Religion: Habemus Papam

For nearly two thousand years the Roman Catholic Church has waged an unending spiritual war. Against heathendom, against heresy, the Church has not ceased from moral strife. Last week, when its Princes met in Rome to choose a new Pope, the Church's war against heresy—the totalitarian heresies of Left and Right —had reached a critical point.

Watching the Roman scene with eyes of concern was many a non-Catholic libertarian and democrat the world over. For the first time since the 18th Century's Enlightenment, believers in individual liberty found themselves taking the same side as...

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