Time’s speculation about Cardinal Ratzinger as the next Pope is intriguing, all right, and probably appealing to his fans.
The reporter Jeff Israely could have stopped there reasonably enough, but he goes on to float this idea:
Moreover, John Paul’s very public health woes may prompt the Cardinals to push his successor to impose a mechanism to avoid another pontificate slowed by illness. Ratzinger, who has sought ways to adapt church governance for modern times, might be willing to agree to an age limit and pass on the job after a few years.
Isn’t that a little far-fetched? Of course, he was writing for the mainstream media. I guess he just had to put in something consoling to that part of his editors’ brains that is filled with secular liberalism and other noxious gases. If they can’t get the Pope’s governance controlled by Time‘s editors, they’ll settle for having it limited by time itself.
Cardinal Ratzinger might indeed support some change in the way the Roman primacy is exercised, especially if it facilitated the re-establishment of full communion with the Orthodox Eastern churches. But a religious proposal that comes along in the name of “adaptation for modern times” can probably be assumed wrong until proven otherwise.