grow even smaller? His friend Father Fessio believes the Pope simply does not think in such terms. To him the key is the proclamation of the Gospel, not a census of believers. Robert Royal, however, has a somewhat different view: “The idea of a smaller Church is one of the hallmarks of his career.” Dr. Royal is quick to point out, however, that the Pope has no inten- tion of simply writing off those Catholics whose faith does not cur- rently conform to Church teaching. “It’s not easy to know what strat- egy the Pope may employ to change things,” he said, “and none of us quite knows why common ground among Catholics seems so hard to achieve.” In this regard, Royal thinks the Pope may know more about the complex intellectual history of the modern world than just about anybody. “He has a better grasp of what went wrong.”


That Benedict XVI is important to American Catholics is obvious, but non-Catholics also look to him for leadership. The Pope is widely admired for taking a muscular stand against violent, Islamic fundamental- ism, for advocating religious liberty


throughout the world, for not kowtow- ing to New Age, multiculturalist views on a range of issues (including global warming), and for having a strong affection for the United States. In Without Roots, a book that details the exchange of ideas between him and Marcello Pera, president of the Italian senate, the man who would become Pope wrote — evok- ing the great 19th-century author Alexis de Tocqueville — that the “unstable and fragmentary system of rules on which, to outward appear- ances, [American] democracy is founded” manage to work because of America’s “thriving Protestant Christian-inspired” religious and moral convictions.


His argument is, politically at least, almost libertarian in its empha- sis that the order created was spon- taneous and not the result of an imposed structure. He explained to Sen. Pera: “In this regard, I would like to quote a signifi cant phrase from de Tocqueville: ‘Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot’ . . . You quote an expression of John Adams that conveys a similar thought; namely, that the American


Constitution ‘was made only for a moral and a religious people.’ “In the United States, too, [as in Europe] secularization is proceeding at an accelerating pace, and the con- fl uence of many different cultures disrupts the basic Christian consen- sus. 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.”


One senses his pride at noting that in America the familiar antipathy between Protestants and Catholics is disappearing. American evangelicals, he writes, now see Catholicism as a bulwark against the secularism that threatens everyone, and the Pope sees the American example as a bea- con to the rest of the world.


The World and the World Hereafter


The Pope’s visit to America also has strategic importance, as the Church races to solidify its position against Islam worldwide.


It is often said that Islam is


Mel Gibson Retains His Passion for the Old Ways Dissenters have been accusing


the Vatican of discarding its core values and precious traditions ever since the Roman Catholic Church began saying Mass in non- Latin languages.


America’s most famous dissenter is actor-director Mel Gibson of The Passion of the Christ fame, who is building his own 400-seat church, Holy Family, near his home in Malibu, Calif. He built the church so he could hear the Mass celebrated the old way.


Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, is a sedevacanist — from the Latin sede vacante (“the see is vacant”).


The elder Gibson believes the See of Rome — the seat of papal authority — has actually been “empty” since Vatican II, which he ardently opposes.


Although most observers believe Mel Gibson doesn’t share many of Hutton’s more extreme


views, the actor steadfastly refuses to denounce his father. Mel Gibson’s Catholic


traditionalism wins him few fans in Rome — not when he refers to the Vatican as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”


That Gibson has his Malibu priests say the Mass in Latin doesn’t make him a heretic, however, according to a fairly reliable authority on the matter: Pope Benedict himself.


While the Pope has not made


specifi c mention of Mr. Gibson, he has lifted the “ban” on the Tridentine Mass. In fact, he says no ban ever existed.


In July of last year, he issued an informal papal directive announcing that it is “permissible to celebrate the Sacrifi ce of the Mass following the typical [i.e., 1962] edition of the Roman Missal.”


There is no indication the Pope believes the Vatican Council ever


MASS APPEAL Mel Gibson’s still-under- construction home church will feature the Latin


Tridentine Mass.


intended for the Tridentine Mass to be eradicated.


Just last summer Benedict underscored that Vatican II has been


misunderstood as “authorizing or even requiring” the sort of creative


Catholicism that, he said, “frequently led to deformations . . . which were hard to bear.” Mel Gibson could hardly have said it better himself. — B.M.


APRIL 2008 / NEWSMAX 61


AP IMAGES / CHURCH/SPLASH NEWS/NEWSCOM


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