New Pope

It doesn't look like it'll be a fun papacy for leftists of a Catholic bent. Inasmuch as he sounds like a very right wing guy, he'll lend political legitimacy to causes with which I have no sympathy. But amid all the bad news in this country and the world, it strikes me as fairly minor. American Catholics have been listening only selectively to the Pope for years on social issues, and I doubt that will change with Benedict XVI.

Andrew Sullivan, the gay conservative Catholic, is dismayed though. What to tell him? I've never thought much of his political opinions, but I'm sure a man of his intelligence knows that people who join institutions hostile to them set themselves up for a lot of grief. How he stands it I don't know.