We begin live coverage at 10:45am today of Pope Benedict’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations. This speech was the original purpose for the Pope’s visit to the United States and its importance cannot be overstated. He has spent long hours preparing his talk and every word will be his own.

The visit to the U.N. coincides with the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You can read it here – the whole document is there.  It is short and to the point and in my opinion it is the most important international document ever to have been signed. After the horrors of World War II, the General Assembly of the United Nations came together and declared that in order to avoid repeating the atrocities of the 20th century, the world community must declare together that human rights are universal and their foundation is based not on democratic vote, or even worse, on the decision of whoever is the most powerful, but on an inherent dignity with which we have been endowed.

We will be explaining more about this on television in just a few moments (10:45am).

Get ready for a speech that will go down in history. His ideas are deep, novel, and of consequence to all of us no matter our religious affiliation.

I want to hear what you think. Post a comment. I will read them all.

God bless, Father Jonathan

Father Jonathan Morris is the author of the new book, “The Promise: God’s Purpose and Plan for when Life Hurts”

Good morning from a box seat in National Park baseball stadium. I am in the “FOX box” overlooking what normally serves as home plate; today it is covered with the papal crest. It is 10:00am and the stadium is packed. Fifty thousand Christians are here to accompany Pope Benedict XVI in his first event open to the masses (pun intended).

With so much on the docket today, I don’t want us to overlook the content of the Pope’s address to the America bishops yesterday. This was his occasion to give marching orders—and a shot of encouragement—to his local leaders.

Once again, no punches were pulled—clarity of thought and expression dipped in and dripping with kindness. That’s this man’s way.

I hate to try to summarize the talk for you because whenever he speaks, unlike other popes in the past (even the great John Paul II) his language is always simple and accessible. He gets down to brass tacks almost immediately. I think it’s fair to say that if John Paul II was the pope of television (his smile, his grandeur gestures, his warmth), Benedict is the pope of the Internet. Once you read him, you know him.

But just in case you don’t read the whole speech, below are some key paragraphs, in the Pope’s own words.

If you have questions or comments, please take a moment to post them on this live blog. I read them and will respond as much as I can.

God bless, Father Jonathan

1) The Goodness of the American People

“Indeed, the people of this country are known for their great vitality and creativity. They are also known for their generosity. After the attack on the Twin Towers in September 2001, and again after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Americans displayed their readiness to come to the aid of their brothers and sisters in need. On the international level, the contribution made by the people of America to relief and rescue operations after the tsunami of December 2004 is a further illustration of this compassion.”

Keep Reading …

This morning we are up at 3:00am to head to the Nationals’ baseball stadium for the first public mass of the Pope’s visit to the United States. Here is a note I received from a friend of mine, a young man named Mathias in his second year of law school here in Washington D.C. I’ll post more later today from the stadium, but wanted to at least leave you all with this:

God bless, Father Jonathan

Who is the Holy Father?  Before today, as a Catholic, I thought the answer was more-or-else straight-forward: the head of the Church and Christ’s vicar on earth. Today, I learned the answer was far, far, more simple.

It was about 5:20 when I had the opportunity to see the Pope pass by in his custom-built “popemobile”. He came by slowly. Inside the car’s glass bubble, this humble priest smiled and waved to the crowd, and since he drove slowly, he took the time to look at us each individually. His glance was full of life and his spirit radiated a glowing and unmistakable message: peace.

Today the Holy Father became for me a messenger of peace. So often political leaders and others talk of peace, but this man lives it. And it shines forth in his life. His predecessor John Paul II was a rockstar, and his example of faith drew an enthusiasm for Christ, especially for us, the young. Benedict’s personal presence makes a quiet invitation: to think, to reflect, and to attempt to live peace. His message has been so simple since the beginning of his papacy, and his theme for this trip, “Christ is Our Hope”. Nothing could possibly be more attractive.

Given this man’s wisdom, even more exciting than seeing him is listening to his words. And his message to the Bishops inside the Basilica was quite simple: pray, pray, and pray. And he preached by example tonight, leading the Bishops in the traditional prayer of psalms and hymns that all priests and many lay Catholics say daily.

That Christ’s messenger of peace would lead through the example of his life of prayer with all of us speaks volumes to me. It is a silent invitation that I know he invites each of us to share in our lives and with each other.

That’s who the Holy Father is: a man of prayer, a man of peace.

As I listened to the speeches President George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI delivered on the lawn of the White House, my thoughts turned to what might have been going on in the hearts of each one…

First the president:

As I said on-air, the content of the president’s speech could have been written by the pope himself.  That’s how close these two men are on so many issues.  President Bush chose to highlight the sacredness of human life, the rejection of religiously-motivated violence, the complimentary relationship between faith and reason, and the danger of moral and religious relativism.  How happy the president must have been to be able to speak with such conviction about his own core values in front of a man with the pope’s moral stature.  Here is a born-again Methodist speaking to a Roman Catholic pope from the heart.  America is a great country!

