Salon.com gets some respons­es to Pope Bene­dict XVI:

James Mar­tin, Jesuit priest, asso­ciate edi­tor of Amer­i­ca mag­a­zine and author of “In Good Company”

While I trust that the Holy Spir­it will be help­ing Pope Bene­dict XVI over the next few years, I would be lying if I did­n’t say how dis­ap­point­ed I was by the car­di­nals’ selec­tion of Car­di­nal Joseph Ratzinger as pope. To my mind, there were many oth­er can­di­dates who had more pas­toral expe­ri­ence, who have been more open to dia­logue with oth­er reli­gions, and who have demon­strat­ed more sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the thought­ful ques­tion­ing that has always char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. But the car­di­nals quick­ly set­tled on a man who would force­ful­ly con­tin­ue John Paul’s approach to gov­ern­ing the church. I can only pray that Pope Bene­dict proves to be more tol­er­ant and open-mind­ed than Car­di­nal Ratzinger was. But stranger things have hap­pened in the Catholic Church, and I am hop­ing that the God of Sur­pris­es will sur­prise all of us.

And that’s not the most stri­dent anti-Ratzinger Catholic voice. 

Here’s Amy Sul­li­van, Salon con­trib­u­tor and edi­tor for Wash­ing­ton Monthly:

As tears of joy filled the eyes of Catholic nuns stand­ing in St. Peter’s Square on Tues­day with the announce­ment of Joseph Ratzinger’s elec­tion to the papa­cy, tears of anger and frus­tra­tion stung the eyes of pro­gres­sive Catholics around the world. Both con­ser­v­a­tive and pro­gres­sive Catholics care deeply about the crises fac­ing their church, but they have very dif­fer­ent ideas about the solu­tions. The elec­tion of Ratzinger sig­nals a deci­sion to stick with the failed poli­cies that have led mil­lions of Catholics in the devel­op­ing world to leave the church for Pen­te­costal­ism, and mil­lions of west­ern Catholics to sim­ply leave reli­gion alto­geth­er. The choice Ratzinger has posed — between the tyran­ny of rel­a­tivism or the tri­umph of ortho­doxy — is false. The church will con­tin­ue to suf­fer for his lack of imagination. 

The nev­er-cau­tious Frances Kissling, pres­i­dent of Catholics for a Free Choice, says:

I can no longer delude myself about these princes’ almost total lack of inter­est in heal­ing the divide in the Church, in show­ing com­pas­sion for or even in lis­ten­ing to the voic­es of the suf­fer­ing. The time for nuance is over. Let the unholy war begin. 

Paul Lake­land, pro­fes­sor of Catholic stud­ies at Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote:

Every time a new pope is cho­sen, who­ev­er the pre­de­ces­sor, it is a moment of hope for the Church, a chance to grow and move for­ward. Today the car­di­nals of the Catholic Church dashed those hopes by elect­ing a man who, how­ev­er tal­ent­ed, is a fig­ure who looks back­wards to the past rather than for­ward to the future.

The car­di­nals lost their nerve and set­tled for con­ti­nu­ity. Faced with the chal­lenges of Islam in Africa, Protes­tant evan­gel­i­cal­ism in Latin Amer­i­ca, hunger around the world, declin­ing num­bers of priests and church­go­ers in Europe and North Amer­i­ca, and calls for flex­i­bil­i­ty in teach­ing and adapt­abilty in the search of new ways to preach the gospel, they chose a man who just lec­tured them on sec­u­lar­ism, mate­ri­al­ism and hedo­nism, who thinks the solu­tion for the Euro­pean church is to set­tle for a small­er and more faith­ful com­mu­ni­ty, and who was and is a hard­line cen­tral­iz­er. Bene­dict XVI was the clos­est thing they could find to a clone of John Paul II– with­out the charis­ma. It was John Paul’s charis­ma that let peo­ple for­give him for many of his author­i­tar­i­an ways. But Joseph Ratzinger is a very clever man, and there is always hope for conversion. 

Many of the con­trib­u­tors expressed con­cern about Car­di­nal Ratzinger while hop­ing that past would not be pre­lude to his papa­cy. Rev. James T. Bret­zke, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor and co-chair of the Depart­ment of The­ol­o­gy and Reli­gious Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Fran­cis­co, expressed the sen­ti­ment most elo­quent­ly, observ­ing that

as anoth­er old pope, John XXIII, showed the world with Vat­i­can II, quite unex­pect­ed things can hap­pen when the Holy Spir­it gets hold of a man. Ratzinger is a care­ful, nuanced and firm the­olo­gian, and I believe those three qual­i­ties will mark his pon­tif­i­cate, whether it be long or short. I join all Catholics in pray­ing as I know he him­self would wish: name­ly that the he would be open to God’s Spir­it in the world.

For now, all we can do is pray that the spir­it guid­ing the papal mind is more accept­ing than the spir­it which guid­ed the cardinal.