WaPost: Why Can’t the Pope Be More Like Us?

I’ve already alerted my readers that the transition to a new Pope will elicit much foolishness from the “news” media.  David Fischler is already having a field day with Papal Malarkey Syndrome (PMS) from the noos media and beyond.

The latest vomit of PMS that Fischler notes comes from the Washington Post, which laments that the Pope and his church is not oh-so enlightened like them.  Their conclusion is particularly rich:

Pope Benedict will leave behind a church facing the same debilitating problems that loomed after the death of Pope John Paul II — above all, how to remain relevant to an increasingly secular world and to its own changing membership. This pope’s response was to insist that only uncompromising adherence to past doctrine could preserve the faith. Catholics who seek a different answer will have to hope that a college of cardinals dominated by the pope’s appointees will choose a more progressive successor.

Oh yes, the church must be more “relevant to an increasingly secular world.”  The world is becoming more worldly, so the church should as well?  Huh?

No, the church must retain its distinctiveness, its saltiness if you will.  When the church tries too hard to be “relevant” it becomes less so and often downright silly, driving the very people away it is seeking to reach.  Marc Solas, no old grump like me, has put that down as one of the top 10 reasons youth leave the church:

10.  The Church is “Relevant”:

You didn’t misread that, I didn’t say irrelevant, I said RELEVANT.   We’ve taken a historic, 2,000 year old faith, dressed it in plaid and skinny jeans and tried to sell it as “cool” to our kids.  It’s not cool. It’s not modern. What we’re packaging is a cheap knockoff of the world we’re called to evangelize. . . .

We’re like a fawning wanna-be just hoping the world will think we’re cool too, you know, just like you guys!

Our kids meet the real world and our “look, we’re cool like you” posing is mocked.  In our effort to be “like them” we’ve become less of who we actually are. . . .  The minute you aim to be “authentic”, you’re no longer authentic!

Fortunately, we are more likely to be hit by an asteroid today than that the Cardinals will follow the Washington Post’s fond yearnings.  Thanks be to God.