The president must have felt some degree of discomfort as well knowing the Holy Father’s concern for the situation in Iraq and the Middle East.  It seems the president did what he thought was the best thing.  The result has been less than pretty — something Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger predicted before the invasion — even as we recognize the significant improvement of conditions on the ground.  This has to weigh heavy on the president’s heart and mind.

But perhaps the beauty of the moment gave the president some relief from the tension he must be under.  Maybe having this opportunity to showcase to the pope the goodness of the American people—our spiritual sensitivity, our strong will in the face of economic, political, and military challenges, our love for freedom, truth, and justice proved a moment of personal rejuvenation for President Bush.  I hope so…

Now, the Holy Father:

Well, more on this later … I’ve got to go back on set.

Pope Benedict is now on a plane. Some have called it “Shepherd One”, but in fact, it is an ordinary “Alitalia” plane. It does not belong to the Vatican. The tradition has been for Alitalia—Italy’s national carrier—to transport the pope, his entourage, and reporters on his first leg of an international trip and for an airline of the host country to do the return trip. This time, the pope will travel round-trip on Alitalia. Maybe he was afraid of getting his flight canceled if he were on an American carrier?! Probably not.

I am waiting in New York to do color commentary on set for Shepard Smith who will do live coverage of the 4:00pm (US Eastern) touchdown. Word is already out about the five questions reporters have asked the Holy Father on the plane. One of them was about the sexual abuse scandal in the United States. Since the questions had been previously reviewed and accepted by the Vatican’s communication department, the fact the pope answered this question in particular means he wanted to tackle the issue right from the start.

Keep in mind, before he became pope, Pope Benedict was in charge of the Vatican department responsible for reviewing the files of priests who had been accused of abuse. He knows from the inside the terrible nature of abuse. Listen to what he said this morning on the plane, as reported by the Associated Press. Note that when he says “Church” he is referring to all of its members, including the victims.

It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the Church is general and for me personally that this could happen. It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission … to these children. I am deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future. We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry. It is more important to have good priests than many priests. We will do everything possible to heal this wound.

For some context, take a look at this in-depth study about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church between the years 1950 - 2002. It was executed by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Since most people ask me about the prevalence of abuse during these years, I have extracted a few paragraphs from the study that give actual percentages of the total number of priests who have been accused (not necessarily convicted) of sexual abuse of boys or girls under the age of eighteen. Here they are:

The total number of priests with allegations of abuse in our survey is 4,392. The percentage of all priests with allegations of sexual abuse is difficult to derive because there is no definitive number of priests who were active between the years of 1950 and 2002. We used two sets of numbers to estimate the total number of active priests and then calculated the percentage against whom allegations were made.

Keep Reading …

Here we go … today, I begin a stint of daily blogging on these pages about Pope Benedict’s visit to the United States.

There will be a plethora of information on television and the Internet about all of the events, but here I want to offer you something different; an analysis and discussion of the pope’s message as it relates to our personal lives and the future of our country.

A word about method. We will go against the facile approach you will see in many media outlets that will fixate on fabricated and stale controversy. They will refer to the pope as a hardliner (as did the New York Times this morning) because he actually believes and teaches Catholic doctrine. They will say he is divisive and has a public relations problem because some radical Muslims were offended by his rejection of religiously motivated violence. They will call him naïve when he speaks at the United Nations and outlines a path for arriving to a universal consensus about human rights and religious liberty. They will say he is irrelevant because many Catholics are not going to church and don’t all follow Church teaching on core issues.

Instead, I will try to summarize and offer context to the pope’s daily message and analyze his interlocutor’s responses. We won’t avoid real controversy and the tough questions, but we won’t manufacture things for our own purposes.

I will keep in mind a very broad audience — Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, and non-Christians of all stripes.

Let’s start by looking here at some data about the pope’s approval ratings, church attendance, and the spirituality of Catholic youth from a new poll released by Georgetown University. It is interesting that only one third of the country’s 65 million Catholics attend mass on a given Sunday. But just as significant, in my opinion, is that the poll found that Catholics born before 1960 — among the most faithful parishioners — and those born since the 1980s have similar outlooks. In other words, today’s youth are not following their parents, who in the 1960’s and 1970’s famously threw out tradition for a free-loving and Godless approach to life.

What data in this poll do you find of interest? What would you like the pope to talk about on his trip? If you are not a Catholic, are you interested in his trip, and why?

Write your comments below and I will post another blog this afternoon to continue the discussion.