One cardinal is a beer-slugging, baby-kissing extrovert, at ease in front of television cameras, who jokes about the lack of corned beef at the Vatican.
The other is a quiet, reluctant public figure, guarded with his inner feelings, who tolerates interviews with reporters like a trip to the dentist.
Comments
I wonder what life is like on the dark side of the moon. Why doesn't the Globe speculate on that issue as well.
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The Globe as cheerleader for two male chauvinists is, to say the least, unseemly. Both have ravaged parishes, tightened the screws on women who, after all, are just Adam's rib, and obscurantist rock stars to starry eyed Cafeteria Catholics. Neither has a chance, much less any inside track, to become Pope, coming as they do from a country where the pews are emptying, Catholic birth control and abortion is pandemic and vocations are decimated.
Just because The Globe has the delusion that it is the Paper of Record of Catholic Boston doesnt mean that it needs to print daily stories about the miracle that would be the American Pope. This is so, so silly and a tell.
When the American hierarchy actually demonstrates backbone, standing up, for example, to the Inquisition, shedding the gender-bending vestments and stop acting as politicians in US secular government, then there will be something to talk about.
And gotta love all the stories in all the media about the medieval gold clothing and ring being made for the next "humble and pious" Bishop of Rome. Well, we just had 8 years of a Hitler Youth, homophobic Benedict XVI ... why not one of these "holy" men from America ...
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It is difficult for a Catholic to read opinions harking back to the Inquisition and before, as if it were the only transgression of men recorded, then to also read these opinions followed by unmistakable references to "8 years of a Hitler Youth" with no modulation of meaning or intent. Certainly the writer confuses The Faith with its fallible members, clergy included, just like any other group, religious or not. Some minor points: You would be hard-pressed to find many people who think the Boston Globe is the Paper of Record of Catholic Boston, as you put it. You gloss over the fact that Bishop O'Malley wore a Franciscan robe for most of his adult life, not "gender-bending vestments" which are quite universal; figures in other churches wear essentially the same robes, equally instilled with meaning, rites and tradition. There was and is much more to talk about, including birth control, abortion, celibacy, marriage, ordination etc. Why aren't you talking about these things now rather than using them as a club to beat it into people that the church is out of step with your thinking, which IMHO, you feel all other people share. The church and people have long since engaged these topics before and after Vatican II and will continue to do so. Benedict XVI's writings and teachings have been scholarly on many issues and beg to be read before comments are made.
http://old.usccb.org/comm/popebenedictxvi/benedictwords.shtml
These two would bring reform and transparency. There are still too many Italian Cardinals. They'll never elect an American. I hope I'm wrong.
I have waffled in my opinion of the Globe as a high end newspaper for a small city. Today I am convinced hat the Globe is not and that it panders to local jingoism. To state that there is a NY/Boston rvalry in the incredibly important selection of a new Pope is absurd. All this does is to stoke the fires of a one sided hate fest; New Yorkers don't give a damn if where a possible US contnder comes from. Idiotic journalism.
well, Benedict XVI was a Hitler Youth who manned an antiaircraft battery in Munich, no? and werent those American bombers overhead?? oh, what a minor transgression, that.
and if that werent enough, Benedict XVI ran the present day Inquisition where he went on gay priest hunting in lieu of stopping the coverup of pedophiles. no?
oh yeah, and Benedict XVI, that holy man, was atop the worlds #1 patriarchal church. now, tell me where exactly I am wrong.
sure, "The" church dealt with all this using one big broom and one big rug. the newly minted Pope Emeritus has alot of time in purgatory ahead of him. a homophobic, pedophile-protecting, woman-hating Nazi. whew. and, of course, on TV everyone is gushing over what is already proclaimed the People's Pope ... another compassion-soaked hater.
"Joseph Ratzinger was not always considered a reactionary. Born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, the first German pope for nearly 1,000 years comes from the country's traditionalist Catholic heartland, Bavaria.
His father was a police officer from a family of farmers whose career suffered because he refused to become a Nazi. The young Ratzinger( age 14) served briefly and unenthusiastically with the Hitler Youth and later with a German army anti-aircraft unit guarding the BMW factory in Munich. He says he never fired a shot." Ratzinger left the German army in 1945, was jailed as a deserter and became a POW of the Germans. (The Guardian, April 2005.)
Yes, I think this is a minor transgression, or are you the same person of thought, deed and judgement that you were when you were 14?
You wrote: "and if that werent enough, Benedict XVI ran the present day Inquisition where he went on gay priest hunting in lieu of stopping the coverup of pedophiles. no?"
NO. I need a link for this opinion. I agree he had some involvement in at least two cases as Cardinal, but your language is too charged and needs verification. This is one treatment:
"Msgr. Charles Scicluna, a Maltese priest who serves as the Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- in effect, its lead prosecutor -- said in a recent interview with the Italian Catholic paper L'Avvenire that the motu proprio triggered an "avalanche" of files in Rome, most of which arrived in 2003 and 2004. Eventually, Scicluna said, more than 3,000 cases worked their way through the congregation.
By all accounts, Ratzinger was punctilious about studying the files, making him one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world to have read the documentation on virtually every Catholic priest ever credibly accused of sexual abuse. As a result, he acquired a familiarity with the contours of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic church can claim.
Driven by that encounter with what he would later refer to as "filth" in the church, Ratzinger seems to have undergone something of a "conversion experience" throughout 2003-04. From that point forward, he and his staff seemed driven by a convert's zeal to clean up the mess.
Of the 500-plus cases that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dealt with prior to Benedict's election to the papacy, the substantial majority were returned to the local bishop authorizing immediate action against the accused priest -- no canonical trial, no lengthy process, just swift removal from ministry and, often, expulsion from the priesthood. In a more limited number of cases, the congregation asked for a canonical trial, and in a few cases the congregation ordered the priest reinstated.
That marked a stark reversal from the initial insistence of Vatican officials, Ratzinger included, that in almost every instance the accused priest deserved the right to canonical trial. Having sifted through the evidence, Ratzinger and Scicluna apparently drew the conclusion that in many instances the proof was so overwhelming that immediate action was required.
Among insiders, the change of climate was dramatic.
In the complex world of court politics at the Vatican, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith became the beachhead for an aggressive response to the sexual abuse crisis. Ratzinger and his deputies sometimes squared off against other departments which regarded the "zero tolerance" policy as an over-reaction, not to mention a distortion of the church's centuries-long canonical tradition, in which punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and in which tremendous discretion is usually left in the hands of bishops..."
http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/will-ratzingers-past-trump-benedicts-present
Note the democratic format of the Church. Everything is in secret like the CIA. The sheep, the people, (the Church calls us sheep) even non-existing lay representatives, are not allowed to vote. Hey, I want to vote for Cardinal O’Malley. The tyranny of Rome still exists to this day under the cover of the Catholic Church that is not the true representative of Christ. Read the New Testament. Much of what Christ said has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. I like the royal robes and stately hat of the Pope and all those red-robed Cardinals. They are called princes of the Church. Christ did not appoint princes or Cardinals. And he physically still lives, in the flesh, according to the Church. Remember? He resurrected. So why should he come back only on the last day? And who said that that would be the case? Hey, Christ, for C’s sake, come on down and make the appointment yourself. You still live in the flesh, we are told. That’s another option. That will save us from the trouble of voting and the Cardinals possibly choking on the white smoke. The Church still teaches 2000 year-old stupidity but well delivered in song and great stories, full of intriguing fiction.