When the name of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rang out from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square last April, nowhere was the jubilation stronger than among conservative-to-ultra-conservative Catholics.

Catholics who were less enthusiastic about the results (an understatement, to be sure) were taunted with gleeful, in-your-face e-mails, some complete with an electronic photo of the newly elected pope waving and smiling from the basilica balcony.

In the weeks and months since last April, however, this column has noticed a distinctly reassuring pattern in the papal style adopted by Benedict XVI. Contrary to his pre-election image as the hard-line enforcer of orthodoxy and discipline, the new pope has shown himself to be modest, self-effacing, non-combative, inclusive, and pastorally sensitive.

No gesture manifested these qualities more dramatically or more compellingly than his four-hour-long meeting, including a private dinner, with Father Hans Küng at Castel Gandolfo in late September.

In recent weeks this column has given voice to a growing suspicion that many of the same Catholics who were once so jubilant about Cardinal Ratzinger's election are beginning to experience feelings of doubt and even some measure of anxiety. He has not taken in hand the papal hammer they had expected him to wield against everyone on their long "enemies" list.

New evidence in support of this suspicion has surfaced recently in the February issue of First Things, a conservative monthly edited by Father Richard John Neuhaus, one of the late pope's strongest supporters and one who, to his credit, correctly predicted the election of Joseph Ratzinger when most other commentators, including the present writer, thought him too old and too polarizing a figure to be elected.

In his regular back-of-the-magazine feature, "The Public Square," Father Neuhaus acknowledges that "[a]mong those who greatly admired Cardinal Ratzinger and were elated by his election as pope, there is a palpable uneasiness."

"Palpable uneasiness." That's a delicate way of putting it.

"As of this writing," Father Neuhaus continues, the pope "has not made what are perceived to be needed personnel changes at the top levels of the Curia."

Neuhaus and others, including Father Joseph Fessio, one of Joseph Ratzinger's former students, were not happy with the pope's appointment of Archbishop William Levada to succeed himself as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In fact, Neuhaus writes, the appointment has "occasioned widespread puzzlement"-presumably among the same Catholics who were most enthusiastic about the results of last April's conclave.

Father Neuhaus's criticism of Archbishop Levada is based on what he perceives as a certain softness in his approach to the issue of homosexuality while heading a diocese centered in a city "commonly called the gay capital of the world."

To compound the new pope's "puzzling" appointment of Archbishop Levada to the CDF was his subsequent appointment of George Niederauer as Levada's successor in San Francisco. According to Neuhaus, Niederauer, while bishop of Salt Lake City, "had a reputation of being... gay-friendly," and was "somewhat ambivalent," in Neuhaus's opinion, regarding the recent Vatican instruction on gays in seminaries and the priesthood. Father Neuhaus was particularly "astonished" by Bishop Niederauer's publicly stated rejection of sexual orientation as the cause of the sexual-abuse scandal in the priesthood.

In light of these two appointments, Father Neuhaus suggests that "we" (meaning, one assumes, those who were initially "elated" by Cardinal Ratzinger's election) are faced now "with what may be a defining test of the pontificate of Benedict XVI."

"As all who know him can attest" (a group which, by clear implication, includes Neuhaus himself), "he is in personal relations a gentle man and averse to unpleasantness." He is a person, in other words, who "cannot relish the prospect of a direct confrontation with major institutions such as the Society of Jesus" --- a group apparently high on that "enemies" list referred to above.

What many others would regard as virtues, Father Neuhaus seems to view as weaknesses: gentleness, aversion to unpleasantness, lack of a confrontational spirit. He apparently wants the pope to stiffen his backbone and to do something about "theologians and priests, backed by bishops and religious orders" who, he says, have "thrown down the gauntlet" of opposition to church teaching and authority with respect to human sexuality.

Father Neuhaus does not want a repeat of 1968 when, as his colleague George Weigel has claimed, Pope Paul VI allowed the opponents of his birth-control encyclical to get away with their dissidence. There can be no Truce of 2005, Neuhaus insists.

Benedict XVI, however, seems to be following a different path, one marked out before him by Benedict XV, who was a gentle peace-maker, not a confrontational divider.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.