Oh goody more lists I can ignore.
Time’s person of the year – ignored for long time
Nobel Peace Prize – peripherally ignored for a while and especially when they gave it to a terrorist
National Catholic Reporters 1st Person of the year – automatically ignorable and oh so predictable. Now that they have instituted this what do you think the odds for them to pick a pope as person of the year before the Second Coming? If I started a Person of the year it would be some man or women who has demonstrated holiness. Pope Benedict XVI would always be on my shortlist as not only someone who demonstrates holiness, but is making every effort to guide the Church in holiness. So I am not going to get riled up about the NCReporter, but thank God for the examples of holiness of people God has placed into our lives.
On a less serious note, I sometimes could almost wish that Progressives would get a Pope they wanted. That a Fr. Hans Kung or a Fr. Richard McBrien or some such would be elected. It would almost be worth it to see their frustration when it comes to Papal Infallibility. They would try and try to write that encyclical to formerly teach to the whole Church on something regarding faith or morals and find themselves unable to do so. The Women’s Ordination encyclical next to the ones on Homosexuality, and Contraception would languish in draft state never to be formally presented. Papal Infallibility is of course a negative charism in that it only prevents a Pope from teaching error formally to the whole Church in a matter of faith or morals. But even as a negative charism it would be one a Progressive – read heretical – Pope would run into as evidenced by the history of the Church where popes with some heretical idea never taught it ex cathedra.
The operative term is “almost wish” since they could do all kinds of menace to the Church even if they are prevented from formally teaching error. Plus I would not wish on them what happened to Pope Sixtus V who died just before he was going to promulgate an extremely botched revision of the Latin Vulgate Bible filled with errors which he was presented to the whole Church and had even written up the Papal Bull to do so.
