QOTD.

"There are plenty of reasonable (if wrongheaded) arguments - theological, political, personal - for why Catholicism ought to take a more modernist turn. But the notion that the Church's future depends on it - that Benedict XVI's election "may make the decline of the Church inevitable," that the Pope's orthodoxy will "only undermine his own authority," that elevating Ratzinger ensures Western Catholicism's "final death rattle" - is simply wrong on the facts."

--Ross Douthat, 2005