Cardinal Ratzinger has been elected as the new Pope. He will take the name Benedict the XVI.

May God help us.

May God help you? Why? From what i've seen he is maticulous in keeping his scriptures alive as they were written - is this not the Catholic's way - to follow the books to the letter. I am not of this faith, but I've heard a person say this recently:

"People don't realise that our (Catholics) Religion is not meant to accomadate the changing ways of society, but rather uphold what is taught in the Bible"

Wouldn't Ratzinger, being so bold against scrutiny on the scriptures, be a good, valid, and sound candidate?

Again, I may be in the dark here - not being of this faith - so correct me if I'm obscured.

I agree with what you said, that the Catholic Church is not meant to accomodate society.

Let's just say Cardinal Ratzinger and I would disagree on our interpretation of the Bible, radically so.

Indeed. The problem lies in when you (as blizzard said) see the bible your way, and put forth that as edict. That way of seeing is somthing that more liberal catholics, (which most of the ones in the US are) oft disagree with.

I've become a bit more comfortable with Benedict the XVI in the past 24 hours based on some of what he has said.

He has said he wants to continue conversations with all world religions and has a unity of Christian faiths as his goal.

I think he will realize a hardline on some things such as forbiding women from being ordained will not aid in a reconciliation with some religions.

In fact, the Lutheran church and the Catholic church were very close to officially reconciling under Pope John Paul the II, but the sticking point was the ordination of women and allowing clergy to be married. Lutherans wouldn't back down on their stance women should be priests/ministers and that ministers/priests should be allowed to marry, and the JP II was unmoveable on forbiding both those points.

Morally I agree with the culture of life, and I understand that forbiding contraception allows the church to wear a seamless garment in support of life, so I'm willing to forgive that stance, even though I think it's ridiculous in a lot of cases.

One of my concerns is that Ratzinger actually said prior to becoming Benedict the XVI that the church needed a cleansing of sorts. He wants to chase out a lot of people to make the church as small as possible and then build it up from there, he said somethign about it needing to be as small as a mustard seed of true believers to become trully mighty again.

Although as NPR pointed out yesterday, you know, he had more or less unbridled control over maintaining Orthodoxy under John Paul II, it can't really get worse.

Though John Paul II didn't wavier on alot of things, he was making steps (or rather leaps) towards certain goals, such as the women in the church. He branched out to many differing relgions, somthing that Ratzinger, the former leader of the Inquistion, might not be too open to.

Apparently, when he was still head of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict ordered the editor of the Jesuit magazine "America" to resign. And so the editor resigned yesterday.

I have a subscription to America. While it is a bit liberal and frequently publishes articles that question Church teaching, it ALWAYS provides two sides (or more) of the issue. Frequently, there will be a big article explaining the Church's point of view, and then maybe a letter/response/shorter article pointing out weaknesses or talking about possible consequences. It was by no means subversive to Church authority, at least in my opinion.

So no, I'm not sure Benedict will be all that open to dialogue with other religions, if he squashes it even within his own.