If you’re looking for a little context on the upcoming papal visit, you’ll do no better than to drop by Amy Welborn’s superlative blog, where she offers us this pearl of great price:

Over the next two months, before the Pope arrives in our country, there is going to be a constant battle, it seems to me, to communicate clearly and authentically what this man is all about. There are a great number of commentors – even Catholic commentors – who are taking the stage with their own certain proclamations about what Americans should “look for” or what Americans “hope to hear” or what the Pope will “have to say” to us when he comes.

Most of those proclamations are about “clear Catholic identity” or involve metaphors that evoke closed doors, tightening reins and battening hatches.

Their paradigms are severely limited, it seems to me, because they can’t get out of adolescence – even the Catholics – in their relationship to the Church. Even the “thinking Catholics” see the Church as a fierce parent handing down arbitrary rules, so when Benedict comes along talking about Christ, they don’t know what to, well “think” anymore and they spend (waste) a lot of time trying to twist his words into, first their own definition of Church, and secondly their own pre-conceptions of Benedict.

So what we see is a lot of head-nodding, invariable commentary about Benedict “softening his image,” a little bit of sneering that faced with the problems of the Church Benedict will be content to tell us just to “pray more” or even to encourage the malcontents to get out.

What they don’t seem to grasp is that Benedict really believes this stuff. He believes that Christ instituted a Church through which He would teach and sanctify until the end of time and that this is it. And that the heart of the Christian faith is, well – faith – a deep personal faith in Christ that is marked by total trust, intimacy and love for the One who saves us from darkness, sin and death. And that it is through the Church, we meet Christ and we nourish that faith relationship. And this faith relationship – this orientation to God – is the most important thing in our lives and the most important thing we can can share with the world and the most important thing that the Church is called to share with the world.

And that what Benedict sees as the great tragedy of the modern age, both in and outside of othe Church, is not that people are “less faithful” to the institution of the Church or have “strayed” from doctrines or dogmas, but simply that innumerable forces both in and outside the Church have worked to sow doubt – real, serious doubt – in the reality of Christ and the redemptive love and mercy he offers, and that brings us back to full, flourishing life in God.

There’s much more. Read the rest. You can thank me later.