Who’d a thought it? They came up with a new pope in only two days, and it’s Ratzinger, the German conservative.

Well, he was certainly my favorite candidate, from the little bit of commentary and analysis I read about it. I mean, given the quote that Greg-the-husband passed on to me, how can you not love the guy (Ratzinger, that is. Not Greg.):

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires,” said Ratzinger, 78, who has been the Vatican’s chief overseer of doctrine since 1981.

And here are some goodies from the blogosphere (three hours before the evening news. You gotta love alternative media!)

• Via Touchstone: The Weekly Standard is already out there finding where that loud buzzing sound is coming from. Yep, it’s Angry Liberal Journalists again (most of whom, by the way, wouldn’t enter a Catholic Church unless they were getting a byline out of it). And the word of the day is apparently “hard-liner”:

  “Hard-liner Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected …” Newsweek

  “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a hard-line guardian of conservative doctrine, …” MSNBC

  “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, the church’s leading hard-liner, …” Associated Press

  We got it already! The line, she is hard. Excellent. Top-notch journalistic integrity and innovation on display again.

• But their response is downright placid compared to popular blogger Andrew Sullivan, who sees the number 666 all over the place:
  

  “I am still in shock … he all but declared a war on modernity … this isn’t just a disagreement; it’s a full-scale assault … And the speed of the decision must be interpreted as an enthusiastic endorsement of his views.

  Really? One can only hope. If we’re very lucky, the Catholic Church has just hit the Big Gong and announced to the global community that creeping secular liberalism is verfallen. (Look it up, if you don’t remember the “Blazing Saddles” quote.)

• Occidentalis may be the first with an idea of how the new pope will respond to the Orthodox.(Another thanks to Greg for finding this.)
• John Mark Reynolds is thrilled.
• Fr. John Whiteford isn’t.
• Huw has a “wait and see” attitude.