New world, old world: How will traditionalist deal with Catholic progressives?

Amid all the speculation about what Tuesday's election of Pope Benedict XVI means for the Catholic Church, and for Christianity as a whole, this beer stein logo may best characterize his modus operandi:

"Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981."

Or this one: "Truth is not determined by a majority vote."

Spoken like true fans.

If you look closely in the coming days, you just may see a member of the former German theology professor's official fan club sporting a T-shirt with one of those logos, though it may take the "Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club" at www.ratzingerfanclub.com a few days to deplete its "Ratzinger" inventory and retool its Web address in favor of the pope's new moniker.

The Web site — which features not only the steins and T-shirts but hats, mugs, stickers, magnets, sweatshirts and pins — was so swamped with Internet traffic Tuesday that the only way to access it was through a cached copy.

Beyond mere commercialism, the Web site is indicative of the brave new world facing Pope Benedict XVI in the most literal sense; much of the cutting-edge technology and bioethic science that has become the foundation of human interaction and societal discourse as he assumes the papacy was little more than science fiction when his predecessor took office in 1978.

Global and instantaneous communication make the pope not only a world figure but an intensely watched and readily critiqued one as well. As his predecessor expanded forums — like World Youth Day — to use the media of his age to reach out to church youth and to the wider religious world, Pope Benedict XVI will likely be judged as much by his media savvy and ecumenical bridge-building as by his doctrinal treatises.

He pledged Wednesday in his first Mass as pope that he would continue the legacy of outreach to youths and to those of other faiths, and to push for the Christian unity promoted by his predecessor.

The media may be modern, but the messenger is a man known for his traditionalism, the former head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His fans know him as a hard-liner, and they respect him for it. His online fan club wrote of his former position within the church: "As Grand Inquisitor for Mother Rome, Ratzinger kept himself busy in service to the truth: correcting theological error, silencing dissenting theologians, and stomping down heresy wherever it may rear its ugly head — and, consequently, had received somewhat of a notorious reputation among the liberal media and 'enlightened' intelligentsia of pseudo-Catholic universities."