Tuesday, April 19, 2005 AD
Good result
On one level, Lutherans shouldn't care who holds the office of Pope. And there can be little doubt that Pope Benedict XVI will be as zealous as his predecessor in upholding Roman Catholic errors in all the usual areas (justification, Mariology etc), though by all accounts he may backpedal the more recent tendencies towards universalism.
However, we shouldn't ignore the fact that a liberalising Pope of the "Vatican III" persuasion would have had the potential to cause incalculable damage to the church outside the Papacy. As I've said before, if Rome adopts the ordination of women (albeit unthinkable under JP II's immediate successor, however liberal) then the last hold-outs - particularly the Evangelical Lutheran Church - would almost inevitably find themselves going down the same path.
The good news about Pope Benedict XVI is that he will continue to be strong where the Roman Catholic Church is at its best: on Trinitarian orthodoxy and moral issues, for example. Even on the redeeming work of Christ, for all that this can be obscured by other teachings (penance, purgatory, the intercession of the saints etc). In other words, all the bits in the Catechism of the Catholic Church where you find yourself saying, "This is really good stuff! What a shame about ... the other bits".
I may also try to blog at some point on a fascinating page I found on the Vatican website about the secrets of Fatima, to which Cardinal Ratzinger made a very interesting, and perhaps revealing, contribution.
Plus, we can all now sit back and enjoy the spectacle of certain sections of the media rerunning their stories about Paul Wolfowitz taking over at the World Bank, replacing references to Wolfowitz with "Pope Benedict" and references to the World Bank with "Roman Catholic Church". (You know the sort of thing: "Liberal dismay/anger as ultra-conservative appointed...").
However, we shouldn't ignore the fact that a liberalising Pope of the "Vatican III" persuasion would have had the potential to cause incalculable damage to the church outside the Papacy. As I've said before, if Rome adopts the ordination of women (albeit unthinkable under JP II's immediate successor, however liberal) then the last hold-outs - particularly the Evangelical Lutheran Church - would almost inevitably find themselves going down the same path.
The good news about Pope Benedict XVI is that he will continue to be strong where the Roman Catholic Church is at its best: on Trinitarian orthodoxy and moral issues, for example. Even on the redeeming work of Christ, for all that this can be obscured by other teachings (penance, purgatory, the intercession of the saints etc). In other words, all the bits in the Catechism of the Catholic Church where you find yourself saying, "This is really good stuff! What a shame about ... the other bits".
I may also try to blog at some point on a fascinating page I found on the Vatican website about the secrets of Fatima, to which Cardinal Ratzinger made a very interesting, and perhaps revealing, contribution.
Plus, we can all now sit back and enjoy the spectacle of certain sections of the media rerunning their stories about Paul Wolfowitz taking over at the World Bank, replacing references to Wolfowitz with "Pope Benedict" and references to the World Bank with "Roman Catholic Church". (You know the sort of thing: "Liberal dismay/anger as ultra-conservative appointed...").
