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Originally posted by sugar and spice
On request from the other thread, I thought I'd move all potentially controversial material here so those who just want to celebrate can do it in the other thread without interruption.
Here's my post from that thread:
Assuming the new pope stays true to his conservative roots, I worry about the route the church is taking. By selecting a conservative pope, the church is essentially sweeping a number of problems (condom use in Africa, the priest shortage, European Catholics becoming less and less religious, etc.) under the rug instead of addressing them. I think we're at the place where the church needs to work with its members (especially European ones) instead of against them, and a conservative pope will be less likely to do that. And in terms of relations with the rest of the world, popes in the near future will probably need to reach out to Muslim leaders the way John Paul II reached out to Jewish leaders.
Hopefully this new pope chose his name for a reason, and he does plan on working towards unification.
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Posted this in the other thread, but:
Supposedly (or speculatively), the European problem is one of the reasons that Ratzinger, a German, was chosen. I guess that they thought it will take a European to work on or "fix" that problem.
Geoffrey Wainwright, a Methodist theologian from Duke who has known Ratzinger for years, was on Nightline last night. He said that, from an ecumenical and inter-faith perspective, he was "elated" at the choice of Ratzinger and thought it would be very positive as far as ecumenical and inter-faith relations go. FWIW.