Habemus Papam.

BENEDICTUM XVI

19 April 2005

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
habemus Papam:

Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,
Dominum Josephum
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger
qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI

a somewhat incongruous successor.

cross-posted here.

Rob Jubb has handed me the baton.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451; which book do you want to be?
One of:
- Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savanna, ('worshipping a dictator is such a pain in the ass ...')
- Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity.
- Owen Chadwick's translation of Augustine's Confessions.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Definitely. Longest lasting: Julia from 1984, and Ihuoma from Elechi Amadi's The Concubine.

The last book you bought is:
David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind.

The last book you read is:
I'm still reading Alvin Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity.

Five books you would take to a desert island:
Descartes' Discourse on Method, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Orwell's 1984, the Philosophical Investigations, the Douay-Rheims Bible, and Summa Contra Gentiles.
And yes, I've noticed that's one more than I'm allowed.

What are you currently reading?
David Braine's paper 'Aquinas, God and Being' and Anthony Kenny's Five Ways.

Who are you going to pass this stick to, and why?
The Exlaodicea crew, seeing as they're all massively erudite. Everyone at the Kenyan blog ring, now KenyaUnlimited. Ory Okolloh at Kenyan Pundit, as she's sensible, and Bee at things that go bump in the night because I can.

Karol Josef Wojtyla, lately Pope John Paul II.

May 18 1920 - April 2 2005

Official press release.

Obituaries and Memorials.
Guardian.BBC. NYT. Globe and Mail [Ca]. National Catholic Reporter . Times. Telegraph. Tablet. Vatican memorial. Archbishop Ndingi's tribute. Sandro Magister (via berenike). Commonweal. George Weigel. Times again. Economist.

Information.
Vatican. Zenit. Catholicnews. the Popeblog. Wikipedia.

There will be a requiem Mass in St. Mary's Cathedral in Aberdeen on Wednesday 6th April at 7pm.

feet of clay.

Over at Crooked timber, there's an interesting post marking the 25th anniversary of the St. Paul's riots. There's a link in the post to this paper [pdf!], which discusses race and policing in urban areas. The author of the paper gives, in illustration, Lord Denning's infamous quote from What next in the Law, which I'd quite forgotten about. My Dad thought Denning instantiated the ideal of the liberal judge, and bought every book of his that he could find. This hero-worship passed naturally to me, and so it was quite disappointing, when I came to England, to discover that Denning was capable of saying, publicly, such rubbish. Ah well.

il Papa

JPII
It would seem that the end is near. Please pray that he might have a 'quiet night and a perfect end'.
Here's a nice little picture from his first vist to Kenya. [from the Archdiocese of Sydney website]

housekeeping.

THEODOLUS is the saint of the day.

Ok, here's the plan. From now on, my philosophical posts will go there. Everything else will be put up here. I look forward to seeing you at philosophical investigations.