Pope Benedict Sets New Papal Record: Mosque Visits

The greatest headline ever from John Allen in NCR

The late Pope John Paul II reigned so long and did so much that it’s difficult to imagine Benedict XVI surpassing his records in most areas, especially after a scant four years in office. Today, however, Benedict moved past John Paul II in one telling category: He’s doubled his predecessor’s total of mosques which he actually entered.

Late this morning, Benedict visited the Hussein bin-Talal mosque in the Jordanian capital of Amman. That makes two mosque tours for Benedict XVI, after a visit to the legendary Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, in late 2006. Though John Paul made appearances at many mosques over the years, he only entered one – the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001.

Granted, the visit in Amman wasn’t quite the same stunner as Istanbul. For one thing, the symbolism was different; Benedict didn’t share a moment of silent prayer with an imam, and he didn’t take off his shoes. He did both in the Blue Mosque in 2006.
Nonetheless, the pope’s choice to go to the mosque at all, which is named for Jordan’s late King Hussein, offered further confirmation of the rising importance of Islam for this pope and for the broader Catholic church.

In his address, Benedict delivered a version of what has, in effect, become his standard “stump speech” when addressing Muslim audiences: Islam and Christianity as natural allies in defense of common values and a positive role for religion in society, but, at the same time, the need to reject extremism and to respect religious freedom. The latter tends to be an especially urgent concern for church leaders, given the limitations and occasional persecution facing Christian minorities in some Islamic societies.

There's more here including a message for Christians living in Islamic countries.

I say he should pile on about 10 more and become the Cal Ripken of Papal mosque visitors.

Do you think he goes home and closes the door and does a touchdown dance and then says "IN YOUR FACE Wotyla!"

Ahem, sometimes I'm just too much for my own good.

Faith in Flux

Nearly half of Americans have changes religions--and that accounts for a lot of Catholics as well.

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- On the heels of a study of the U.S. "religious landscape" released last year that showed a quarter of Americans had changed faiths, a follow-up survey has found an even greater rate of "Faith in Flux," as the latest report is called.

When the number of people who now practice a different faith than that of their childhood is added to those who have moved around among religions or denominations and come back to where they started, nearly half of Americans have changed religions at some point, said the report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released April 27.

Among people who have changed religions, those who left the Catholic Church were more likely than those who left Protestant denominations to have done so because they no longer believed the teachings of the church, the study found.

It also made connections between how actively involved people were in their churches as children and teens and how likely they were to leave the faith in which they were raised.

Across the board, the vast majority of people who changed churches, who stopped being affiliated with any faith or who transitioned from being "unaffiliated" with a religion to belonging to a church did so before the age of 24, the survey found.

The reasons cited most often by those who have left the Catholic Church were that their spiritual needs were not being met, that they "just gradually drifted away" or they "found a religion they liked more."

A lot more to read here--but well worth the time.

Mary Kate Cary over at US News just blogged onthis recent survey:



She claims:

This poll shows that most American Catholics go with our faith first, our religion second. We have plenty of members of our parish who are homosexual, and we're glad to have them, despite what the Church's rules are about that. For the most part we are a pro-life community, but I don't know anyone who pickets an abortion clinic. We all know divorced Catholics—they're part of our community too—because sometimes there are excellent reasons to get divorced, despite what the Church says about that, too. I can't speak for all Catholic women, but as a mom, I feel that if women were allowed to play a bigger role in the leadership of the Church, there never would have been a pedophile scandal at all and the Church's conservative positions on many issues would be very different.

So it looks like the "cafeteria Catholics" are now the new mainstream of the American Catholic Church. I'm not surprised.

As they said in the Movie "White Men Can't Jump"...

"Dude, you were almost there!"

To think that if women were in leadership positions in the Catholic Church there never would have been a sex scandal is ludicrous. We all know what the sex scandal is about and that's power. Women have had their share of abusing power in the church just as much as men have.

With regards to her other commments, I would say two things:

I think she is accurate on how many people feel about having divorced and gay people in their pews--but I don't believe that this is because of any theological reason. In a world of diversity, inclusion is held up as an almost sacred value in our society. Many Catholics believe that homosexuality is wrong but wouldn't shun the homosexual from their pew (even if they might shun them at communion time). Many people think that couples don't really try very hard to save their marriage and then are all too willing to jump through many hoops to try to procure an annulment from the church should they want to remarry. When there are some marriages that never should have took place to begin with and have caused much pain to families, many Catholics believe that an annulment is fine and some may even equate divorce with that process.

And as for the pro-life comment...

We're all too nice when it comes to abortion. As Bishop Chaput has stated and I'll paraphrase here..."We don't really care." If we really cared Pregnancy Crisis Centers would be shrines and plentiful. We'd all be foster parents and we'd let that inconvenience us without complaint. We'd hire pregnant teens to do jobs that feed their family well and provide for their medical care and not say two words about it. We'd charitably provide council to politicians instead of merely screaming at them or writing them a nicely worded letter.

If we really cared about the unborn we wouldn't care if President Obama was speaking at Notre Dame--because we'd be too busy taking care of the children and mothers that he picks an all too easy solution for. If we really cared we'd wonder why we allowed the state to kill prisoners in our name and we'd lose a lot of sleep over that. If we really cared, we'd be angry about why people are going hungry tonight and we would go a little hungrier ourselves and share not just what we want to dispose of with the poor but what we have and think we deserve ourselves.

But we don't do that, do we?

No, instead like most Americans we choose comfort.

That's what is missing from that little survey that isn't really worth the paper it's written on or the time it took to compile.

It doesn't really look at the big picture when it comes to our faith which is often all too easy, convenient and not at all messy. Nobody's feathers ever get matted down nor do we ever risk offending anyone who might not share our views--and for the few that do, we call them crazy, out of touch fanatics.

We simple choose to pray in peace in our nice quiet church that's free of any controversy and continue to delude ourselves into thinking that this is what the radical message of Christ's love is really all about.

Our own comfort.

Because you see, neither the conservatives nor the liberals have gotten this right. And surveys don't tell us how we are responding with love to those who need us.

We like the comfortable wood of the manger but hate the painful wood of the cross.

But as we move towards holy week that cross is where we are called to look. And it scares us to think that if we even came close to loving others as much as Jesus did that our result would in fact be similar: They'd crucify us.

And so, our wooden pews get cushioned and our views become ones that get kept to ourselves. We like Christmas but without labor and Easter with cute bunnies but without a painful death a few days before the resurrection.

And that my friends is simple American Catholicism. Where the comfy come to pray.

Now survey THAT!