Over the past few weeks, we've learned quite a bit about the
candidates and their religious affiliations. What a pity it has
nothing to do with religion. The YouTube site is busy running
videos of black pastors ranting and raving about politics, but
I'm inclined to believe the beneficent sermons preached in Tyler
Perry movies more likely represent the norm in the black
community. Forgive me if I do not comment on these pastors but
I'm a Roman Catholic who's never attended a Protestant service.
The Pope, however, is coming to New York in a few weeks. Can we
talk about religion now?
Every February, the New York Archdiocese celebrates Black History
Month with a special "black mass." The main celebrant
is a black priest and the choir may offer special
African-American hymns, but the mass is still the mass. There
will be readings from the Old and New Testaments, and the sermon
will be about Christ and his teachings, not about who's running
for president.
Pope Benedict XVI will make his first visit to America as the
spiritual leader of the Catholic Church Tuesday, April 15. This
is a historic trip, since the Holy Father will address the United
Nations General Assembly, meet with President George Bush, and
visit Ground Zero. He'll only be in New York for two days,
between April 18 and April 20, and the clamor to be present at
one of his public appearances is somewhat frantic. Tickets for
the public mass to be held at Yankee Stadium have been allocated
to the parishes for distribution.
Pope Benedict will be celebrating his 81st birthday in
Washington, D.C. on April 16, and his visit here is still
considered by many older Catholics who never dreamed of seeing
the Pope to be somewhat of a miracle. Our popes used to be
remote, living thousands of miles away and rarely heard from in
any form other than an encyclical. That changed with the arrival
of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, aka Pope John XXIII, the roly-poly
smiling pontiff who some traditionalists claimed destroyed the
church when he convened Vatican II and introduced ecumenism to
the world. Fortunately, I was still attending a Catholic high
school and learned that the church was not modernizing but rather
going back to its origins. Catholics were being made more aware
of the reasons behind the church laws. With the relaxation of
some rules we were given more responsibility over our personal
behavior, but just like the cradle-to-grave Communists who have
difficulty with their freedom, some rigid Catholics preferred
mysticism to truth in dogma.
Pope Benedict's visit is not without controversy. He has managed
to disturb both Jewish and Muslim leaders, and no doubt their
bone of contention will be addressed by the pontiff during his
visit.
The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham
Foxman, wrote to Pope Benedict in January expressing concern that
a revised Good Friday prayer that Jews abandon their own
religious identity would be devastating to the deepening
relationship and dialogue between the Catholic Church and the
Jewish people.
I was a little surprised at this statement because I had never
even heard of this Good Friday prayer, and when I did discover it
in my Sunday missalette I found it rather innocuous. It reads:
"Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the
word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his
name and in faithfulness to his covenant."
But the prayer that Foxman referred to is actually only in the
Tridentine Latin Mass and it does call for the conversion of
Jews. But really, how strange is that? Christians believe that
Jesus Christ is the messiah and that his coming is good news for
all humanity. The church wants the whole world to accept him as
their savior. Jesus was born a Jew, as were the early Christians,
and I believe that Pope Benedict feels that this kinship should
not be denied.
On the other hand, Muslims who were upset when the pope repeated
the lines of a Byzantine emperor who used harsh words to describe
Islam will have a more difficult dialogue with the pontiff. In
his book, "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures,"
written when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the pope wrote that
Christianity is incompatible with Islam as practiced by the
jihadists because, "Our God is a God of Love who would never
order the death of innocents."
I hope that in a few weeks, we'll hear dialogue about religion
that actually means something.