Like the Globe's Alex Beam, I'm not entirely convinced that the new Huffington Post-Facebook partnership represents the "future of journalism." But in his run-down of former "future of journalism" nominees that failed, Beam takes his curmudgeonly shtick a bit too far.

Here's the problematic quote in question:

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I tend toward curmudgeonly skepticism of new technologies. On the other hand, I also tend toward curmudgeonly skepticism of the Vatican.

Anyway, here's what Benedict XVI--who, it should be noted, just started his own YouTube channel--recently had to say about the perils of Facebook and other social-networking applications: