pope Fester stuff, you can just carry on. I had to look some stuff up last night, so I didn't get a chance to post. Did you know that if you try to find Newsweek's most recent Anna Quindlen column on line, what you mainly get is a lot of people talking about what a liberal cunt she is because she's willing to say that there are problems with things like letting Terry Schiavo live in a vegetative state and that Pope JP2 wasn't entirely the world's greatest humanitarian this side of Mother Teresa? Sounds like my kind of person. (As if I didn't already know.)

I think we can safely say that the axiom about walking into the conclave a Pope and leaving a cardinal is no longer true.

On the bright side, he's 78, so hopefully he won't have too much time left to fuck up the world with his conservative views. Because, and let's look at this realistically, religion is a far larger (and at the same time smaller) issue than most Americans give it credence for being.

Religion can be blamed in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the Northern Ireland conflict, and the impending/continuing Hindu/Muslim clash, both between Pakistan and India and internally in India. Religion is often the refuge of a group that seeks to change the political face of the landscape, and that is historically true all the back to, at least, the Roman empire. Religion also often generates the disagreement between two groups, as seen all over the world, which expands into a new political disagreement.

Not that I'm arguing that there aren't significant political differences that are solely political differences. The Vietnam war was not about religion, and never has been, unless you count Communism versus Democracy as a religous difference. But it is often a factor in creating political confrontations.

However, it is simplistic to say that the Palestinian conflict, the Northern Ireland conflict, and the Hindu/Muslim conflicts are solely based around religion. They are also based around the often-real perception that one group is disadvantaged by the other (good god, I sound like the PC police, sorry) not because of religion but because they can.

Or, perhaps, not strictly because of religion. This brings me back to my original point. Religion is both a larger and smaller force in the world than I think most Americans understand it as being. Tremendous numbers of people, even in America with (legal) separation of church and state*, profess to believing in a specific religion. I can't, of course, find the statistics that I was looking for, since google is only showing me religious sites, but given where I find news, it was probably in Newsweek if you want to go out and prove me statistically wrong.

Religion is, whatever your view, a force that holds people together, even beyond ethnic/cultural, linguistic, and national boundaries. It is, from that standpoint, very large and powerful indeed. At the same time, it is smaller in that not every problem or good in the world is caused by religion. Sometimes, people just up and do beautiful things without thinking about how it will promote the glory of their God.

At any rate. Groups like The Dominionists believe that religion is smaller than it should be in the life of a political body, especially one like America. They seek to make it far larger than it is, or than the Founding Fathers were comfortable having it be.

Bear in mind, this is the key tenet of Dominionist belief: "'Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' (NIV)

Most Christians interpret this verse as meaning that God gave mankind dominion over the animal kingdom. Dominion theologians believe that that this verse commands Christians to bring all societies, around the world, under the rule of the Word of God."

They may or may not be on the same side as the people who want to bring about the rapture - by such methods as deforestation and environmental destruction and fomenting a war in Israel. I'm willing to bet that they are, but probably there's a quibble between the two about whether it's appropriate to use the shrimp fork while plotting the destruction of the real world or not.

My worry - and belief - is that Ratzinger, from what I know of him, seeks to make religion a larger force than even John Paul II did, and he managed to make it quite relevant, unfortunately in ways that were often contradictory. One example, taken directly from Anna Quindlen, and you can talk to her if you want to know more, is "In 1976, a pontifical commission concluded that there were no scriptural reasons to prevent the ordination of women. With a critical shortage of seminarians in some countries, John Paul merely trotted out the boilerplate ban. 'Is there only the tired reply that "we never did it that way before"?' wrote one Chicago monsignor." Despite these contradictions, John Paul II was an incredibly visible force in the world, one that drew people to him, almost - as it seemed to me - simply on the basis of being himself.

I've known a couple of people like that. One of them was my school's parish priest when I was very wee. He had this unshakeable faith in God, as God should be (kind and caring). I have no idea how he felt about modern American Catholicism vs the dictates of the Vatican vs the Bible vs WWF, because I never engaged in a mature debate with him. But he seemed like a very good, kind man.

Back to Ratzinger. I don't have the sense that he's a good and kind man who means well. I have the sense - and admittedly, it's not based on much, since I didn't turn Pope-a-rama 2005 into my new OJ trial or my new Iran-Contra affair or my new Election 2004 - that he is the sort of small-minded man who would get along quite well with the Dominionists.

Of course, having stated all that, I can only conclude that what American (and at least Western European) Catholics want isn't necessarily what all Catholics want. I simply hope that Ratzinger doesn't manage to do that much damage to the world in his office as Pope before being promoted to direct sales in Heaven, Inc. Even leaving aside the differences between Catholicism as practised in America and as practised in Kenya, though, I don't think think that Ratzinger will give too many people what they actually want. And that will cause people to leave the Church - presumably to enter other churches, which I don't find comforting.

That voice in the wilderness crying out?

Yeah, it's not going to stick around forever waiting for you to hear it and respond to it. It's going to find someone who will hear it.

Dancing with seven veils,

Channon

* This is not particularly a pun. I had a teacher in college who had done fieldwork in Indonesia, and upon entering Indonesia with her visa, got an ID card that listed her religion as Christian. The official who gave it to her said they assumed all white Americans were Christian unless they specified otherwise.

And on a funnier note, at least now we've opened the way for sweeping generalisations about how the Germans failed in 1870, 1914, and 1939, so now they're taking over the Church. Also, we have a Pope now who can be compared visually to Uncle Fester and took as his moniker part of the name of a popular breakfast food.

Rather like the results of Election 2004, even if you wind up disappointed in the end, you know it's comedy gold.