Afternoon Baseball

UMass-Amherst's paper

Interesting staff editorial about the death of John Paul II, focused mostly on what his successor will be like, pointing out the new diversity in candidates and the need to continue John Paul II's ability to communicate and find common ground.


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One point is way off, though. Maybe a minor point, but it ignores the general positioning of the Church as a political observer and commenter rather than a player.

They say the U.S. won't get the next pope, but cite political reasons (most people, they say, disagree with our foreign policy) as a barrier.
It doesn't make sense because if political agendas of one's homeland were enough to disqualify a papal candidate, John Paul II of communist Poland would have never been considered. In fact, there really isn't any nation that has all the political positions that the Church has espoused in recent years. And as JP II was hardly a lone rebel against the dissenting College of Cardinals, that doesn't look to radically change anytime soon. An institution doesn't last nearly 2,000 years by changing overnight.
Rather, it's that the U.S. is so powerful and influential on every stage that to give an American the papacy would look as if the Vatican was either cozying up to the last superpower or being corrupted by it. Either way, it would cause so much distraction as to handcuff the next pontiff.

I read this article from a link on "Best of the Web" by James Taranto, who disagreed with other parts that I didn't think were such a big deal. I find it refreshing that the ed. board took the time to list some of the top candidates and show how much of the world is represented in that list.