New York Times just twice. At the same point in his pontifi cate, John Paul II had graced the Times’ front page 25 times. But that may begin to change with Benedict’s visit to the U.S., bringing the message: “Christ, Our Hope.”


U.S. VISITS John Paul II (left) and Paul VI are the only other popes to touch American soil.


fl esh by more people than any other human being who has ever lived.” One thing Pope Benedict has known from the beginning of his papacy is that he cannot replicate John Paul’s visibility or popularity, and the fi rst three years of his reign have mostly proved it.


According to veteran Vatican reporter John L. Allen Jr., in all of 2007 — his third year as Pope — Benedict made the front page of The


Already there are signs that the Pope’s popularity is on the rise. “Benedict XVI is the most popular Pope in history,” says Italian journal- ist Sandro Magister. “The numbers speak.”


But Magister admits he is making that assertion based on the number of people the Pope “draws like a magnet to St. Peter’s Square . . .” Attendance is reportedly double that seen by John Paul II, perhaps owing to Rome’s proximity to Germany. Still, Magister fi nds it remark- able that the current Pope draws these crowds without benefi t of the charisma of John Paul. The throngs


Catholicism’s Charismatics One of the fastest growing branches of


Catholicism involves a form of spirit-


fi lled religious expression that borrowed from Protestant Christianity: Spanish-speaking Catholics in America.


These Catholics consider themselves “charismatics.” The Catholic charismatic movement got its start among Anglos (or whites) beginning in the 1970s, and it arose for the same reason then as today’s Hispanic version: Ecumenical interchange — and competition


— among Catholics and their Pentecostal and Evangelical counterparts.


The 1970s version was launched at several Midwest universities: Duquesne, Notre Dame, Michigan State, and the University of Michigan. The Web site of Christ the King Church in Ann


gathering in St. Peter’s Square these days come for “nothing but his plain words.”


Why Benedict Matters


To consider why this octogenarian — the Pope celebrates his 81st birth- day during his U.S. visit — is impor- tant, we fi rst need to know who he is. If there is a theme for Josef Alois Ratzinger’s life, it is one of orthodoxy and consistency.


The man who would become Pope was born in 1927 in the little German town of Marktl am Inn (“Little Market on the Inn River”). His father was a policeman, his mother a hotel cook. According to the offi cial Vatican biog- raphy, the future Pope’s “youthful years were not easy. His faith and the education received at home prepared him for the harsh experience of those years during which the Nazi regime pursued a hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church.”


faces energetic competition from the expansion of Pentecostalism.


Pentecostalism began around 1900 in Los Angeles, where the ironically named William Seymore, a one-eyed African-American preacher, fi rst began talking in tongues at the Azusa Street Revival. The fundamentals of


Pentecostalism are largely at odds with Catholicism, since the former stresses the direct experience of holiness without the mitigation of sacraments administered by ordained priests.


HANDS UP Catholic charismatics enjoy a fervent, energetic liturgical experience.


Arbor describes the liturgical experience of the so-called Catholic Charismatic Renewal as follows: “People are free to raise their hands in prayer and during songs, many pray their own prayers audibly, some pray in tongues, etc. . . . We pray with expressive or charismatic prayer at monthly parish prayer meetings, at the beginning of parish meetings, and most especially during certain moments in the Holy Mass.”


In Latin America, the Catholic Church 58 NEWSMAX / APRIL 2008


The Pentecostal movement emphasizes that the receipt of the Holy Spirit (in glossolalia or “talking in tongues” — saying prayers and making prophecies in unrecognizable languages, and in other forms of intensely emotional worship) is not necessarily incompatible with Catholicism, although the Charismatic Renewal has never been embraced by either Rome or the American Catholic hierarchy. According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, over half of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics, compared to only an eighth of non-Hispanic Catholics. Roberto Suro, former director of the Pew Hispanic Center, says these charismatic Hispanics present a dilemma.


“The open question here,” he says, “is does the [Church] adapt to them, or do they adapt to the institution?” — B.M.


Like all other teenagers in Germany during World War II, Joseph Ratzinger became a mem- ber of the Hitler Youth, and he was assigned to guard a BMW plant. But as author and priest Richard John Neuhaus has written, the young man abhorred the Nazis: “Family and Church were, for him, insepa- rable, and he clearly saw Hitler as the enemy of both. Nazism was at its heart a religious movement that, by its own evil lights, had to attack a Church that championed a ‘foreign Jewish and Roman’ faith.”


Ratzinger studied philosophy and theology at the universities in Freising and Munich, was ordained in 1951, and received his doctor- ate in theology two years later. He taught at a number of German uni- versities, holding, as The New York Times has reported, “the chairman- ship in dogma at the University of Regensburg from 1969 to 1976, until . . . his career focus shifted toward Rome.” Along the way, he learned to speak nine languages in addition to his native German.


He was a key aide to German churchmen during Vatican II, where he was a champion of liturgical


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