Everybody Say His Own Kyrie Eleison

Jaysus

Great Tom Lehrer reference!

This article doesn’t say who the new pope is.
Am I missing something?

The NYT page was just updated – it’s Ratzinger. I guess that Negroponte needs to be transferred from Iraq to the Vatican.

Good point.

Not a great day for the Intrade crowd. Ratzinger was hot favourite at 17.8 earlier in the week, but he softened markedly during the day; I saw him quoted at 12.0 and only a single point above Arinze, who was strengthening today (you can see this best in the charts on the “expired contracts” screen of Intrade if you look at the “Region” market; “Europe” dropped by ten points today while “Africa/Asia” firmed, although it is visible that the Ratzinger contract was falling today). Paddy Power’s oddsmaker did a much better job; he kept Ratzinger as 3/1 favourite throughout the race.

Once more, the betting markets were … kinda okay. All experts had Ratz as their favourite (Chris Brooke called it in the comments to this post). The markets also did, but were much less sure about it and were giving up on him. Once more, we prove that market prices have to inhabit the same reality as the rest of us, which puts a lower bound on how bad they can be, but they really really are not “all that”.

“This selection makes sense if, and only if, someone made a conscious decision to write off all but a small, cohesive, zealous group of First World Catholics to create a more disciplined group to manage the burgeoning masses elsewhere.”

That’s one way to view it. Other way to view it is that, whether one likes it or not, JPII served long enough to be able bring around most of the cardinals to his doctrinal viewpoint, or outlast those he couldn’t. By electing Ratzinger (who probably will have a decade of effective service, tops), the cardinals have signaled that they want another few years to consolidate all of JPII’s doctrinal pronouncements, before embracing the reality that Catholicism is no longer primarily a First World, European phenomenon.

For what it’s worth, Richard Neuhaus wrote from Rome that the word was that the Latin American cardinals, who probably easily could have managed to install one of their own, basically agreed that their moment wasn’t yet, and to bide their time until the next conclave. The next pope will almost certainly be from the Third World.

Nobody expects the German Inquisition!

As soon as he threatened the other cardinals with the comfy chair, it was all over.

My favourite comment so far – from PNH over in Making Light

Benedict, hell. Look at the guy–he’s Palpatine I.

The Church missed out on an ecumenical opportunity. What would it have hurt to elect Jim Baker? The prison record shouldn’t be held against him — I mean, first shall be last and vice versa, right? Plus, the familiarity with gold plumbing fixtures. And plus, an emotional style that would go over well with the below-78 set. Admittedly, Ratzinger, who has personally eaten two heretics, has a certain cred with the retirement age Opus Dei set. But I think Baker could have closed the gap, plus he could have really invigorated any new funding drive.

The upside here is that David Foster Wallace’s concept of years named after products takes a giant leap forward. Remember the year of the Depend Adult Undergarments? The Vatican has just elected its ideal spokesman.

ps — And surely Bunuel is smiling down from surrealist heaven.

The Holy Roman Empire strikes back. Or perhaps the South German/Austrian hold on the Church never went away.

Probably more of the latter than the former, it’s true. Still, it’s not like JPII lacked persuasive power altogether.

I think they’re just not going to pick someone as young as JPII was for a long time to come. Too much time to do too much.

That was the theory behind electing 77-year-old John XXIII. Oops.

I had that guy pegged as a total Pius, but Palpatine is better.

28 comments so far on this thread. Over/under on the number of commentors have read more than 500 words written by Ratzinger in their lifetimes: 4. But then again, the more you read the more you have to deal with an actual, specific intellectual agent – makes it much harder to pour into him all of your darkest fever swamp fanatasies. I’m awaiting the commentor who will point out that its common knowledge that Ratzinger was an HR manager at Wal-Mart in his youth.

Then there’s this gem:

“I don’t think they’re so naive as to imagine that many educated people in affluent countries will get on board with their agenda—they’ve directed their efforts to a niche market, admittedly a big one: socially conservative peasants in “traditional societies” and socially conservative “red” Americans.”

The little brown people just aren’t sophisticted enough agree with me. tsk tsk.

Well sd, I’ve read thousands of words of the hateful bilge Ratzinger has pumped out during his time as head of the Inquisition. Sorry, Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

And as one of a probably very small number of practicing Catholics on CT, I can tell you the horror, disgust and sheer sweaty nausea I feel at Ratzinger being made pope put much of the contempt expressed on this thread in the ha’penny place.

Maria:

For those of us who are not Roman Catholics, could you direct us to a paragraph or two of Benedict’s that you think well illustrate his hatefulness?

“The markets also did, but were much less sure about it and were giving up on him. Once more, we prove that market prices have to inhabit the same reality as the rest of us, which puts a lower bound on how bad they can be, but they really really are not “all that”.”

I would suspect that the election of the pope is one of the areas where the market is highly unlikely to have much more information than your average informed watcher. Which would tend to make it an exception rather than the rule, no?

Maria:

I thought that you were using the word “hateful” in OED sense #1, but now I’m wondering if you meant OED sense #2. Was it the latter?

This is probably a small nit to pick under the circumstances, but I think I’m going to have trouble respecting the moral reasoning of someone who thinks “relativism” can be used to mean “every single position that differs from mine”.

Nat, since you seem to be keen on semantic rigor, could you tell me how you understand Ratzinger’s use of the word “disordered”? It’s certainly not clear to me.

Maria wrote: “Nat – don’t be so bloody pedantic. I said it was hateful bilge and I stand by it.”

But the two senses of the word “hateful” are so different. Does Pope Benedict’s assertion that homosexual acts are never approved signify that he (and those who agree with him) is full of hate, or does it make you hate him?

Uncle Kvetch: FWIW, my guess is OED sense #2.

I must say that the last time that the Catholic Church decided that it was absolutely impossible to have any movement or discussion on fundamental points of doctrine was 1517 and look how that turned out.

Regarding the Wikipedia entry photo:

Is it me or does he look astonishingly like the emperor from one of the early episodes (I’m not a SW fan, btw)? Looks like they guy on shark5600 picked up on the same thing.

Dunno, I guess I’ll stick to Lutheran Pietism.

I mean “the guy”…

hey what happened to preview?

Is this as hateful as it gets?

“Hateful” doesn’t begin to describe it.

nat –

There’s a bit more about Herr Ratzinger’s views on homosexuality here, although still not a whole lot of context:

In 1986 Ratzinger issued a letter to the Catholic Bishops in which he wrote that homosexuality was a ‘tendency’ towards an ‘intrinsic moral evil’. A few years later, in 1992, he rejected the notion of human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be ‘legitimately limited’. He followed up by remarking that ‘neither the church nor society should be surprised’ if ‘irrational and violent reactions increase’ when gays demand civil rights.

Ratzinger is in fact the spit and image of Boris Karloff in Roger Corman’s The Raven; see
http://images.allposters.com/images/MG/144075.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.digitalhit.com/posters/p/936773&h=425&w=275&sz=58&tbnid=0q9fFxNFEjwJ:&tbnh=121&tbnw=78&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkarloff%2Braven%26svnum%3D50%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

Minor pedant re: dsquared’s comment at 12 above: Paddy Power’s bookmaker on this was actually a woman.

Liadnan, thanks. Also, Reuters article on the movement in betting odds, albeit that they appear to think they were speaking to Paddy Power himself!

whew! alot of words from so many secular agnostics, but does anyone really know how much money and influence the church really has?

Benedict Arnold II