Pope Benedict XVI

On the evening that he was elected Pope, Vincent Browne had a discussion on Tonight with Vincent Browne about what the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI would be like. I forget who exactly was on the show, although I do remember Gina Menzies was there - Ms Menzies is an alleged theologian whose career An Spailpín follows with great interest since she first swam into his ken on those Bible shows Browne was doing at the end of the 1990s - but the panel's prognosis on the future of the Pope, and therefore on the future of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church itself, was grim.

At the end of the night, Browne finished by asking the panel if they welcomed the election of Pope Benedict XVI, and not one of them did. Not one. I find that astonishing - why didn't they ring Reverend Paisley, and ask him if he thought that things had gone from bad to worse as well?

I don't understand how a selection of Catholic theologians could not welcome the appointment of a new Pope, even if that Pope was Charles Haughey or Teddy Kennedy, both noted for ambivalent attitudes to certain traditional tenets of the Faith. I don't understand how Catholics, or even Irish people in general, couldn't just think of what the new Pope has ahead of him and not even have the grace or good feeling to say even, "musha God help him, I hope he gets on ok?"

But Browne's panel couldn't even do that. An Spailpín is at a distance from the faith of his fathers himself - so much so that unless there's a Pauline event somewhere in the future, An Spailpín's connections would be more prescient in laying out his mortal remains in bermuda shorts and sunglasses rather than the wool suits more traditional in those that have some hopes of avoiding the less temperate climes on the Other Side - but my God, I do not envy Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger as was, one bit. One thing that the new Pope gets from An Spailpín though, is admiration, in that in this age of fudge and half-truths and petty little deals cut by men of little honour, Pope Benedict is sticking by his guns. You have to admire a man for believing in something in an age that believes in everything and nothing.

One last note about the old Pope - I never realised it at the time, as my eight year old brain wasn't the finely tuned thinking machine that it is now, but Pope John Paul II's rhetoric in his plea to the IRA to end their campaign during the Pope's Irish tour of 1979 was really quite remarkable. Not that he asked for an end to the war, but the words he chose.

The Pope said to the IRA "on my bended knees I beg you" - what a remarkable image to use. As anyone familiar with the two thousand year history and tradition of the Papacy should know, the Bishop of Rome bends his knee to no-man. But in his appeal to stop the slaughter - and it's all to easy now in peacetime to forget what the the weekly death-toll was like in those days - Pope John Paul II went beyond even the two thousand year history of his office to the imagery and humility of JC himself. He was some operator, Karol Wojtyla. God have mercy on him for all he did for poor forgotten Ireland.