get on your knees and pray we don't get fooled again

[lookingforwater]

Habemus papem.

So they elected the Argentinian.  Here's the breakdown:

1. He's a Jesuit.  This is good.  Jesuits are a force for good more often than they aren't, and they're certainly more liberal than other orders.
2. From what I've heard, he supports the use of contraception to reduce the spread of disease.  This is also good, if it's true.
3. He's not

Comments

[danalwyn]

From a non-believer's standpoint, I'm also cautiously optimistic

[lookingforwater]

I'm just going to keep being mildly annoyed with the harping on his affirming Church teachings on sex-and-life stuff. I mean, yes, it's put the Church dramatically out of step with a lot of the rest of the world, but. That stuff is doctrine. It can't just be handwaved away - it has to be argued away, rationally, using the existing structures, otherwise the whole thing comes crashing down.

It's like having a bad precedent in the law. It's there and it sucks but you can't ignore or overturn it willy-nilly, because that opens the door to a lot of other things being ignored and overturned willy-nilly, and many of those things will be very good things. And you may say "well, but it's blatantly unjust," and I agree with you, but. The ability to run off and make your own church, a better church, with blackjack and hookers every time you run across something in the doctrine you don't like is what's led to a lot of the really, really amazingly toxic evangelical/dominionist groups