We have a Pope!!

The College of Cardinals has elected Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as pope. If you have been hiding under a rock somewhere and have not heard this name, Vincas points out that Wikipedia already has quite a collection of facts about him. My prayers are with our new pope.

I suspect that things will not be easy for him, he is going to face quite a bit of dislike from the people who insist on believing that any pope could or would change the Church’s teaching on homosexual “marriage,” women in the clergy, divorce, or a host of other issues. But then, I think that any pope would have to face that, not just one starting his pontificate with a well established history of theological orthodoxy.

Some time ago, I first noticed a case in which a New Mexico church is being baned from using a hallucinogenic tea “sacramentally.” It is in the news again, with articles in the BBC, and in the CS Monitor (and others, but these are the two best articles I see). I find that it is being looked at now because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 which ordered the courts to look harder at religious exemptions to laws that are otherwise general in application, something that the Supreme Court restricted rather significantly in a 1990 decision. When last I noted this, I wrote the following:

Also in today’s news, religious freedom is under attack, though subtly. FindLaw documents the story, in which a New Mexico church is being blocked by the Feds from using some weird hallucinogenic tea. What is the big deal you ask? Surely we do not want people using hallucinogens right? Well, yes, but at what cost are we stopping them? In a rather unlikely scenario, say prohibition comes back and we sub out hallucinogenic tea with wine. Now back in the days of prohibition, we had a stronger sense of religious freedom, so churches everywhere had a dispensation, and were allowed to purchase and distribute wine for use in Mass. But under this sort of precedent, it would be all too easy to say “alcohol is dangerous” and prevent, or at least make illegal, the Mass. Precedent is always dangerous to create you see. You never know how it will be used.