Al Baker, in the April 11th issue of The New York Times, told us the pope was to arrive at New York’s Kennedy Airport on Friday morning, and will offer Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Saturday morning, with a youth event at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers that evening. On Sunday, he will visit ground zero and will celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium.

In case of rain, Sewell Chan, in an April 12th article, tells us 100,000 ponchos will be on hand in the Bronx, and three Polish nuns will have dusted off a gold and silver garment, hand-woven more than a century ago, for the pontiff to wear at the Basilica of the National shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the capital.

If you can’t cough up your name, address, date of birth, a government-issued photo identification, forget about being admitted to the Yankee Stadium Mass.

There’s an army of high-ranking clergy, Hollywood producers and veterans of political advance teams, who will communicate in New York via two-way radios that double as cellphones, to keep order and ensure safety for all concerned..

Chan ponders the question: How will 530 priests distribute communion to 57,000 people in 14 minutes? Numbers: We do so like to count ourselves, don’t we? Gives us a sense of security, of pride, perhaps?

The numbers do not compose an undivided whole. First, there is the right-wing group, conservative to the core, faithful to every direction emanating from the Vatican.

On the left, there are the liberals, respectful to Rome, but on the fringe, such as the 35,000 members of Voice of the Faithful, who have drawn up the following petition, because the pope has scheduled no discussions or listening sessions with the ordinary laity.

Who is this pope, our august visitor? Do we know him? Does he know us? Georgie Anne Geyer, in her April 10th column, referred to the startling contradiction found in the pope’s reputation before and after his rise to the papacy –from “God’s Rottweiler” to a sweet, gentle and loving man, so popular with youth that he fills the plaza before St. Peter’s with more worshippers than did Pope John Paul.

Despite the disagreements flowing across to the Tiber from our shores, the pope paid off $1.5 billion from damages incurred by the clergy sex scandals, according to Geyer.

This is news to me, and possibly to the majority of Catholics. After considering the fact that the major financial support for the Vatican comes from the United States, it’s the bread’s returning on the waters.

Furthermore, had Rome acted promptly and compassionately in 1984, when Jason Berry, author of Lead Us Not Into Temptation, first heard reports of the scandal of sexual abuse of boys by a priest in rural Louisiana, chances are excellent that the lawsuits, prompted by the coverups and indifference to the children abused, would never have reached today’s proportion, fueled by anger and determination of revenge on the part of many parents.

It is this continuous scandal that prompts me to compare the pope’s visit for countless Catholics as a kind of wake for lost trust in our leaders, along with a deep hope for a renewed resurrection of Christ-like values. Interestingly, Geyer’s article refers to Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body that grants absolutions and issues decisions on maters of conscience, who suggested in a interview with the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, that, yes, the seven deadly personal sins are fine, but let us think beyond them Because of globalization, he said, the “social consequences of sin are far broader and more destructive.”

More destructive than children, so traumatized by rape they withdraw into a safe world where no one can reach them? Wander around from class to class, unable to concentrate, then drop out of school completely? And what about the suicides? If Rome really cared about these children, now grown up, she would have scheduled at least a month in the United States, with no parades or grand Masses, only simple Masses and schedules for meetings with the laity from coast to coast.

Back in 1939, Bishop Sheen gave a series of addresses, later published in a book, The Seven Capital Sins, which he connected with Jesus’ last words on the Cross.

If we Catholics could eliminate those sins from our lives, we would be saints, and globalization would do just fine.

Just when I thought I had explored every conceivable repercussion from the clergy abuse scandal, Mr. Des McGrath of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia sent an e-mail that tossed me into such a deep, brown study, I’ve never fully emerged from it, never fully assessed the dire consequences of his observations, published on this site in January, 2008.

I have come to the view that the institutional Church is mostly preoccupied with its own image's culture and privilege, to the detriment of the people of God. An overwhelming Eurocentric cultural conservatism, reflexively hostile to any contemporary ideas which may hinder its perceived interests, seems to take priority over the love and care of the people. Those ugly stories of patriarchy, the horrors of child abuse and the abuse of Sisters by the African clergy push me to the margins of the Church. The trouble for cradle Catholics, such as me, tend to view these issues through the same distorted lens as does the institutional Church. It takes a good deal of reflection and insight to recognize how wrong this is. People outside the Church easily recognize its dysfunction, whereas we Catholics are often reluctant to face the truth. Gregorian chant and the Tridentine rite of the Mass pale into insignificance when you consider these issues.

Often, since receiving McGrath’s e-mail, I have stropped to consider how insidiously the scandalous indifference on the part of too many of the Magisterium has infiltrated into the hearts and minds of the laity, as will be evidenced in the next few days when pomp and circumstance will rule the papal visit. Those holding wakes for the dying Church of the little people will gather in lonely places.

Lord, please help us to rejoice in the holiness of this Church of ours, with its history of saints, canonized or not, a Church that has given millions shelter from harm, and spiritual gifts beyond number. We will celebrate and be glad.

We beg You to bless us with the grace of wisdom, courage to face the real problems in this Church we love, and the energy to struggle and to pray for a Risen Church tomorrow, more resembling that of Your first disciples. Amen.

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