Off Point: The Church as Literature

Via Spoons I found Lileks' posting about the choice of Pope:

I'm still astonished that some can see a conservative elevated to the papacy and think: a man of tradition? As Pope? How could this be? . . . At the risk of sounding sacrilegious: it's the Catholic Church, for Christ's sake! You?re not going to get someone who wants to strip off all the Baroque ornamentation of St. Peter?s and replace them with IKEA wine racks, okay?
. . .
To those who want profound change, consider an outsider's perspective: the Catholic Church is the National Review of religion. You may live long enough to see it become the Weekly Standard. In your dreams it might become the New Republic. But it's never going to be the Nation. And if ever it does, it will have roughly the same subscriber base.

Some of it's a little over the top and I don't agree with his solution but the post is probably the best "Papal Post" I've seen so far.