March 7, 2013
Commonweal has re-published an essay by Michael Higgins, of Sacred Heart University, that profiles Cardinal Marc Ouellet, still the most likely person to walk out onto the loggia sometime next week as the new pope. Higgins clearly likes +Ouellet but the story he tells is troubling: While the cardinals rightly concern themselves with secularization, it does not appear from the track record in Quebec that +Ouellet was very effective in combating the acids of modernity. Perhaps no one could - the collapse of the Church in Quebec was fast and furious. But, if I had a vote in conclave, I would not cast it for Cardinal Ouellet unless I heard from him what he might have done differently.
