By now, most everyone has forgotten the actual name of the deceased vicar of the catholic church.

We merely remember him as the cautious, kindly, and gentle but stubbornly orthodox "Pope John Paul."

Now, the wholly white smoke replacing the black smoke signal from the Vatican's smoke stack has alerted us to announcement from the secret conclave of red-robed cards with pointy hats the new name: "Joseph 'Benedict' Ratzinger."

Little is known about German Joe by many, except that he looks like (but we hope that he won't become!) the pope Luther was rebuffed by - a Tetzel type greedy for penance-pronouncing indulgences absolving the superstitious from mythical purgatory.

Intriguing it is how a group of religious catholic gurus take the authority upon themselves to select and appoint (in their opinions and resultant opinions of millions of worldwide catholics) humanity's closest human representative to Jesus through Presumed-Intercessor Mary.

The old boy seems like he is going to follow the hard-line path of the previous papacy: no women priests, no homosexual paederists, no abortion homicide. Sounds good - in agreement with the sacred doctrines of Romans 1, First Corinthians 6, First Timothy 2:8-15, plus KJV's First Timothy 5:14 - and (as we remember our Bible): "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."

The man has selected a stage name for himself as Hollywood's actors and actresses do - a handle and alias of "Benedict." Maybe he'll add another chapter to the fake pseudoscripture of non-canonical apocrapha before the unually old guy croaks.

In any case, I will continue to simply call him Pope Joe Ratzinger. Whether or not he was called by God and thus of the universal priesthood of all faithful believers (besides being the commissioned leader of high-church liturgical ceremonialists), we do not know. As with (and contrasted to) Biblically-recorded prophets and apostles of the Old and New Testaments, it is not known who (if any) have laid hands on whom nor if there was a genetic holy-order succession of worthies authorized to continue whatever Biblically-congruent or humanly-concocted ordinations of past whoevers, but 'time will tell' as the saying goes, and by his fruits we will find out. We do remember Scripturally-declared-name Abraham who was actually and authentically completely surrendered to the LORD (as are all bonafide saints - living or dead), thus justified and received God's blessing before he was circumcised through faith given him, as we recall the Divine Head of the Church informing us that we are not bound by fickle and shadowy-sourced, changeable and non-applicable, edicts and proclamations and traditions of men, but instead by the Spirit, through God's Sacred-66-Book Word.