From a political interest group perspective, the inreasing closeness between once mortal enemies - papists and conservative Protestants - has been a troubling development. It's nice that we can all get along now, but that schism has been a major contributor to the understanding of the necessity to maintain the separation of church and state, keep religion out of public schools, etc...
So, now that we have a new pope who isn't into the making nice with other religions thing, will this continue? From what I can survey of the conservative-religious wingnutosphere, they seem to be thrilled that he's a "conservative" and not too concerned about his discussion of "lesser faiths" and "not churches in the proper sense."
We're getting reports now that one of his primary goals is to reach out to other religions. But, it's quite clear that what he means is reach out to other religions in an attempt to unite them under his leadership.
