Pope Benedict Confounds His Critics

Three weeks have passed since the Pope’s visit to Great Britain, and memories of it still fill my mind, because it was a triumph few had expected. Of all the remarkable things I saw, while blogging about it for First Things, nothing more surprised me than this: on September 18th, as his Popemobile rolled toward Hyde Park—with Benedict waiving to his supporters packed along the streets—a BBC reporter, watching in amazement, suddenly burst out: “The 83-year-old pontiff has confounded his critics!”

To appreciate the significance of that comment, one has to understand the BBC. For years, it has been among Benedict's most cynical media foes, questioning every aspect of his pontificate. The coverage has been so bad that Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien felt it necessary to speak out (Catholic bishops in the U.K. tend to keep their heads down), denouncing the network’s “consistent anti-Christian institutional bias,” particularly against the Catholic Church.

Yet there was that BBC reporter, undergoing an awakening, if only for an instant.

Even more astonishing was the reaction of another commentator, Joe Wilson, of BBC Radio Lancashire: “Somehow as the four days progressed, bit by bit, the Pope’s visit transformed from the worry of embarrassment that reaction would be tepid, to the glow of the eventual warmth given off by the obvious love so many felt for him.”
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He then did what every pope is called to do: he bore witness to Jesus Christ. He did so in the heart of secular Europe, with diplomatic aplomb and mutual respect. He praised Britain’s many social achievements, but defended the Church’s liberty and faith in the public square. He pushed back against a rabid, unhealthy secularism. He pointed out that a secular society is only as strong as the beliefs that undergird it—and reminded the British of their Christian history, and why its given them so much to be thankful for.

He bucked up the spirits and convictions of the British bishops and thus gave hope to all British Catholics. He called Great Britain back to its religious heritage, proposing its citizens draw on it again, to heal contemporary ills. He met with interfaith groups, and gave new life to the Church’s ecumenical mission, but also paid tribute to the unique virtues of Catholicism, honoring two of its greatest sons, Thomas More and John Henry Newman.

And he did something else, not often mentioned: he conveyed a sense of Christianity’s overwhelming beauty. “The most positive effect of the Pope’s visit was one that even the BBC could not prevent-and that was the public display of Roman Catholic ritual at its most gorgeous and replete,” wrote British philosopher Roger Scruton perceptively.

For many television viewers the Mass at Westminster Cathedral was their first experience of sacramental religion. The mystical identity between the ordinary worshiper and the crucified Christ is something that can be enacted, but never explained. It is enacted in the Mass, and as Cardinal Newman recognized, it is the felt reality of Christ’s presence that is the true gift of Christianity to its followers. . . . For many Englishmen, I suspect, the Pope’s Westminster Mass was the first inkling of what Christianity really means.

As these transcendent events were taking place, the British public got an opportunity to contrast—up close and first-hand—the beautiful message of Benedict with the ugliness of his unbridled critics. What they heard from the latter must have sounded surreal, given the gentle witness of the actual man.

Read the entire article at First Things.