The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?

Christianity and Islam are dynamic (missionary) rather than static (cultural) religions and have always experienced cross-conversions. In the new world of the emergent global mind, we can expect this two-way flow to increase. But there is this difference: If a prominent Christian converts to Islam, it won’t cause a ripple: the Christian religion has no specific penalty against leaving. However, when this prominent Muslim converted to Christianity, “much of the Islamic world” is said to have complained: the Qur’anic-Muslim punishment for defection is death.

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The Question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America?

“Nothing” is my first thought: you don’t send the problem to fix the problem.

The problem is not the excellent scholar Joseph Ratzinger, or this good man in the papal role. The problem is the traditional autocratic papacy itself, of which he is the current embodiment.

The Roman pope is the structural descendant of the Roman emperor, whose power was absolute. Most of the Roman Church’s modern woes have this absolute power (in lesser forms distributed in the hierarchical pyramid of bishops under the pope) as a component.

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The Question: In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: "Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted . . . To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul." Do you agree or disagree? Why?

As I read the Pope’s 4.16.08 address to the Roman Catholic bishops of America, I became convinced that this was his formative question in composing it: “What would I say and do if I were a bishop in the United States?”

Benedict XVI’s diagnosis of our religio-cultural condition contained the expected catalog of isms – privatism, secularism, materialism, individualism, moral relativism, latitudinarian pluralism.

The current “On Faith” question suggests a central concern of the speech:
“In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted ... To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul. Do you agree or disagree?”

I must disagree before I agree.

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Sally Quinn has set herself up as a sure target, a conscious challenge, and a possible model. For all three, I congratulate her. As all politics is local, all religion is most interesting when it gets personal. In telling us that she, a non-Catholic, took Communion at Tim Russert’s funeral, she has asked us to get personal about her no matter how little or much we “On Faith” panelists may know about her. I know little, so feel free to assume much.

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