The United States, Catholic Nation?

Tomorrow Benedict XVI arrives in the United States. When the plane carrying him from Rome touches down in the Washington Air Force’s military airport, that nation will be ranked at the top of the list of the countries most visited by the Popes. Tied with Poland in number of visits: nine. John Paul II had traveled far and wide throughout the United States. In his first visit, in 1979, he arrived in seven cities during seven days and gave 63 speeches. Joseph Ratzinger, also in seven days, will visit only two important urban centers: Washington, where the day after tomorrow he will meet with George W. Bush in the White House, and New York, where he will give 11 speeches. But of those, at least two provoke special interest. We refer to the April 17th speech in Washington, in which he will address the representatives of Judaism, Islam and other religions; and that of April 18th, in New York, before the General Assembly of the United Nations.

In Ratisbona, Benedict XVI denounced as capital errors of today’s world, the separation of church and state, that of which he accused Islamism, and the absolutism of reason to the detriment of faith, which in turn he attributed to the dominant culture in Europe and America. From the rostrum of the United Nations, one could bet that he will take it one step further: he will offer the world the grammar of peace founded around natural law, around the inviolable rights sculpted in the conscience of every man, and in the Universal Declaration, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. The Roman Church has strongly opposed the military attack in Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Benedict XVI has also done this. But now he doesn’t pressure for the withdrawal of the troops. He wants them to stay there in a peace mission, also in defense of the Christian minority.

With the republican presidents, from Reagan to the two Bushes, the Roman Church has found itself in better tune than with the democratic Clinton, precisely because the former have dedicated themselves to defending the right to life beginning with the first instant of conception, and to promoting religious freedom in the world. In Cairo in 1994 and Peking in 1995, the two international conferences convened by the U.N. about the population question and about women, both with Clinton as president, the delegation of the Holy See fought tenaciously in debates against the United States and Europe who want to provide incentives for abortion to reduce births in poor countries.

Nonetheless, the Holy See continues giving credit and support to the United Nations as a peaceful tool for the solution of international controversies. The Vatican is present in the U.N. as a “permanent observer”. It doesn’t vote, but it has the right to speak and to answer. A campaign to separate the Holy See from the U.N. was orchestrated some years ago by nongovernmental organizations interested in birth control and irritated by the Vatican opposition in the matter, but this had the opposite effect. In July of 2004, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously approved a resolution that not only confirmed, but reinforced the presence of the Holy See in the organization.

From the rostrum of the United Nations, Benedict XVI will speak to the entire world, in which catholics are less than one-sixth of the population. Not even in the United States are the members of the Catholic Church a majority, since in the 50 states and the federal district, 67.5 million catholics live among a total of 300 million habitants. However, they are a notorious group. According to a poll of the “Pew Forum”, the atheists and agnostics there are 1.6 and 2.4 percent, nonetheless in the midsts of communication they appear to be much more numerous and vociferous. The most important piece of information in the poll is something else. It has to do with the very high number of American citizens that pass from one religious denomination to another. Forty-four percent of Americans over 18 have changed their religious affiliation including more than once, or have passed from skepticism to creed, or vice versa.

Among the protestant denominations, to which belong about half of the Americans, the ones of “liberal” orientation referring to individual rights are in clear decrease. While the evangelical denominations grow, some of strongly antipapist tradition, many of them have nowadays brought themselves nearer to the Roman Church in the name of the common battle for the defense of life. Among American citizens raised in the Catholic Church, one out of every three has left. But this loss has been compensated for by the acquisition of new converts and by the arrival of many Catholic immigrants from various countries, especially from Latin America. An example of this is Dallas, where twenty years ago the Catholics were 200,000 and today are more than a million, the majority arrivals from Mexico. For the Pope, the United States is a land of promise, and for this, justifies his visit of six days.