John Allen handicaps the campaign for Pope. It’s not bad, but of course, his roots at the National Catholic Reporter show through in his classification of the four types of cardinals in the college. I think his divisions are artificial and a little too simplistic, especially his characterizations of the conservatives, as well as that of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council as a “moderate-to-progressive” project. It isn’t. The rest of us want to see the authentic reforms advanced and it’s the false “spirit of Vatican II” reforms that we oppose.
I don’t dispute Allen’s three top picks, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone that completely goes against all the experts’ picks: I think he might be relatively young, white, European, and completely orthodox. We’ll see eventually.
