Opinion: Spinning the pope

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Both liberal and conservative Catholics are spinning Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to America and he hasn’t even landed.

The website of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good offers a pre-visit briefing for journalists (listen for my question) featuring several liberal Catholic luminaries, including Father Thomas Reese, the deposed editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Commonweal magazine on its Website recycles a golden oldie, an analysis of Joseph Ratzinger’s theological evolution.

On the right side of the nave, the conservative Cardinal Newman Society — ‘dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities’ — offers a series of essays looking forward to the pope’s speech on Catholic education, which, depending on whom you believe, will either be an anathema against Catholic colleges that play host to pro-choice speakers and ‘The Vagina Monologues’ or a gentle reminder that colleges should retain their Catholic identity.

A non-ideological but indispensable source for followers of the pope’s visit is Rocco Palmo’s Whispers in the Loggia. And those who share my eccentric interest in the pope as a fashion trend-setter can keep up with the pope’s wardrobe at the site of the New Liturgical Movement, which also offers (with disapproval) a snippet from a song you’re not likely to hear the U.S. Marine Corps Band play when the pope visits President Bush:

Long live the Pope His praises sound again and yet again
His rule is over space and time His throne the hearts of men
All hail the Shepherd King of Rome The theme of loving song
Let all the earth in glory sing And heav’n the strain prolong.

I think even the pope would prefer ‘Kumbaya.’

This just in: The White House website has provided the textof the Vatican National Anthem.