Blogging the Visit
April 9, 2008, 1:01 pm
Posted by J. Peter Nixon
The New York Times and BeliefNet have both set up blogs to comment on the upcoming apostolic visit of Pope Benedict XVI. The former will have a multi-author lineup that will ultimately include many names known to readers of this site. The latter, of course, features DotCommonweal’s own David Gibson.
I suspect those of us at DotComonweal will also have a few things to say about the visit, so be sure to check back here from time to time as well.
No question this visit will not resonate with the adulation and deification of past papal visits. This is due mostly to the reality that this is after the pedophilia crisis of 2002 ff. Too many are trying every which way to discount this severe scandal. Further, it may be quite notable that highlight of Benedict’s trip will be to Egan’s diocese which is notorious for stonewalling and subterfuge in the crisis while at the same time showing zero transparency in revealing the finances of the diocese.
From Votf.org:
Vatican finally getting it a little bit?
If what we read in the media is accurate, there appears to be some change in tone emanating from the Number 2 person in the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. He has gone in a few days time from saying in a British newspaper that the Church has already “responded with great dignity” to the clergy sexual abuse scandal — and that the “clamour created in the U.S. around this scandal is really unbearable” — to telling the Associated Press yesterday: “[Pope Benedict] will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation” in response to the abuse crisis that has caused “so much suffering for the victims, for the families of the victims and above all to the church …”
(You can see the stories at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/07/wpope107.xml and at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040801793.html.)
Perhaps the voices of the laity, amplified by the media, are once again resonating with Church officials: Cardinal Bertone’s interview with Associated Press coincidentally occurred the same day Voice of the Faithful’s full page ad appeared in the New York Times.
Of course, the challenge is whether Church leaders can effectively address the unresolved issues of the clergy sexual abuse scandal while also embracing full lay participation in the Church and providing complete financial accountability and transparency. Meeting that challenge could, indeed, transform the Church into one that is governed by compassion, informed by justice, empowered by equality, and animated to act collegially.
Benedict on the US. A mixed bag. What is your view?
http://ncrcafe.org/node/1722
Here in Yonkers where Benedict is coming for a youth rally Saturday afternoon, from 8am-8pm no one is allowed on the streets, Seminary Avenue and Valentine St, contiguous with St Joseph’s Seminary where the event will be held. So if one wants to exit from one’s house one will have to use the side street or not go out at all. Ditto for returning home. The locals affected already have some choice words for the pope like: “No one is going to tell me what to do in my own house”, what doesn’t he stay in Rome?”, “Rome is nice, why doesn’t he stay there?” They are not happy campers.
Just in this one location event builders and security are mulling all over the place.