A thought about the pope.

This is what my one dean (the one who's not a black woman) said when I was talking to him about Benedict the Sixteenth at a departmental dinner on Friday --

For the pope, he's worried about people to the right who are not aligned with the Catholic church (e.g. the SSPX) but not the left (e.g. Hans Kueng), because the people on the left aren't organized and are more a disparate group of radical theologians, whereas the people on the right appeal to councils and authorities and say that *they're* the true church, which the pope sees as a dangerous claim to have floating out there, since he makes the same kinds of appeals to councils and authorities and hierarchy, and it's both threatening to him and strikes him as deceptive and troubling to the kind of religious people he wants in his church.

This is in addition to the widely-recognized thought that the Pope is more sympathetic to the right anyhow, and that's why he's worried about including them in the church.