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What should we make out of Pope Benedict XVI visit to the United States? There was the royal pageantry of a Papal Court, and expression of the Sacred Liturgy that focused on the diversity of the Church. Also there was a meeting with the victims of clergy sexual abuse, a long past due outreach. It is wonderful to hear apologies, but if these apologies are not linked to actions they are empty. There was also a meeting with President Bush without any mention of the War in Iraq; even the Pope has to make some accommodations. Will the lasting impact of the visit be to unite Catholics in one family of faith, or an understanding that Cafeteria style Catholicism is a fact of Church life.
I do not think the Pope’s visit will have a lasting impact. He did not address U.S. Catholicism's troubling trends: declines in Mass attendance, a priest shortage, hemorrhaging membership and struggles to meet the needs of a fast-growing Hispanic population. The trip appeared to be more focused on good PR with little substance.
Remembering the same phenomenon at the time of John Paul II,. The large crowds, the enthusiasm, the charisma yet 20 or 25 years later — in terms of anything you can measure in American Catholicism — it's all been downward. Will this be Pope Benedict’s legacy, only time will tell? He like President Bush knows how to side track the critical issues, and put a PR spin on ineptitude when he said the Catholic Church directly condemns any artificial birth control or sexual acts aside from intercourse, between married heterosexual partners. One wonders about the Sense of the Faithful, and why the Pope continues to listen the the Vatican clique over the Sense of the Faithful.
