Pope Benedict XVI will in a few days be coming to the United States of America. The advanced billing he is getting promises that his every word and action will be scrutinized from every possible direction. What signals will you be looking for and what message do you hope for?

I am hoping that he will come across as the Pope of "green religion", emphasizing universal moral obligations of all to the God/ Land/ Human Covenant. As to Church discipline, etc, I will be watching to see if he comes across as a "conciliarist" pope, open to Church collegiality, or if he will continue in the ancient precedent of Vatican "infallibilism".

The Vatican wars over internal authority, infallibilism vs. conciliarism, are the oldest and most damaging of Church issues, not just to Church itself but to public good faith.

The Italian Vatican II Popes, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I, were conciliarists. Pope Paul VI began the encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (the "birth control encyclical) with conciliarist intentions, but along the way he succumbed to (Germanic) infallibilists, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger (?) and disregarded lay input. And so, the conciliarist intentions of Pope Paul VI and Vatican II came to an end before they got started.

I'll be looking for signs of conciliarism in Pope Benedict's words and manner. If there is no place for conciliarism in the Church, it seems only too obvious that the exodus of laity from Church will be given impetus, and the moral authority of the Church will be diminished.