Pope may find US on his wavelength

[[R_H]]

BBC

President Bush is not a Catholic. And unlike his good friend Tony Blair, he probably never will be.

Yet the very Protestant Mr Bush is clearly an admirer of Pope Benedict XVI and is pulling out all the stops for his first visit to the United States as pontiff.

For a start, the president and his wife Laura are making the rare gesture of going to meet Pope Benedict at Andrew's Air Force Base when he lands on Tuesday evening.

Normally world leaders and heads of state have to make the journey to the White House to see Mr Bush.

Not that they see eye-to-eye on every issue.

This Pope has criticised the war in Iraq - highlighting the suffering of Iraq's Christians. But on issues like the sanctity of life, human rights and the freedom to worship, the president and the Pope share a common agenda.

In fact some have even described President Bush as a "closet Catholic".

The former Republican Senator, Rick Santorum, calls him "the first Catholic president... much more Catholic than Kennedy", who found his faith in the 1960s as much a burden as a blessing.

Still unfamiliar

This visit, though, is about much more than seeing the president.

In fact, Pope Benedict will not even turn up to the White House dinner being held in his honour and marking his 81st birthday.

Instead, he will be meeting Catholic bishops for prayer.

On his six-day tour Pope Benedict will also hold a Mass for the faithful at baseball stadiums in Washington DC and New York.

Some 46,000 American Catholics are expected to attend the service at the new Nationals Park stadium in DC, while 50,000 are due at the Yankee Stadium in New York.

It is a reminder that although the United States is not a Catholic nation, it does have the world's third largest number of Catholics - after Brazil and Mexico.

There are 70 million Catholics in the United States - a quarter of the country's adult population.

While in New York, Pope Benedict will also be addressing a global audience when he speaks at the headquarters of the United Nations.

So this is an important visit for a Pope who is still to make his mark in the same way as his predecessor - the much-loved and more charismatic John Paul II.

This Pope remains unfamiliar to most Americans. A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that three in 10 people did not know enough about him to give an opinion about his leadership of the Catholic Church.

Rift with liberals

One of the biggest tests for Pope Benedict is how he heals the wounds of the sex abuse scandal that rocked the American Catholic Church in 2002.

Hundreds of priests have since been removed, and the Church has spent $2bn (£1bn) in payouts following legal claims from an estimated 5,000 victims.

The Pope is expected to address the matter, but at the time of writing there were no plans for him to meet any of the victims - as some have urged. It is clearly not an issue on which the Catholic Church wants to dwell.

This Pope may also be at odds with liberal Catholics in America. Not all subscribe to his orthodox position on contraception, abortion or same-sex relationships.

Some 62% of Catholics in America say the Pope is out of touch with their views.

Yet at the same time there is a growing Latino population who look to the Pope as the true leader of their faith.

An even greater number of evangelical Christians in America share the Pope's concerns about rapid changes in society and proclaim a similar gospel.

In fact, overall, Pope Benedict may find that more Americans are in tune with his thinking than in more liberal Europe, where the band of believers is dwindling.

In America, 40% of Catholics still go to Mass, compared with around 10% in Europe.

[Dartzap]

I hear he is a very popeular person over there...

Did anyone hear Bush's speech earlier? I'm fairly sure allot of Americans would disagree about quite allot of what he said.

[Darth Onasi]

Isn't it heart warming how two amoral fundamentalist crackpots from two different sects can get along?

[Darth Wong]

I hate the way "sanctity of life" is a code-word for anti-abortion. Anyone who calls George W. Bush a promoter of the "sanctity of life" is a raving lunatic; the man laughs at all the death he's caused.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well at least the RCC does not maintain the farcical public hypocrisy that war, capital punishment, and poverty are A-OKAY, but abortion and gay marriage are horrific.

[Molyneux]

Anyone know if the Pope is going to be in New York anytime soon?

It's one of my sillier life goals to moon a major religious figure.

