Cheering for B16 From The Peanut Gallery

An E-mailer to K-Lo over at the Corner puts it rather neatly:

K-Lo,

I think conservative/orthodox/confessing Protestants are all bubbly today about Benedict XVI because our Catholics brothers are showing the mainline Protestant denominations what it means to be faithful. It is now the so-called "moderates" of these churches who have long been victorious in forcing the relaxation of doctrine and church teachings under the banner of modernization who look "behind the times." They now seem like an old pair of marbled bell-bottoms rather than the cutting edge of the future of Christianity they thought they were. For some denominations, it may be too late, but there are pockets of orthodoxy that are thriving even in these dying denominations. They are celebrating with conservative Catholics this week.

As a Confessional Lutheran in one of those pockets of orthodoxy, I must confess to being enchanted by this new GERMAN Pope. What would Martin Luther say?

Congratulations!

As a Conservative Episcopalian (no, that is not quite yet an oxymoron), let me just add: Amen. The greatest problem I see with my own Church isn't necessarily related to specific issues like whether or not Bishop Robinson should have been elected. Rather, it's the Church's steady sinking into a mire of soupy Deism, moral relativism and intellectual hyper-sophistication that basically sends the message that people should worship whatever Designer God they're comfortable with and that there's no such thing as Right and Wrong so long as everybody's nice to each other. (In other words, God is Us. Or to put it more accurately, We are God.)

Most of the former Palies that I know who have got fed up with this sort of thing have gravitated toward the Evangelical camp. If Pope Benny cleans out the muck and fires up the Faithful the way everybody seems to think he plans, I wonder how many of them might be more tempted to go to Rome instead. (This is assuming, of course, that the Episcopal Church itself doesn't shatter into pieces, which it very well might do in the next five years or so. And who knows what effect a vibrant Rome might have on the Episcopal schismatics? Instead of simply running away from the marbled bell-bottoms, they might be encouraged to charge them with sledgehammers. Call it the Sherry Revolution.)

YIPS from Steve: The Irish Elk has a ton of great links on past Benedicts, as well as some interesting questions about the near future.