The news here is not all bad, an impression which I may unintentionally have given through my first five critiques of today's Church.  The weakness of the Hierarchy; the avoidable alienation of the Laity, as it is simultaneously harrassed and ignored; the misguided and risk-averse efforts to be "political" with secular authorities instead of "speaking Truth to power".  All of this is true.  But also true is the fact that this is the One True Church, firmly based upon both the Old and the New Testaments; not necessarily the only way to God, as St. Peter and some Church pronouncements have declared...but the most direct route back to Him. 

 

A glimpse of this is found in the current pilgrimage of Pope Benedict to the Holy Land.  He is doing and saying the right things, rather than the "political" things: about the Holocaust; about a Palestinian State; and by inference about the missteps the Israeli people have made in the last several decades - over and above their absolute right of self-defense - as they try to achieve an inaccessible Israel of the Bible.  He has extended a hand of peace to the people of Islam, despite the clenched fist he often gets in return.  This is leadership.