How Benedict XVI Will Make History
Another youngster asked why the church urged frequent confession. Benedict answered: "It's very helpful to confess with a certain regularity. It is true: our sins are always the same, but we clean our homes, our rooms, at least once a week, even if the dirt is always the same … Otherwise the dirt might not be seen, but it builds up. Something similar can be said about the soul, about me: if I never go to confession, my soul is neglected and in the end I'm always pleased with myself and no longer understand that I must work hard to improve …"
What the pope can say so winsomely to children, he will likely say to adults during his American pilgrimage: "Look again at the basics of Catholic faith and practice. They exist for a reason. They just may satisfy the hungers of the human heart. Give them a chance."
Popes matter in ways that challenge our conventional thinking about the way the world works. Popes no longer claim the power to bring penitent princes to their knees in the snow, as Gregory VII did with Henry IV; the modern papacy deploys a greater power, the power to propose and persuade, religiously and morally. Popes matter by changing lives and changing history.
Which, as it happens, was the only power Saint Peter had.
Read a different view on the pope's visit from NEWSWEEK's Lisa Miller.
Weigel, a NEWSWEEK contributor, is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
© 2008
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Posted By: chinese tibet @ 04/26/2008 10:36:25 AM
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Posted By: chinese tibet @ 04/26/2008 10:36:12 AM
Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???
Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.
France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !
Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:
http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html
Posted By: chinese tibet @ 04/26/2008 10:36:03 AM
Comment: Oppose France, England, Germany, Japan ,USA???
Oppose CNN is not actual report to China!
CNN's Jack Cafferty is a ignorant garbage???
Sustain the Beijing Olympics!
Tibet is inviolable territory in China from time immemorial, China never relinquished control of Tibet.
Dalai Lama is Chinese splittist.
France, Germany, England, Japan, American people does not understand reality of Tibet!
Occidental news is inauthenticity for China.
China is amity, but China is unconquerable come from threaten for fremdness !
Please see the following Web address in the concerning the photo that true of China Tibet:
http://blog.ifeng.com/706796.html