On Benedict and British Expectations

If people had only listened to him, read his books, or ever looked at the man himself, they wouldn't have been so surprised:

Of all the remarkable things I saw, while blogging about it for First Things, nothing more surprised me than this: on September 18th, as his Popemobile rolled toward Hyde Park—with Benedict waiving to his supporters packed along the streets—a BBC reporter, watching in amazement, suddenly burst out: “The 83-year-old pontiff has confounded his critics!”...Even more astonishing was the reaction of another commentator, Joe Wilson, of BBC Radio Lancashire: “Somehow as the four days progressed, bit by bit, the Pope’s visit transformed from the worry of embarrassment that reaction would be tepid, to the glow of the eventual warmth given off by the obvious love so many felt for him.”

He quoted a pilgrim “still floating on a cloud somewhere” over Hyde Park: “It was really, really wonderful. We were just surrounded by so many different people. Young people, elderly people, more young people than elderly people, people of all nationalities. It was awesome.”

This was not supposed to happen...

[Pope Benedict XVI] then did what every pope is called to do: he bore witness to Jesus Christ. He did so in the heart of secular Europe, with diplomatic aplomb and mutual respect. He praised Britain’s many social achievements, but defended the Church’s liberty and faith in the public square. He pushed back against a rabid, unhealthy secularism. He pointed out that a secular society is only as strong as the beliefs that undergird it—and reminded the British of their Christian history, and why its given them so much to be thankful for.

He bucked up the spirits and convictions of the British bishops and thus gave hope to all British Catholics. He called Great Britain back to its religious heritage, proposing its citizens draw on it again, to heal contemporary ills. He met with interfaith groups, and gave new life to the Church’s ecumenical mission, but also paid tribute to the unique virtues of Catholicism, honoring two of its greatest sons, Thomas More and John Henry Newman.

And he did something else, not often mentioned: he conveyed a sense of Christianity’s overwhelming beauty. “The most positive effect of the Pope’s visit was one that even the BBC could not prevent-and that was the public display of Roman Catholic ritual at its most gorgeous and replete,” wrote British philosopher Roger Scruton perceptively.

For many television viewers the Mass at Westminster Cathedral was their first experience of sacramental religion. The mystical identity between the ordinary worshiper and the crucified Christ is something that can be enacted, but never explained. It is enacted in the Mass, and as Cardinal Newman recognized, it is the felt reality of Christ’s presence that is the true gift of Christianity to its followers. . . . For many Englishmen, I suspect, the Pope’s Westminster Mass was the first inkling of what Christianity really means.

As these transcendent events were taking place, the British public got an opportunity to contrast—up close and first-hand—the beautiful message of Benedict with the ugliness of his unbridled critics. What they heard from the latter must have sounded surreal, given the gentle witness of the actual man.

“Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity,” declared scientist Richard Dawkins absurdly. Philosopher A.C. Grayling called Catholicism a “criminal conspiracy” under Benedict. “In all my years as a campaigner,” said secular activist Claire Rayner, “I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature. His views are so disgusting, so repellent and so hugely damaging to the rest of us, that the only thing to do is to get rid of him.” This is the face of modern atheism.

Or, at least, much of it. Columnists Padraig Reidy and Simon Heffer wanted no part of this embarrassing intolerance, and rebuked their fellow atheists. The tone of these critics, said Reidy, is like that of “Ian Paisley’s rabidly anti-papist Free Presbyterian church, not of rational secular debate.” Heffer wrote how “dismayed” he was by “the aggression and militancy” of the anti-papal atheists, and said their antics “threatened to compromise our reputation as a civilized and hospitable country.”

But it would be that very civilized tradition that would uphold British honor in the end, allowing the public to hear Benedict’s elegant voice. The Pope reciprocated, and didn’t miss his chance.

“Although he had come with a fierce message about the vital importance of the place of faith in public life and education,” wrote Austen Ivereigh, “it had been framed, throughout, in terms and language and symbols which pointed to the value of dialogue and respect. It is this, perhaps above all, which floored his critics. The Pope’s was a message which all could instantly recognize as the true humanism.”...