Now Why Can't I Put Things This Well?

Progressive American Catholics have always seemed to me to be surprisingly ignorant of how little Catholicism in the rest of the world resembles the American Catholic Church. All the disappointment pouring out of the American left over the conservatism of Benedict XVI...it's not like there was any chance you'd get a Pope that would genuinely make them happy, because the Catholic Church is not politically correct and isn't ever going to be. Jonah Goldberg nails it: "If a committee made up of Andrew Sullivan, Gary Wills, Andrew Greeley, Paul Begala and Nancy Pelosi were given the power to select a pope from the current College of Cardinals, we would still have a pope opposed to abortion and gay marriage."

It is only fair to link also to Andrew Sullivan's post that anticipates this particular non-Catholic's reaction to the Silly Left's reaction to Benedict's elevation. (Andrew and I have our disagreements but he is not a Silly Leftist.) I haven't figured out yet how to link to Andrew's individual posts, but if you go to his main page and scroll down to his posts from April 20, 2005, the two posts "The Church Never Changes?" and "The Issue Is Oxygen" both serve as refutations, more or less, of my own position.