This post is from April 19, 2005.

The funniest thing -- and it's a heated competition -- about the New Left is that everything frightens them. John Ashcroft frightened them. Don Rumsfeld. Fluoride in tap water. The new season of Dragon Tales. (The correct response to that is disgust, not fear.) And so on.

To that end: The Dread Rises.

I care less than nothing for your sexual preference; but for the love of the God you claim to worship, be a frigging man. Some excerpts:

This was a statement as much as a selection. And the statement is that the church is circling the wagons. They simply could not have picked a more extreme candidate. And that tells us something important. ...

What this says to American Catholics is quite striking: it's not just a disagreement, it's a full-scale assault. ...

I expected continuity. I didn't expect intensification of the fundamentalism and insularity of the current hierarchy. I expect an imminent ban on all gay seminarians, celibate or otherwise. ...

And what is the creed of the Church? That is for the Grand Inquisitor to decide. Everything else - especially faithful attempts to question and understand the faith itself - is "human trickery." It would be hard to over-state the radicalism of this decision. It's not simply a continuation of John Paul II. It's a full-scale attack on the reformist wing of the church. The swiftness of the decision and the polarizing nature of this selection foretell a coming civil war within Catholicism. The space for dissidence, previously tiny, is now extinct. And the attack on individual political freedom is just beginning. ...

The hard right has now cemented its complete control of the Catholic church. And so ... to prayer. What else do we now have? ...

So quick? So soon? What can that mean? Ratzinger?? The dread rises.

Grow a pair, huh?

A better, funnier, more thorough take here, and up; and here.

Update [2005-4-20 17:32:59 by Thomas]: The Dread Continues to Rise. I have to wonder at the paucity of the man's catechesis, or feel rising dread that my memory might become so poor when I pass 40.