3 Comments

Joe G.
February 12th, 2013 | 11:53 am

Did Matt Lauer say Mundelein CEMETARY?

David Nickol
February 12th, 2013 | 2:04 pm

Father Barron made reference to waiting to see what the Holy Spirit would do. We have a fairly authoritative opinion about what the Holy Spirit actually does when it comes to electing a new pope:

Perhaps the final word on the subject should belong to the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger. He was asked on Bavarian television in 1997 if the Holy Spirit is responsible for who gets elected pope, and this was his response:

“I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

Then the clincher: “There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

Graham Combs
February 12th, 2013 | 4:54 pm

Fr. Barron’s observations are spot on as far as it goes. But click on Richard Engel’s report from Vatican City — the usual from a media that are tourists in their own country. At least a couple of factual errors. And the focus on the “we need change” respondants (after fifty years of “change.”) Then again, USA Today turned first to Fr. Thomas Reese. Like the administration, the media are functional illiterates when it comes to religion or rather Christianity and specifically to Catholicism. As in economics, complexity and nuance befuddle them when it comes to the Church. But when you see the Church as merely the world’s largest NGO, whaddya gonna do.?