[Rye]

Well at least the RCC does not maintain the farcical public hypocrisy that war, capital punishment, and poverty are A-OKAY, but abortion and gay marriage are horrific.

Yeah, they're just a bit blasé in regards to child molestation, instead.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Anyone know if the Pope is going to be in New York anytime soon?

It's one of my sillier life goals to moon a major religious figure.

He's talking at the UN today or tomorrow, I think.

[Siege]

Anyone know if the Pope is going to be in New York anytime soon?

The pope will be in NYC from Thursday 'till Sunday. Be sure to post pictures .

Yeah, they're just a bit blasé in regards to child molestation, instead.

The pope's been slamming the whole priest scandal business pretty badly lately - in fact he's "deeply ashamed" about it (well, yeah duh, he'd bloody well better be...)

Of course, whether any action will follow after those words will very much remain to be seen.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The pope's been slamming the whole priest scandal business pretty badly lately - in fact he's "deeply ashamed" about it (well, yeah duh, he'd bloody well better be...)

Of course, whether any action will follow after those words will very much remain to be seen.

He is only "deeply ashamed" that they got caught, what with him having written the old policy...

[Rye]

Yeah, they're just a bit blasé in regards to child molestation, instead.

The pope's been slamming the whole priest scandal business pretty badly lately - in fact he's "deeply ashamed" about it (well, yeah duh, he'd bloody well better be...)

Of course, whether any action will follow after those words will very much remain to be seen.

I doubt it. If he failed when it was his specific purpose to investigate such claims and he never thought "hmm, let's abolish crimen solicitationis to protect children!" during that job (and of course, he's never spoken out against or tried to prevent third world catholic communities shunning those who try to take the church to task on the matter) I doubt he will now. The only reason he changed his tune from "this is a coordinated attempt to discredit the church" to "I'm so sorry" is because it became abundantly clear that the church lost plausible deniability in the whole affair. I would think the only extent they give a shit now is attempting to avoid it and the money they've lost from it.

[Siege]

He is only "deeply ashamed" that they got caught, what with him having written the old policy...

I bet he's that too - I'm definitely not defending this whole 'thin red line of clerics' mentality the RC church's got going.

[Qwerty 42]

I think the pontiff is giving mass at Yankee Stadium soon, if one of your major goals was also to moon the Yankees.

[Rye]

I think the pontiff is giving mass at Yankee Stadium soon, if one of your major goals was also to moon the Yankees.

Well, Holy See, holy do.

[FSTargetDrone]

The Editorial page in the local paper here had an interesting bit about the pope's visit:

Posted on Sun, Apr. 13, 2008

Editorial: The Catholic Church

Who will be left to speak and hear?

Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the United States marks a time of celebrations and challenges for the church.

The pope is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Tuesday, and spend three days in New York before returning to Rome. He will turn 81 on Wednesday.

Today, Cardinal Justin Rigali will mark the close of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's 200th anniversary celebration with a Mass at Villanova University.

The celebrations affirm the roots and impact of the church here, but also signal the challenges at hand.

The pope has a hard act to follow in John Paul II. The late pope was charismatic, assertive and beloved, and deeply influenced world affairs. Benedict, by contrast, has maintained a lower-profile, working instead behind the scenes to put his own stamp on church affairs.

In America, the church holds a puzzling position. It remains large and respected, but is withering and weathering attacks from both outside and within.

In many older, urban areas, parishes and schools are closing or merging. Bishop Joseph Galante just announced a big restructuring of the Camden Diocese that will probably close parishes in six South Jersey counties.

In Philadelphia, three Catholic parish schools in Port Richmond plan to merge into one. At the same time, the archdiocese is adapting to population shifts with plans to build two high schools in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

Maybe the biggest challenge of all is this: What does it mean to be a Catholic in the United States of 2008?

