Splinters

I was hoping Cardinal Fang would get the vote. Nevermind. Curious how sychophantic the BBC was over this example of anti-democracy in action. "The new Pope", gushed newsreader Huw Edwards, "is a brilliant theologian". Really - how fascinating! I would have liked him to have explained what the difference is between an ordinary theologian and a brilliant one. Maybe the latter admits it's all a load of bollocks yet gets away with it? I doubt we'll hear more of that. In his little sermon before the conclave, Ratzinger condemned the "dictatorship of relativism". Might one call this a definition of democracy?

Benny the 16th is a year or so older than fellow child of the Third Reich Thomas Bernhard, whose character, the Rome-based Franz-Josef Murau, had one or two things to say about Catholicism in German-speaking lands: ... although the National Socialism period had long been over, I was given a National Socialist and Catholic upbringing and thus subjected to the Austrian mixed-power regime that has such a dire effect on the growing child. This combination of the Catholic and National Socialist elements, of Catholic and National Socialist educational methods, is the norm in Austria. They are the commonest and most widespread methods, applied everywhere without restraint, and produce atrocious and devastating effects on the whole of this essentially National Socialist and Catholic nation. National Socialist and Catholic educational methods enjoy unrestricted authority in Austria. Anyone who denies this is a liar or an ignoramus. And the laws of the land are nothing other than National Socialist and Catholic laws, which operate as a mechanism that brings devastation and destruction. That?s the truth about Austria. By nature the Austrian is a National Socialist and a Catholic through and through, however hard he tries not to be.

He was being ironic, of course. Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth.