The Pope in the U.S.

An Event
That Liberates
Our Freedom
We closed this issue of Traces on the day Benedict XVI arrived in the USA. A few days before, the Crossroads Cultural Center had organized two events, in Washington, DC, and in New York, in preparation for the Pope’s arrival

by Santiago Ramos

On April 9th, one week before the Pope’s arrival to the United States, the Crossroads Cultural Center, an initiative born within the CL communities in New York and Washington, DC, hosted the first of two events in both cities concerning the upcoming visit of the Pope. First was the New York installment, beginning with opening remarks from H. E. Celestino Migliore, Apostolic Nuncio to the United Nations, and a panel that included Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus; Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Editor in Chief of First Things, a journal of religion and public life; and Dr. David Schindler, Editor of the English language edition of Communio and Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The Washington event was held two nights later, and included opening remarks by H. E. Pietro Sambi, Papal Nuncio to the United States; John L. Allen, Vatican Correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and Senior Religion Analyst for CNN; and again Dr. Schindler. Both panels were moderated by Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, who inaugurated each talk with a few preliminary remarks.

Monsignor Albacete’s first task was to set up the correct disposition: “The Pope’s visit is a unique event that calls for our attention and challenges our freedom,” he said in his opening remarks. “We must avoid framing the visit within the narrow bounds of our own hopes and expectations.” Underscoring this point, Fr. Neuhaus began his own remarks in a similar vein: “That’s the main thing–to listen to what he says.” Fr. Neuhaus’s address expressed affection for the Movement, and he quoted at length from then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s funeral homily for Fr. Giussani; he also expounded on the Pope’s favored expression of Christ as “the human face of God.”

The nuncios gave hints as to what might come when the Pope addresses the United Nations. In New York, H.E. Migliore used a distinction formulated by the German sociologist Max Weber to explain the Pope’s role in this visit: society contains both kings and prophets. “Kings have to make inconvenient decisions; prophets keep alive the conscience of those kings.” At the United Nations, the Pope will defend universal human rights and the notion of a universal “moral grammar,” in continuity with John Paul II’s address the previous decade. In Washington, H.E. Sambi warned, however, against reducing everything to politics: “The danger is to see all this through political eyes. He [the Pope] will address all human problems–economic, social, political, moral–through religious eyes.”
Carl Anderson spoke about the hope that Pope Benedict places in the United Nations, and quoted the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, who in Democracy in America argued that “someday America will either lose entirely Christian faith or America will become a Catholic nation.” John Allen, who for many years has been considered the leading American Vaticanologist, provided engaging anecdotes regarding how the American media reports on religion, noting many shortcomings. He also echoed Anderson, in commenting that Pope Benedict is fond of the work of de Tocqueville.

For all that, the theological judgment was provided most succinctly by David Schindler. The starting point for Benedict, he argued, is that all the problems in the West today can be traced to a “forgetfulness of God.” Therefore, the solution comes in a re-acquaintance with God, with “the human face of God.” The popular religiosity of the United States, Schindler continued, is not fully integrated with reason, and thus it becomes a private affair, irrelevant to public life. “A God who is truly God must make a difference to everything all of the time. Reason is a dialogue with God.” Finally, he provided the most succinct expression of the Pope’s mission during his visit: “In order to transform society, he will affirm us, so we can enter in, and change”–this is the only way toward real social progress–“and the change causes pain.” Pain that is redemptive, because it is the pain of the Cross.