I’m in a rather mellow mood right now, so let’s keep it light.<\/p>\n
The big story of the day went up in smoke — white smoke, that is, as a new pope has been elected<\/a>. I’m not Catholic, or even religious for that matter, but I do recognize the importance of the position in international and American affairs. That said, I’ll leave it to someone much spiritually closer to the matter, Phil over at Shades of Gray (Umbrae Canarum)<\/a>, who seems quite excited<\/a> about the choice of Germany’s Joseph Ratzinger as the man with the cool hats.<\/p>\n Wow.<\/p>\n I have to admit, I am very excited and happy by this turn of events. Cardinal Ratzinger is a brilliant man, and an ardent defender of the faith. The Church is in good hands with him in charge. I have about four of his books collecting dust on my shelf right now, so I best get about to looking at them again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Phil goes on to look in more depth at what the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger means, both to devout Catholics and to those who were hoping for a great change in Catholic orthodox.<\/p>\n Now, on to those frivolities.<\/p>\n Jeff at Protein Wisdom<\/a> has the first Pope Benedict XVI joke<\/a>.<\/p>\n I posted<\/a> before that Eric’s fine blog has a new site<\/a> and new name. He now has a new look. Please feel free to drop by his new digs and make fun of the banners he’s added<\/a>. Yes, I have a personal interest in this.<\/p>\n Go pick a fight with the monster that is TexasBestGrok<\/a>.<\/p>\n Who needs Dances with Wolves<\/em> when there’s Travels with Chicken<\/a>?!<\/p>\n Once again, Khan<\/a>!!!<\/p>\n And to bring it back full circle, Hog on Ice<\/a>‘s Steve is pushing for a grass-roots campaign<\/a> to have the pope recalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m in a rather mellow mood right now, so let’s keep it light. The big story of the day went up in smoke — white smoke, that is, as a new pope has been elected. I’m not Catholic, or even religious for that matter, but I do recognize the importance of the position in international […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,1,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogosphere","category-europe","category-general","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}