President Bush Honors Pope Benedict

For the first time in his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting the United States. President Bush will be ready to greet him.

WASHINGTON -- The leader of the world's Roman Catholics has been to the White House only once in history. That changes this week, and President Bush is pulling out all the stops: driving out to a suburban military base to meet Pope Benedict XVI's plane, bringing a giant audience to the South Lawn and hosting a fancy East Room dinner.

These are all firsts.

Bush has never before given a visiting leader the honor of picking him up at the airport. In fact, no president has done so at Andrews Air Force Base, the typical landing spot for modern leaders.

A crowd of up to 12,000 is due at the White House on Wednesday morning for the pope's official, pomp-filled arrival ceremony. It will feature the U.S. and Holy See anthems, a 21-gun salute, and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Both men will make remarks before their Oval Office meeting and a send-off for his popemobile down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The White House crowd will be the largest of Bush's presidency. It even beats the audience last spring for Queen Elizabeth II, which numbered about 7,000.

The evening festivities will mark the first time the Bushes have put on a high-profile meal in honor of someone who isn't even a guest. Wednesday is the pontiff's 81st birthday, and the menu celebrates his German heritage with Bavarian-style food.

But Benedict's prayer service that evening with U.S. bishops at a famed Washington basilica preclude him from coming to the dinner, according to the White House. Catholic leaders will be there instead.

The president explained the special treatment — particularly the airport greeting.

"One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn't come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith," Bush told the EWTN Global Catholic Network in an interview aired Friday. He added that he wanted to honor Benedict's conviction that "there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies."

The Bush-Benedict get-together will be the 25th meeting between a pope and a sitting president.

...Weighty discussions aside, the talks with Bush are not likely to be the most-remembered or most influential part of the pontiff's six-day, two-city U.S. tour, [George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and biographer of Pope John Paul II] said. That is expected to come when Benedict addresses the United Nations on Friday.

"I think it's nice they're going to meet. They have a lot of things to talk about," he said. "But the notion that the world operates by the big guys getting together and cutting a deal is wrong."

Clearly, President Bush is treating Pope Benedict with tremendous respect and honoring him in extraordinary ways.

Millions of Catholics in America eagerly await his visit to our country.

Not surprisingly, not everyone will be welcoming him.

NEW YORK -- Pope Benedict XVI may not see them or hear them, but aggrieved Roman Catholic activists hope his U.S. visit this week will help them draw attention to issues ranging from the ordination of women and gay rights to sex abuse by priests and the Vatican ban on contraception.

The groups have planned vigils, demonstrations and news conferences to press their causes as the pope visits Washington and New York. On Monday evening, the eve of his arrival, supporters of women's ordination will host what they are calling "an inclusive Mass" at a Methodist church in Washington, presided over by Catholic women — including two who were recently excommunicated.

"We cannot welcome this pope until he begins to do away with the church's continuing violence of sexism," said Sister Donna Quinn, coordinator of the National Coalition of American Nuns.

...Gay Catholic activists, who plan to demonstrate Tuesday along the papal motorcade route in Washington, have compiled a list of statements by Benedict during his career which they consider hostile to gays and lesbians. These include forceful denunciations of gay marriage and of adoption rights for same-sex couples.

"He has issued some of the most hurtful and extreme rhetoric against our community of any religious leader in history, and we want to call him into account for the damage that he's done," said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA.

...Another divisive issue being raised this week is the Vatican's ban on contraception. Gay rights groups and others say the ban undermines programs promoting condom use to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In a conference call Monday organized by Catholics for Choice, four Catholic theologians will be examining the impact of the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae," which defined the Vatican's opposition to artificial birth control.

...For many American Catholics, the most distressing church-related issue of recent years has been clerical sex abuse. Thousands of molestation allegations have been filed against Catholic clergy, and dioceses have paid out more than $2 billion in claims since 1950.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abuse by Priests, said his advocacy group would not be mollified even if the pope meets privately with abuse victims.

"Extraordinarily few Catholics and victims will be moved in any way by gestures, words, tokens," Clohessy said. "It's as plain as day that three years into his papacy, Benedict has done literally nothing to protect the vulnerable or heal the wounded."

...Voice of the Faithful, a Boston-based reform group which emerged from the scandal, placed a full-page ad last week in The New York Times, costing more than $50,000, to air its call for a transformation of the church.

The ad urged Benedict to meet with abuse victims, oust bishops who covered up abuse and promote a greater role for lay Catholics in running their parishes.

The extent to which the pope addresses the varied grievances during his trip remains unknown. But the Vatican's envoy to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, said any dissent that might arise was regrettable.

"Even in the Catholic church, nobody has the right to instrumentalize the visit of the pope to serve their personal interests," Sambi told the National Catholic Reporter. "The problem is that there are too many people here who would like to be the pope ... and who attribute to themselves a strong sense of their own infallibility."

There will be dissent, but I hope the demonstrations will be more controlled than those that greeted the Pope when he visited Turkey in November of 2006.

See photos from the anti-Pope rallies in Turkey.

More.

I'm sure the protesters are poised for their close-ups. They know that Pope Benedict's visit will be followed by the media. It's an opportunity for them to push their own agendas and get attention, and I'm sure the media will oblige and give them plenty of it.