Sorry, I Don’t Speak Catholic
Two words on the new Pope: oy vey.
If I were a progressive Catholic, and I wanted to express my displeasure with Ratzinger, I’d call him Pope Ratzinger instead of Pope Benedict. His half-rodent, half-slapstick name is too good to pass up. But I don’t know the rules around calling the Pope by his, uh, nom de Pope. Is it a sin to call him Pope Ratzinger, or just incredibly disrespectful? I don’t want to encourage sin.
Suppose it is a sin to call him anything but his nom de Pope. Do you have to include the number in there too? “Pope Benedict the Sixteenth” is such a mouthful, whereas “Pope John Paul Two” had kind of a chunky rhythm to it. Will I be forgiven if I leave out the “sixteenth” bit? And if the number is morally mandatory, do I have to write it in Roman numerals? If I write “16″, am I “letting [my]self be tossed and ’swept along by every wind of teaching’”? I would, after all, be adopting the heathen post-modern Arabic numeral orthographic system, instead of the numeral orthographic system of Christ’s culture. Would I spend eternity in the Xth circle of hell? Am I being a moral relativist by asking these questions, or what?
Seriously, though: call him Ratzinger, if that suits you. Do it while people are still familiar with his nom de fallibility.
April 24th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
I think it would only be considered disrespectful to call him that in that the title and name don’t match. As a cardinal he was Cardinal Ratzinger, but as a pope he is Pope Benedict XVI. The new name and the title are not independent for the most part. I’m not sure what protocol is regarding his “old name,” i.e. whether or not it can be used in anything but a past-tense sense now, and if it can, by whom. Lots of ins, lots of outs.
May 14th, 2005 at 3:52 pm
I have referred to the various popes by their real names and put their papal names in parentheses with the notation, Professional Name, because that indeed is what it is. I think it can be done fairly respectfully, which is what I tried to do here.