Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Papacy in the Twenty-Second Century

John Perry noticed this typo that recently appeared in the Washington Post:

Under Benedict, the church has brought back the Latin Mass in limited form, courted Anglicans disenchanted by the ordination of gay and female bishops and moved toward bestowing sainthood on Pope Pious XXII -- who has been criticized for not doing more to denounce the Nazis.

The last Pius was Pius XII; so we're talking ten Piuses in the future. Since the average service of a Pope is seven to eight years, we're talking somewhere post-2080; very likely several decades afterward. It also wasn't Pious but Pius; but at that far in the future, who knows what Anglicizing conventions exist in the press? It would make an interesting science fiction story. One could call it "The Things that Never Change". But I'm not sure how much story there would be because, you know, names and finer details aside, things of this sort really don't.