Pope Benedict & America

A very nice reflection by John Allen on Pope Benedict’s existing relation with America—on the eve of Benedict’s visit—beginning with when he was an American prisoner of war during the Second World War.

Benedict on America: In his own words
By John L Allen Jr Weekly
Created Apr 11 2008 - 09:16

As Pope Benedict XVI's arrival in the United States approaches, the media is chock full of pieces outlining the challenges the pope faces in America, and trying to anticipate what he might do or say to address them. Perhaps it's fitting that the last word before the curtain goes up, however, should belong to Benedict himself.

By that, I'm not referring to the brief video message to the American people from the pope released by the Vatican this week. Instead, I have in mind the various reflections on the United States offered by Joseph Ratzinger over the years, much of which dates from the period before his election to the papacy.

Despite protesting in 1996 that he has "little knowledge of America," in truth Benedict XVI probably came into office with more direct insight into the United States than any other pope in history. For one thing, he is the first pope ever to have been an American prisoner of war. After deserting from the German army in May 1945, Ratzinger was sent to an American POW camp in Ulm, Germany, until his release on June 15, 1945. (By the way, the future pope filled his days by penning Greek hexameters in a notebook.)

In his role as the Vatican's top doctrinal official, Ratzinger visited the United States five times. Over the course of more than 20 years in Rome, he also met the a wide cross section of American bishops, clergy and religious, theologians, politicians, social activists, and ordinary people. Predictably, the pope has also read widely about America, developing a special fondness for Alexis de Tocqueville.

As a footnote, from 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has had canonical responsibility for reviewing allegations of sexual abuse against priests, which means that over four years Ratzinger became deeply familiar with the contours of the American crisis.

Among the best sources for gaining a sense of Benedict XVI's attitudes towards the United States:

• The 2004 book Without Roots, which reproduces a lecture Ratzinger delivered to the Italian Senate in May 2004, followed by an exchange of correspondence with Italian politician Marcello Pera;

• A 1996 interview with German journalist Peter Seewald that became the book Salt of the Earth;

• The 2002 book God and the World, another lengthy interview with Seewald;

• The pope's Feb. 29 address to Mary Ann Glendon, the new Ambassador of the United States to the Holy See.

The following represent some of the highlights from that material.

Religious Vitality

Probably the top note of Benedict's thought is appreciation that the United States remains a deeply religious society. Despite the inroads of secularism, it still has a lively appreciation for the public contribution of religion. The pope quotes de Tocqueville as epitomizing the American spirit: "Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot."

Also following de Tocqueville, Ratzinger wrote in 2004 that democracy in the United States is based on moral and religious values derived from Christianity.

"No one prescribed or defined these convictions, but everyone assumed them as the obvious spiritual foundation," he wrote. "The recognition of this basic religious and moral orientation, which went beyond the single denominations and defined the society from within, reinforced the corpus of the law. It defined the limits on individual freedoms from within, thereby creating the conditions for a shared, common freedom."

The pope believes this basic consensus is fragile today, but intact.

"One could say, at least in my opinion, that in the United States there is still a Christian civil religion, although it is besieged and its contents have become uncertain," he wrote.

In Benedict's mind, the appreciation for religion in America stands in sharp contrast with contemporary Europe.

"In the United States, secularization is proceeding at an accelerated pace, and the confluence of many different cultures disrupts the basic Christian consensus. However, there is a much clearer and more implicit sense in America than in Europe that the religious and moral foundation bequeathed by Christianity is greater than that of any single denomination. Europe, unlike America, is on a collision course with its own history. Often it voices an almost visceral denial of any possible public dimension for Christian values."