From the editor’s desk

How the Pope can help America

There are two messages the American Catholic Church is likely to hear from Pope Benedict XVI during his visit next week to Washington and New York. The first is to remain true to itself, to its distinct traditions, beliefs and values, in the face of the temptations of secularisation, materialism and relativism. The second is not to be afraid to claim its proper place in the mainstream of American life and thought, from which it has sometimes liked to keep a certain distance. It has, to borrow a boxing expression, been punching below its weight as the largest Christian denomination, with the formal allegiance of a quarter of the population - and, thanks to immigration in the South, growing rapidly.

The Pope will inevitably wag a finger of disapproval at America's high rate of abortion, as his predecessors have done. But he has indicated recently that he understands that abortion is often the tragic result of a personal crisis rather than an act of wanton homicide. The American Church and its leaders need to be called back to the "seamless robe" argument of the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, which set abortion in the context of a series of interconnected pro-life issues ranging from the lack of health care that affects more than 40 million of America's poorest, to nuclear weapons proliferation and capital punishment. To which can be added, in the twentyfirst century, climate change, the combating of HIV-Aids, and unjust trading and financial arrangements between rich nations and poor. They are all threats to human life.

These are mainstream issues rather than specifically Catholic ones, but issues where American society needs the moral influence of its largest Church. Unusually, America seems open to that message: polls suggest that many non-Catholics look up to the Catholic Church while recognising the danger of a spiritual and moral void in national life. The clerical childabuse scandal has left a crisis of debt in many dioceses, five of which have had to sue for bankruptcy, but public opinion has apparently been able to separate its disgust at what actually happened from the general regard it still has for the Church. It would be a pity if the Pope did not mention the child-abuse scandal, but a pity also if it stole the headlines.

The large and continuing influx from Latin America into the United States has more than made good the depletion in Catholic Mass attendance figures from lapsation. But this presents the Catholic Church with a particular challenge of harmonizing the "old" Catholicism with the "new", the traditional Irish, Italian and central European immigrations that concentrated on the eastern side of the country with the more southerly Spanish-speaking communities that have made Texas, for example, home to more Catholics than evangelicals. These communities have to perform the difficult process of integrating into wider society while preserving their identity, a process to which the Church can make an immense contribution.

The Pope visits America at a time when many of the assumptions of so-called American exceptionalism are under examination as never before, particularly in the foreign policy and security debates that have loomed large in the presidential primaries so far. America senses the time is passing when it could dictate terms to the rest of the world. In adjusting its global relationships to a more realistic level, the wisdom and example of the universal Church could be immensely helpful.