Pope Attempts To Re-Christianize Europe

The cover story in Easter Sunday's New York Times Magazine is on Pope Benedict XVI's attempt to re-Christianize Europe. Titled Keeping the Faith, the wide-ranging article on the Pope's background and beliefs and on the state of Christianity in Europe today concludes:

Benedict may be right that the Catholic Church has a world-historic chance to transform Europe and bring about change. But the church's own strictures could work against that. The paradox may be that for all his stylistic softening as pope, Joseph Ratzinger's own labors through the decades, applying his life experience with such rigor to protecting and preserving the church, are precisely what prevent Europeans from reconnecting with their roots. "Think of the silencing of theologian in recent decades," said Father Reese, the former editor of the Jesuit journal America. "The suppression of discussion and debate. How certain issues become litmus tests for orthodoxy and loyalty. All of these make it very difficult to do the very thing Benedict wants...."