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JFonseka, welcome to the Forum. It is always good to see "new faces", and to hear other people's perspectives.

Canisius, good to have you around. Believe me, when it comes to commentators, religious or otherwise, there've been lots of times when I've had to "agree to disagree" with some of them. It keeps me sane!

Hmm ... well, here are some thoughts on the Gibson article.

But his outlook is not about his age or philosophy. It's his style. He loves the Fathers of the early church-St. Augustine is his hero-and he models his vestments on the Medicis of the Renaissance papacy. His Latin is better than his English-and his English ain't too bad-and he plays Mozart to relax.

Well, Benedict XVI is not the only Pope to have a marked preference for the Early Church Fathers - Blessed John XXIII was especially devoted to St. Jerome, which is why his body lies underneath the St. Jerome Altar. As for vestments, well, as has been discussed at length on another thread, whether or not the Pope actually does prefer the Medici vestments cannot really be said for sure.

If his Latin is better than his English, that is evidently because he learned the language in a time when Latin was taught in most schools, along with his native language; he learned it almost from his earliest school days. The English came later, so it's understandable that his Latin would be better than his English - but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's old-fashioned. I rather think that his fluency in Latin shows his facility with languages, and demonstrates the depth and breadth of his intellect, that he can speak, read and write in at least six or seven languages: German, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English and a smattering of Polish. Whew!

Incidentally, I play Vivaldi and Bach to relax - I suppose that makes me a little old-fashioned as well, but I seem to be in excellent company!

Benedict yearns for the good old days. That's his character, it's his destiny-and, for the foreseeable future, the church's destiny, too.

Ah, but it is part of being human to "yearn for the good old days" - all of us, at one time or another, look back with fondness to the days of our youth, whether they were in the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s or the 80s. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're completely unhappy with the present time. I'm yearning for the "good old days" of the 1980s myself sometimes, and I'm not even 50 years old yet!

As for Il Papa's "yearning for the good old days" being the destiny of the Church, I really don't think that will really be the case. Whatever Il Papa's personal preferences may be, he is wise enough - and humble enough - to know that he can't impose them on the Church.

He is the Catechist-in-Chief, a brilliant intellect who can distill decades' worth of study into learned sermons delivered so eloquently you never even know when he's speaking off-the-cuff.

That I definitely agree with. It is also the mark of a truly luminous intellect that one can, as Benedict XVI does, express even the most complex theological concepts in such a way that the "man-on-the-street" can understand them. That bespeaks a character which combines both exceptional intelligence and singular compassion - he knows that not everyone has had the chance to acquire as much learning as he has, and so he tries to express his teachings in a way that can be understood by everyone. We are truly blessed to have such a Pope.

The head of the CDF has to draw lines, level punishments and basically talk tough, a role that Ratzinger seemed to relish, but one that won him epithets like God's Rottweiller and the old standby, the Panzerkardinal.

I agree that the head of the CDF has a very difficult job, but I don't agree that Joseph Ratzinger ever relished it. Aside from the fact that, as Rcesq observed, there was always a wistful note in most everything Cardinal Ratzinger had to say about his work outside the CFD, there was also the fact that he tried (as everyone knows), more than once and with no success, to retire from the CDF and return home to Bavaria. If he was "good at what he did" - and he certainly was, hence the epithets - it was evidently because he clearly believed that he had to do his job well. He had the most profound respect and admiration for John Paul the Beloved, and I suppose that his was the thought that "my Pope has called me to this duty, therefore, however much I may not like it, I owe it to him, to the Church and especially to God, to do it well."

"Europe is the faith, and the faith is Europe," Hilaire Belloc wrote a century ago. Restoring that legacy is Benedict's priority, and the mass secularization of the Continent is the lens through which he sees the rest of the West.

Somehow, I don't quite think that Europe is going to be the priority of Benedict's papacy. I think that he is determined to encourage Europe to remember and to honor her Christian legacy, but he will certainly not put the very urgent needs of the Church outside Europe on a "back burner". I also think that it is not quite the case that he sees the rest of the Western world, and the world in general, through the lens of European secularization. It should be remembered that in 20-plus years he served at the CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger met and spoke with bishops from around the world, and would most certainly have heard their insights and perspectives as to the reasons for secularization in their "corners of the sky". I agree that he is definitely a European - but that doesn't make him blind and deaf to the rest of the world.

Now, about David Gibson himself … I've read hardly anything of what he's written, for several reasons: first, there a lot of blogs I can't access because of the server firewalls; second, even if I could access the blogs, I haven't got the time - I prefer to devote my energy to the RFC, which is a place where anything you write definitely has to be well-thought-out, for the benefit not only of the members, but of everyone who reads the Forum; third, I suppose that I prefer to read the news sites, such as Zenit, Asia News, CNS, CNA, etc. - I'd like to have the facts first, and as many of them as possible, before I read opinions.

However, I may try to get his book and read it before I actually say anything more about what he writes. As for his having been with Vatican Radio, well, although that's just one "department" in the large organization that is the Holy See, the fact remains that he has seen some aspects of life at the Vatican that none of us have. He may not have too positive an opinion about some of the things he's seen and experienced, but it may still be possible to obtain certain facts and insights from what he writes. We may have to grit our teeth from time to time as we read him (Rcesq, I am sorry he made that comment about the Latin Mass; definitely not a charitable thing to say), but he's still a source of information - a rather controversial source, but a source all the same.