The Pope: yet another topic the Associated Press can’t get right
Sigh. We really don’t want to do this story, because the AP bias is already so well documented. Here’s the headline:
New Pope’s Ex-Students Express Skepticism
Here’s the lede:
In the cafeteria at Tuebingen University’s theology department, students swapping lecture notes on a rainy Wednesday weren’t preoccupied by their looming exams. Instead, they were concerned about where their school’s most famous former professor would take the Roman Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI. And they didn’t exude optimism.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what he does,” said Thomas Burchard, a 20-year-old Protestant studying for the ministry. “He’s very conservative and, like the Catholic Church, he goes against what the Bible says.” Fellow student Simon Reinitz, clad in black, his hair long and a stud piercing his left eyebrow, declared that Ratzinger was a caretaker pope, nothing more. “Why not an African pope? Why not a Latin American pope? The church will make changes,” Reinitz said. “This is just someone to hold over the conservatives.”
Nothing wrong with that, you say. A couple of students disapprove of their former teacher. But Ratzinger left Tubingen in 1969 — these weren’t the students advertised in the headline. There is a fellow in the article who might pass as a former student — but he would more appropriately described as a professor, the successor to the Chair the the current pope held at Tubingen years ago.
How about this: some young people, unacquainted with Benedict XVI, at least one a Protestant, at Germany’s leading left-leaning theological center, don’t like the new conservative pope or his theology. Less compelling as a story? Yeah, but a truer one.