MINTY: [Note: I actually wrote this over a week ago! Have been too busy to post it.] So a (non-Catholic) friend of mine mentioned that she’d gotten an email from a friend of hers, asking the question, “How do you feel about Pope Benedict XVI?” And I jokingly said that for my part, I felt “minty.”

But actually, thinking about this, that’s closer to the truth than I think people might expect. I feel like I’m supposed to have a strong emotional reaction to the pope, and to Ratzinger as pope, and I just really don’t. I think he’ll most likely be wonderful. I’m happy. As I said earlier, shaking the invisible pom-poms for him.

But so what? If I suspected he’d be a lousy pope–a cretin, a coward, or worse–it would not prompt me to leave the Catholic Church. Nobody ever promised me a saintly pope. The one thing they can’t do, as I understand it, is teach heresy as the faith of the Church. Other than that, Katie bar the door–and rarely, but occasionally, Katie doesn’t. I knew all that when I joined up.

People who are too deeply emotionally invested in the selection of the pope–to the extent that they make noises about leaving the Church if the pope doesn’t share their moral, philosophical, and/or political beliefs–seem to me to want the Church and the papacy to have a much more exalted self-understanding than is in fact the case. In fact, the Church makes very modest claims for the papacy. I trust that Pope Benedict XVI will not teach heresy. I don’t count on him to fix every problem that I see, to make the changes I would make, to discipline and conciliate and comfort and honor where I would. Obviously, I hope he’ll do all that. (And I hope, too, that he’ll challenge me. I strongly suspect he will, given his views on contemporary warfare.) But there are very few problems in Washington, DC that can be fixed from Rome.

So I feel happy. It feels good to pray for Benedict’s intentions. It’s fun, honestly, to have a “German shepherd” (I think Ratzy would appreciate the humble imagery there!) who attracts so much expected loathing and perhaps–unexpected praise. But on a deeper level I think perhaps a degree of pedestrian mintiness is warranted.