I don’t buy Gene Kennedy’s argument in general, but his ethnic argument in particular is awry.

Folklore grinds out the grains of truth that are found in such notions [as]: If an Irishman is given a choice of water or whisky, the water will go untouched.

With Pope Benedict XVIs latest plans for time traveling the church back to another era, we recall another claim: If a German is offered a choice between justice and good order, hell take the good order any day.

That may not apply to all Germans, but it certainly does to the present pope who is currently devoting a lot of time to battling what he terms relativism and to bolstering his Reform of the Reform, a.k.a., turning Vatican II back into Vatican I.

He’s maybe been “listening to too much Wagner,” says K, who is having a little ethnic fun here, I would like to think.  But it fails from several standpoints, one of which occurs right off.

The Rahner brothers, especially Karl, both SJ, might have found folkloric grains of truth in the above — which admittedly may not apply to all Germans (really?) — after, say, a stein or two of Bavaria’s best. But my guess is they stir uncomfortably in their graves when they hear it helps to be German if you intend to reform, i.e. reverse, reform.

There’s more. The pope is or appears “willing to turn worship into a well planned war game by deploying believers as if they were charged to march, salute, and, of course, pray and obey,” says Kennedy, warming to his task.

The pope’s heritage makes him feel more comfortable if you remove all of the doubt, mistakes, and spontaneity from life as if that would remove sin. He apparently wants to do the same with worship that, as a human activity, is bound to express the incompleteness, the ever unfinished edges, the heartbreak and the unfulfilled hopes, that, along with their simple joy and gratitude, human beings express in their prayer lives.

Heritage, shmeritage. Spend too much time in the mists of Glocca Mora, and the fairies will get you if you don’t watch out.

This pope intends to find mystery in “phrases minted like coins of Bismarck’s empire, each one perfect, each one the same, and not one of them worth anything today.”

Bismarck, eh?