Wrap up of the pope's UK trip

CONGRATULATIONS to NCR and its team for an outstanding coverage of the pope's trip to the UK. No one did it better.

God Bless Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church

It's been a fabulous and touching four days. For the first time, the British media have had extended exposure to Benedict, rather than the casual assumption of a cold, dispassionate academic and I've lost track of the number of places where commentators have gone 'well, I certainly didn't expect that'; the widespread coverage by the BBC and Sky News of the major papal events really putting on display of devotion that rarely gets onto TV screens; and the clarity of his addresses has really set the agenda about faith in the public square and the call to us all to follow Christ's example even more attentively.

In the run-up with the ever-increasing ferocity of criticism across the UK press I was getting rather worried that it would all end in tears. The hardcore atheists are never going to be persuaded by any element of Benedict's message - and while a few select remarks ('atheist extremism', for one) provoked really virulent responses, for the first time in a while I felt like the Church wasn't continually on the back foot and having to fight against deeply entrenched stereotypes. For the chance to actually ask British society some pretty profound questions about faith, secularism and society - and get a fair hearing - that opportunity has felt absolutely priceless.

God Bless Pope Benedict XVI and the UK! Listen to him! He is listening too, he, as representing the Catholic (Universal Christian) Church, is starting a blessed dialogue which may bring much wisdom, humility and peace to the UK.

Allen must get out of his Vatican bubble.

Benedict's "creative minority" and "positive orthodoxy" is addressed to the Western Church only - that is, to a diminishing 30% of Catholics worldwide (roughly 24% in Europe & 6% in North America). According to a recent survey, of this 30%, only 10% are for Benedict's "reform of the reform", and are happy with a reassertion a re-Latinised RC identity (Allen's "boundary markers").

Papa Ratzinger is speaking on behalf of, and to, 10% of 30% of the Catholic faithful. What about the rest of us?

Two-thirds of us are in the South. A re-assertion of a European identity is a disaster in Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist majority countries. And what is the alternative to increasing secularisation - a confessional state, India becoming Hindustan, Indonesia Islamostan, Sri Lanka Buddhistan?

Allen is enthusiastic about the Patriarch of the West.

What 90% of Catholics would be more than happy to have is a unifying Bishop of Rome, who, in Newman's language, would be a final appeal, not a creeping absolute monarchy.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s we thought that the rigid Roman Rite was finally adapting to local cultures and conditions, giving birth to a myriad family of Rites, such as the once proposed "All-India Rite". Paul VI hesitated while JPII and B16 have actively reversed key insights of Vat II.

True reform is coming from below and from the South.

I would also like to commend John Allen for his reporting.

Interestingly, the hard-core atheists might even have done the Church a favour. Their relentless propaganda before the papal visit ensured that nobody could ignore Benedict when he arrived, while their ludicrously exaggerated hostility (Benedict as the most evil person in the world, etc) meant that almost anyone, even a rather reserved German theologian, would turn out to be a pleasant surprise!

And the biggest No Popery rally in London since the Gordon Riots of the 18th century only served to draw attention to the papal visit, while the spectacle of allegedly progressive atheists demonstrating in Glasgow alongside Ian Paisley and the Loyal Orange Order should have brought a chuckle to anyone with a sense of the absurd.