The Chicago Tribune, the newspaper that did not have space to publish Fr. Pfleger’s death threats last summer, found the space to run a tired op-ed from Robert McClory conjuring up a ghostwriting assignment for Pope Benedict XVI visit to the US this week.

McClory imagines that speaking from “the heart”, the Pope’s top priorities are “its position on the ordination of women, homosexual acts, marriage after divorce, stem cell research and artificial birth control”. McClory speculates that a lack of focus on media friendly issues is what is responsible for a shortage of Catholic churchgoers. So McClory has the Pope jettisoning the missions of the Catholic Church so that he can promote the principles of the secular media and Hollywood like an episode of the Phil Donahue show in 1979 while disregarding the interests of the vast majority of practicing Catholics.

I am a Roman Catholic, involved in many activities throughout the Archdiocese of Chicago. I can honestly say, the subjects raised by Professor McClory are not the ones that are keeping people from beating down the doors trying to get into the Catholic Church, nor do they come up that often. Many activities of the Catholic Church are, suprise!, related to spritual and sacramental issues near totally foreign to the Chicago Tribune and secular society. There is also a vast amount of time spent on education, charity, evangelization, and the liturgy, none of which is of much interest to the shouting press, unless there is a scandal afoot.

Even in the celebrity obsessed times we live in, it is just not that hard to imagine Pope Benedict as a priest and religious leader, rather than as an activist for media friendly issues.