Another Clerical Error

Poor old Times. They really are in snit. Yesterday's editorial* lamented the cardinals' failure to elect a third-world candidate to the papacy. Oh, please. The editorial snark-o-meter would be at exactly the same level if Cardinal Arinze had been elected. It wasn't all that long ago that His Eminence of Nigeria stood up before the assembled intellectualoids of Georgetown University and read 'em from the book. One could hardly hear oneself think over the resulting din of editorial tut-tutting and harrumphing. How dare a benighted cleric from the boondocks lecture the unco guid of Georgetown on morality.

Third-world cardinal, indeed. The Times would still be in a blue funk. And does it really think that there would not be rejoicing amongst the faithful for Cardinal Arinze? Or Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos? Or the saintly Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires? Or a few dozen others? The Times and its editorial clones throughout the western world only think they want a third-world pope because their hubris allows them to believe that the poor, simple, fellow would submit to their lectures from on high.

What The Times really wanted was Frank Griswold. It would have been issuing its judgemental, uncharitable, and negative encyclicals, er, I mean editorials no matter who else showed up on that balcony last Tuesday.



___________________________
*I can't make the Times' archive cough up yesterday's editorial so you'll have to take my word for its existence. Unless you can dig it up yourself. I don't know why you would, though. If you read a Major American Daily Paper with any regularity, I would think you could probably write it yourself.