German Papers The Faithful Are Called to Party
World Youth Day will culminate with a visit by Pope Benedict XVI, the German pope, on Thursday. He'll hold the closing mass on Sunday. An astonishing 800,000 faithful from 193 countries are expected to attend.
The German media is flummoxed by the mass event, unsure of how to report on the odd juxtaposition of a young, Woodstock-like atmosphere and an event organized by the dogmatic Catholic Church. And really, how do you report on young people carrying heavy wooden crosses clear across Germany or 50,000 people doing the wave at the opening mass in a soccer stadium?
The tone ranges from perplexed to snide with little in between, proving that even in a country where people continue to leave the church in droves, religion still draws an emotional response. Not to be left out of the fun or miss a chance to advertise, the tabloid Bild had 500,000 buttons made with a picture of Pope Benedict XVI along with its now-famous headline, "We are Pope." Unlike condoms, the buttons will be distributed for free in Cologne.
World Youth Day, notes the conservative Die Welt, is propelling Cologne back to its glory days. "For a week Cologne is once again what it once was in the Middle Ages: one of the biggest places of pilgrimage in the Christian world, now fulfilled with the enthusiastic faith of hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world." But the writer warns that one shouldn't expect any modern surprises from the pope. "That would be naive. This pope sees himself as the faithful executor of his predecessor's will." Indeed although the Catholic and Protestant churches have gotten closer in societal-political terms, "theologically, they stand before a precipice."
Meanwhile, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung raises its finger, clucking "one must warn against a misunderstanding of the World Youth Day motto: 'We have come to worship Him.' The words of the three wise men refer, even today, to Christ, and not the pope, whatever his name might be."
The financial daily Handelsblatt observes that "there's a huge gap between the often very negative published opinions and the joyful, full-of-faith youth in Cologne. Because the Catholic Church presents itself as young and happy, the critics just look churlish." News reports focusing on young people NOT distributing condoms or interviews with church critics lamenting celibacy give the media the "thankless role of the dogmatic... If this continues, then Benedict XVI will have come a good deal closer to his goal" of attracting people in agnostic Germany back to the faith.
Some critics just look foolish, like the Financial Times Deutschland, which, in what has to be one of its oddest editorials ever, talks about teen-age stars and masturbation. It begins by poking fun at Benedict's star quality and noting that he has become something of a "pin-up pope." "We've all done it: hung up posters of stars over our beds. Mooned over them. And were ashamed later on," the paper writes. Then it mentions that this week, the German teenie magazine "Bravo" isn't featuring a hunky boy band or scantily clad singer on its inside poster. Rather, this week's pin-up is the 78-year old Benedict. The writer then says that while teenagers may have masturbated over previous "Bravo" posters, there's no need to worry about that this time. Still, he amusedly points out that the pope is just a few pages away from advice columns on teenage sex.
