I believe that the next Pope and the Pope after that should continue in the same vein as JP II and BXIV — knocking out the liberals, bringing the Catholics closer to the Orthodox and the Oriental Churches by emphasising the first among equals nature of the Western Patriarchate and tossing away a lot of the medieval baggage. This will help in rapprochements with other Christian brethren.
...please explain your comment regarding ‘medieval baggage’...and how it would relate to a ‘conservative’ Pope...
...and rapprochments with other brethren...gee, wasn’t that what VatII was all about? Are you saying we need to Protestantize the Church more than it already has been in the last forty years?
Or with the other lung of the Church -- the Orthodox, the relations have thawed since both JP II and Pope Benedict have emphasised that the Patriarch of the West is the first among equals
The resting of history is what I'm talking about -- we all have serious dogmatic differences, but until we settle the simpler historical baggage, we can't move forward - it's like us arguing with a Lutheran over his and our guilt over the 30 years wars in the 1600s. That's what I mean by baggage
rapprochements with other brethren - I'm talking specifically about our relationship with the Orthodox and the Oriental and Assyrian Churches.