But not from ME.
K-Lo of NRO has come out in favor of an American pope, commending both Cardinal Dolan and Cardinal O’Malley as “holy men” she knows personally.
Hadley Arkes and Robert Royal have endorsed Cardinal George (Chicago) as the countercultural candidate most attuned to the deep philosophic/theological reasons Catholic teaching can be understood as true. Hadley admits that being 76 is a problem.
I’ve gotten a couple of emails endorsing Cardinal Burke (formerly of St. Louis) as the most ferocious enforcer, a kind of Giuliani that could clean up the Fulton Fish Market that parts of the church have become.
Burke is better, from this view, than Dolan, who is viewed as a “gentle” and selective enforcer.
A problem with Dolan, maybe, is his scholarly pay grade is too low, especially by recent papal standards. A problem with Burke might be that his “conservative” fan base is intense but narrow. For postmodern conservatives, it really is possible to be too conservative politically, but too conservative religiously is a complicated issue I won’t touch for fear of my email overflowing.
Nobody is mentioning DC’s Cardinal Wuerl, who is also on the old side but looks really fit and is quite the charmer on TV and in writing. He, of course, has come out against the idea of an American pope this time.
So, all in all, I’m heartened to see American Catholics having enough patriotic self-esteem to think of one of their own as a possible leader of the universal church. I hear from K-Lo and others that the CARDINALS in general are open to an American possibility this time. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there is an American who is the right man this time.
Because I’m feeling a little poorly today, I didn’t ALL CAP words that are richly deserving of such HIGHLIGTING.