The Catholic Church is the largest single faith in the country and in the world. Locally, as in many areas throughout the country, there are many Catholics, but too many of them no longer attend church regularly. And Catholic high schools and universities everywhere soft-pedal religion and hard-peddle "values" as a branding strategy.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University says that nearly 700 parishes closed across the country from 1995 to 2007, with more cutbacks coming. The numbers of priests and sisters continue to decline. In South Jersey, it's estimated that by 2015 there will be only 85 active priests to serve 450,000 Catholics. Nationwide, in the next 20 years, the number of active diocesan priests will drop in half to 11,500. There are about 19,000 parishes, so that translates to a huge gap.

The church has helped create this crisis by insisting on ancient disciplines such as priestly celibacy (including its refusal to allow priests to marry) and the bar against women in the clergy. None of these practices was expressly enjoined by Jesus. All were local traditions that ossified into doctrine. Now, they're helping strangle it.

Sexual-abuse scandals have destroyed trust in the institution and its ministers. Church leaders have contributed to this fiasco in being slow to react; hiding or minimizing the problem; or stonewalling. True, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has overhauled its prevention and victim-assistance program (for a reported 144 victims), devoting $1 million since January 2007 on counseling and other services. On the other hand, generally it refuses to say where the disgraced and defrocked perps are now.

Yet many people love the Catholic Church, and not just Catholics. It retains an authority earned by long, loyal and often dangerous adherence to a high standard of belief and conduct. (There's much to be ashamed of, too, including the Inquisition and an often ambiguous response to Nazism in World War II.)

Church leaders regularly weigh in on public policy (the death penalty), ethical debate (stem-cell research), and personal morality. Most visible of all is the pope, father of the church.

In a world of violence, environmental degradation, and lack of coherent values, it's comforting that somewhere there's a family that, inspired by the holiest of lives, seeks to emulate that life and spread its message of peace, responsibility, moral clarity - and above all, belief.

Today, the debate (at least in the journals and op-ed pages) between belief and unbelief rages afresh. Still, hundreds of millions all over the world, and millions and millions to come, will come to believe in a God in the universe and a Christ that intervenes in human history to spread understanding and love. And they will learn that and live that through this church.

You could have a worse message. The challenge for all Catholics, though, remains: Who will tell this message, and who will hear?

The end of that editorial annoys me, but in any event, all this fawning over and welcoming by the crowds is well and good, but the thing is, the Church will have to adapt, or die. Frankly, nothing would please me more to see that misogynistic, patriarchal organization crumble under its own rot.

[Molyneux]

I think the pontiff is giving mass at Yankee Stadium soon, if one of your major goals was also to moon the Yankees.

Well, Holy See, holy do.

...holy crap. I know it would be a suicidally bad idea, but I REALLY do want to do that. I've suspended my Yankee fandom since they got rid of Torre...

[Invictus ChiKen]

I wouldn't calibrate the death of the Church just yet. There declining numbers are starting to taper off and in some areas it's starting to show an increase.

A lot of this is also demographics, people leaving the Northeast for the Southeast. Inner cities for suburbs.

I'm not saying the Church is about to explode all over the place, just I wont count her dead till the last parish shuts her doors and the last Bishop with a valid holy order dies.

[FSTargetDrone]

I wouldn't calibrate the death of the Church just yet. There declining numbers are starting to taper off and in some areas it's starting to show an increase.

A lot of this is also demographics, people leaving the Northeast for the Southeast. Inner cities for suburbs.

I'm not saying the Church is about to explode all over the place, just I wont count her dead till the last parish shuts her doors and the last Bishop with a valid holy order dies.

And the Church's membership seems to be increasing in other parts of the world, no doubt, but it is encouraging that more and more Catholics are not so rigid with their interpretations of Catholicism.

[FSTargetDrone]

And the Church's membership seems to be increasing in other parts of the world, no doubt, but it is encouraging that more and more Catholics are not so rigid with their interpretations of Catholicism.

Er, in the US, that is.