The media coverage, insofar as I have been able to follow it, is still excessively preoccupied with comparisons between Benedict and John Paul the Great. That is both unfair and misleading. Benedict is who he is, the 264th””or, according to some reckonings, the 265th”“successor to St. Peter, doing what Peter among us is supposed to do, strengthening the faithful. They key thing, as one has occasion to say for the thousandth time, is to concentrate not so much on the person as the message. Listen, and listen carefully, to what he says! He is very much the man many of us have known and admired for years. And now he speaks as the Vicar of Christ, the shepherd of the universal Church in the service of the Good Shepherd. Remembering, of course, that this is the week of Good Shepherd Sunday.
Read it all.
Richard John Neuhaus with some Reflections on the Papal Visit
The media coverage, insofar as I have been able to follow it, is still excessively preoccupied with comparisons between Benedict and John Paul the Great. That is both unfair and misleading. Benedict is who he is, the 264th””or, according to some reckonings, the 265th”“successor to St. Peter, doing what Peter among us is supposed to do, strengthening the faithful. They key thing, as one has occasion to say for the thousandth time, is to concentrate not so much on the person as the message. Listen, and listen carefully, to what he says! He is very much the man many of us have known and admired for years. And now he speaks as the Vicar of Christ, the shepherd of the universal Church in the service of the Good Shepherd. Remembering, of course, that this is the week of Good Shepherd Sunday.
Read it all.