Britain awaits its first official papal visit

LONDON, United Kingdom — The Bishop of Rome is coming to town and it is big news.

The bishop — aka Pope Benedict XVI — will be making the first ever state visit to Britain by a pontiff. When Pope John Paul II came in 1982, it was part of a "pastoral" visit to his flock. 

When Benedict begins his visit Thursday, and is hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's head of state, the occasion will have all the status of an official visit by the president of the United States. 

The unpleasantness over Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, in favor of the younger Anne Boleyn, not only changed the course of history (hastened the pace of Reformation in England) — it opened a schism among this island's Christian population.

The enmity for centuries between the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church was deep and bloody. It has long since cooled down but survives in the British constitution. Britain's monarch is not allowed to be a Roman Catholic.

Benedict will begin his tour in Scotland meeting the Queen at Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh before visiting Glasgow, London and Birmingham.

The high point of the trip will be the ceremony marking the beatification of John Henry Newman. It is the next to last step to making Cardinal Newman, one of the most prominent English intellectuals of the 19th century, a saint.

A person is not beatified without attestation of a miracle. In this case, Jack Sullivan of Marshfield, Mass., claims to have prayed to Newman to relieve post-operative pain which disappeared immediately. A poet, essayist and Oxford academic, Newman was an Anglican priest but converted to Roman Catholicism in his mid-40s. This may also explain why he is being honored by the pope on this visit.

Conversion from the Church of England, or Anglican Church, to Roman Catholicism is a hot topic among those who still regularly worship in this very secular country.

It is something of a social trend among the elite. Within months of leaving office, former Prime Minister Tony Blair was "received" into the Catholic Church. He follows in the footsteps of the Duchess of Kent, the Queen's first cousin (these things count over here), a couple of Anglican bishops and a number of prominent Conservative politicians, including Ann Widdecombe.

Speaking by phone, Widdecombe acknowledge that the small "c" conservatism of the Catholic Church was what led her to convert. "The Church of England is compromising, it's not sure what it stands for," she said. "The Roman Catholic Church stands on 2,000 years of teaching, it does not compromise what it sees as the truth with what is fashionable" For example? "Like birth control."

Widdecombe was brought up in a devout Anglican family. "I come from a very, very deep Anglican background. My brother is a vicar, my nephew is a vicar. I'm surrounded by vicars. They all understood why I left."

Other converts attest to their dislike of the Church of England's compromising of what they consider traditional values. Journalist James Roberts, assistant editor of The Tablet, a Catholic magazine, grew up in the Anglican Church, went AWOL from practicing faith in his 20s, rediscovered it in his 30s while working in Zimbabwe and upon his return to England in his 40s found the church in which he was brought up too "secularized — compromised, too readily wanting to be accepted by the wider world."

In their explanations, the contemporary converts echo broadly Cardinal Newman's reason for leaving Anglicanism behind. The specifics are different, however. Most converts say the changing views on the ordination of women, and the acceptance of homosexual rights and a woman's right to choose on abortion are their main reasons for leaving the Church of England.

The high-profile conversions, dutifully reported in the Conservative Party supporting press, have created an impression that there is a huge movement of people leaving the Church of England, an impression exploited by conservative Anglicans to bolster their campaign against the ordination of women and acceptance of homosexuality, among other liberal points of view. But there is no hard data to back this up.

Figures for 2005 show that at the time there were 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, and 25 million baptized Anglicans. But practice of religion is what counts and both have the same number of regular churchgoers: a study three years ago showed neither denomination was able to muster a regular Sunday attendance in excess of 900,000, although a few more Catholics (about 40,000, according to one recent survey) attend Sunday mass than Anglicans. 

Factor in the arrival of 600,000 plus economic migrants from Catholic Poland and the Baltic states since those nations joined the European Union in 2004 and the "surge" in Catholicism is shown to be a bit more illusory.

One other fact puts the Catholic surge into context.

The combined regular attendance at evangelical and dissenting churches outstrips the Church of England and the Catholic Church.

Benedict's trip will be a more accurate guide to the comparative strength of the Catholic Church than any number of high-profile conversions.

In 1982, when John Paul II said Mass in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park, upward of 200,000 people attended. When Benedict returns there Thursday afternoon to perform the ritual, it is not expected that he will draw that big a crowd … although when it comes to organizing a crowd the Catholics still have some skills.

The still-unfolding scandal over child abuse in the church — Belgium is the latest country to be overwhelmed by it — and the pope's role in dealing with pedophile priests during his time as head of Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith is bound to take a toll. A poll for the BBC found more than half of Catholics in Britain had had their faith shaken in church leadership by the child abuse scandal.

The fact that many modern Catholics find repellent the very aspects of the church's teaching that the converts find so appealing may also diminish the crowd.

Still a first state visit to Britain by a pope is too good an opportunity to waste for those with protest in their hearts.

The 84-year old Reverend Ian Paisley, head of the Free Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, and the man who almost single-handedly sparked the Troubles more than 40 years ago with his virulent rants against Ulster's Catholic community, plans to lead a protest in Glasgow. Nice to know that the old battles of history still have meaning to some people.