The pope’s visit to a skeptical nation

What happened

Benedict XVI this week became the third pope in history to visit the U.S., on a six-day tour in which he sought to shore up American Catholicism at an especially challenging time. A theological conservative, Pope Benedict has devoted the first three years of his papacy to reversing the influence of secularism and re-igniting faith in traditional Catholic moral teachings. But in America, the German-born pope confronts a church still disillusioned over the sexual-abuse scandal involving hundreds of priests, and divided over such issues as priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, and the morality of birth control.

Benedict chose to address the sex-abuse scandal even before landing on U.S. soil, telling reporters on his plane that he was “ashamed” of the actions of pedophile priests. “It is a great suffering for the church in the United States, for the church in general, and for me personally that this could happen,” Benedict said. After a warm and enthusiastic greeting at the White House, the pope said that he hoped his visit—which was to include Masses at Yankee Stadium and Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.; an address to the United Nations; and a visit to ground zero in Manhattan—“will be a source of renewal and hope for the church in the United States.”

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What the editorials said

The church, said the Chicago Sun-Times, is “divided and battered,” and needs every bit of the pope’s wisdom and good will. In addition to the sex-abuse scandal, American Catholics face a desperate and growing shortage of priests, and a rift between their own beliefs and church teachings on birth control and abortion. A recent study by Georgetown University found that about a third of the 64 million U.S. Catholics never attend Mass, about a quarter attend only a few times a year, and a majority never go to confession.

Yes, the church has its problems, said The New York Sun, but if you “take the long view,” Catholics have done remarkably well in America. Today, Catholics occupy five of the nine seats on the U.S. Supreme Court and, by one count, constitute more than a quarter of the U.S. Congress. Once the target of fierce bigotry, the church has scaled the heights of American society “to become an important part of American life.”

What the columnists said

Benedict’s visit may “lift the spirits” of American Catholics for a time, said University of Notre Dame historian Jay Dolan in Newsday. But despite multiple visits to the U.S., the more charismatic Pope John Paul II failed to “halt the decline of the institutional church over the course of the past 30 years.” Benedict has made it clear that the church will not evolve, and that he’d rather see it continue to shrink than consider such changes as ordaining women. “That is scarcely a message of hope.”

Benedict isn’t the hard-liner—“God’s Rottweiler”—of recent caricatures, said Stephen Prothero in USA Today. The pope’s first two encyclicals were on love and hope, and on Benedict’s watch the Vatican has added pollution and social and economic injustice to the list of sins. But the challenges the pope faces in reining in the American church are real. Thanks to Hispanic immigration, Catholics are “holding steady” at about a quarter of the U.S. population. But native-born Catholics—especially those under 30—are fleeing the church by the millions.

Benedict’s papacy has just begun, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal Online, so let’s give him a chance. He may not have John Paul II’s charisma, but he has a teacher’s gift for explaining Christianity’s basic message and moral teachings, and why they cannot—must not—change to suit the whims of secular society. “John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. At the moment, perhaps, it is more important to think.”

What next?

The erosion of the American church appears destined to continue, at least until either Rome or American culture blinks on social issues. But Benedict—who speaks 10 languages and “is one of the most learned men in the world”—sees the church in a historical context, with a time frame of centuries, said religious scholar George Weigel in Newsweek. That’s why he won’t budge on what he calls the “dictatorship of relativism” in the West. “Look again at the basics of Catholic faith and practice,” Benedict says. “They exist for a reason. They just may satisfy the hungers of the human heart. Give them a chance.”