There’s a lot of excitement:

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony cheered the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope.

“This is unimaginable,” Mahony told KCBS-TV Channel 2 anchor Sylvia Lopez in an interview in Rome. “The impact this is going to have have. Particularly, of course, in Latin America. It’s the first time we ever had a Southern Hemisphere pope. It’s just extraordinary.”

“Unimaginable.” “Extraordinary.”

It’s hard to think of another example of anyone being so excited at their symbolically overcoming their own bigotry to such a minor degree.

That a non-European Pope be elected for the first time in 1,200 years (some of the early popes were born in the Middle East or Roman Africa) is more a sign of how the church disrespects and disregards the rest of the world, where the great bulk of their believers reside.

It is only symbolic, however, to a minor degree, because Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not even part Indie; he is of full Italian descent, the child of immigrants.

So, it’s just his nationality that has people excited.

God forbid they select someone of non-European ethnicity. Or, some day, not male.

In the meantime, they elected yet another white European-descent male who is vigorously anti-gay. But he lived in South America! Wheee! What a breakthrough!

If doing that is “unimaginable” for the church leadership, then this church is decidedly backwards.

There is also excitement that this man chose to live in a modest apartment among the poor rather than to move into a luxurious, stately church residence.

Um, let’s see, this church is supposed focus on Christ, yes? And we’re supposed to be impressed by the fact that, for the first time in a very long time, the leader of that church actually respected the core teachings of their savior in his own lifestyle? Before moving into the most extravagant opulence, of course.

A step in the right direction, perhaps. But “extraordinary”? Wow.