Goldberg: Pope Pelosi

National Review Online:

Habemus Papam!

That's Latin for "We have a pope!" With those words the College of Cardinals announced that the world's Catholics have a new spiritual leader, former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

As the Vatican's chief defender of theological doctrine, it's no surprise he's already being condemned as a "traditionalist" and a "hardliner." Of course, if some of the modernizers had their way, a new pontiff would be announced with the declaration, "We got pope!" Or maybe "The pizzy is in the hizzy!" Then Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake would bump and grind a bit before His Holiness rolled out in a newly pimped-out Pope-mobile.

But my guess is that won't be happening any time soon, and not just because Ratzinger's the new pope. Some believe there is a radical left wing in the Catholic Church that seeks to unravel the teachings of John Paul II, but this is an exaggeration of the Western — particularly, the American — press. The notion that you could find any cardinal eager to change church policy on abortion, for example, is simply a fantasy concocted by liberal journalists. Excepting, maybe, the issue of distributing condoms in Africa, it's hard to think of a hot-button social issue that divides the church's leadership a fraction as much as American editorial pages seem to suggest.

If a committee made up of Andrew Sullivan, Gary Wills, Andrew Greeley, Paul Begala, and Nancy Pelosi were given the power to select a pope from the current College of Cardinals, we would still have a pope opposed to abortion and gay marriage.