Steinfels on the Papal Visit...

... and the coverage it will produce, much of it clueless.
He enumerates five major "dramas" that will be played out during the visit, one so general and amorphous as to be meaningless, "[Benedict's] encounter with American Catholicism," but the other, specific, and precisely described indeed loom large -- the appearance at the UN; the problem of Catholic identity especially insofar as it is reflected in catholic education; faith (Catholic and otherwise, I should think,) and the coming American presidential election, and dialogue with other religions.
The OMG-does-the-Pope-KNOW-Mess-of-Creation-will-be-played? frenzy, and the whining by various beleaguered dioceses because they will not be included on the itinerary despite their concerns being more pressing than all other dioceses concerns both get a bit old.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29beliefs.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&adxnnlx=1206932522-/wwhqLRLm7c53O2f8iKh5Q

Is the pope Catholic? That used to be a sarcastic way of saying, could anything be more obvious? Is fire hot? Is water wet?
Now, however, that nothing in the world is obvious, when Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the United States on April 15 there will surely be voices in the media apparently disconcerted to discover that, yes, the pope is Catholic. ...
What is surprising about every papal visit, at least after 1965, when Paul VI addressed the United Nations, is what so many people find surprising. Each time they are surprised, for example, that the pope hasn’t abandoned the notion that all human lives, even in their earliest, embryonic phases, deserve protection and that therefore abortion is wrong.
They are similarly surprised that many American Roman Catholics honor the pope yet disagree with papal positions, whether about using contraception, restricting legal access to abortion, ordaining married men or women to the priesthood, or recognizing same-sex relationships.
This kind of disagreement may signal, as some argue, a severe crisis in church authority. Or it may be more of a norm throughout Catholic history than is widely realized.
But whatever it is, it is not new.
The most surefire satirical segments on “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” consist of quick clips of newscasters or politicians beating the same phrase into the ground. It is easy to imagine clips from 1987 until now with one talking head after another intoning about the pope coming to visit “a divided flock ... divided flock ... divided flock.” What rings false is not the fact. It is the breathlessness.
Breathlessness is always a problem with papal visits. The trouble with melodrama is that it displaces genuine drama. Caricature replaces character. ..
Breathlessness may be a major reason why, almost three years after his election, the world still hasn’t much of a fix on his personality or his papacy. [Well, yes, if by "breathlessness" you mean shallowness, insipidity, laziness, an obsession with surfaces and a kind of cultural ADD]

I found this a fascinating question : was [the Regensburg lecture] part of what the Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, speaking on a panel last Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations speculated was a strategy of deliberately positioning himself to win a hearing in the Islam-anxious Europe he would like to rescue from secularism?