THE POPE'S CURIOUS TASK...:

Christ Our Hope (George Neumayr, 4/17/2008, American Spectator)

[P]ope Benedict enters Washington, D.C., at an ironic moment, in which many of his critics are Catholics and his allies Protestants.

The Pelosis, Kennedys, and Kerrys press for an irrelevant and secularized Catholicism, an empty faith without works, as it were. Meanwhile, a Protestant President applauds the Holy Father for his faith and works, for defending God and objective truth in a time of relativism.

Their speeches on Wednesday at the White House harmonized, causing some disappointment to the press corps. Scrambling for a storyline, the press had hoped for tension and conflict between them over "immigration" and "Iraq." How the Holy Father could get to the left of a (basically) pro-amnesty president on the issue of immigration isn't clear to me.

On his trip to America Pope Benedict is addressing two crises at once, which are connected more deeply than the press can compute. One crisis afflicts the world, the other the Church. Both result from the same cause: the post-Enlightenment rupture in the relationship between faith and reason, God and man, that marginalized Jesus Christ.

At the very moment society was plunging into de-Christianized chaos, the American Catholic Church decided to join it.

...is to make Europe more Catholic, but Catholicism more American.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 18, 2008 6:22 AM