We’re All Equal, Right? And a PS

At a time when the world needs tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, the Catholic Cardinals have elected as Pope a man whose “mission is to stamp out dissent, and curb the "wild excesses" of this more tolerant era.”

Due to the rapid choice, in only 4 ballots, of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, the meaning of the consensus of the Catholic Church’s leaders cannot be minimized. The clouds forming above the Vatican may be a literal physical foreshadowing of what is to come from this new leadership of the world’s biggest religion.

PS: Chris Dickey's latest dispatch of his Shadowland Column is a tribute to Marla Ruzicka, volunteer aid worker killed in a suicide bombing in Baghdad a few days ago. The tragedy of her death reminds us of the heights to which the human spirit can attain.