Sandro Magister sums up the Pope’s visit to Bavaria, quoting from various homilies, and offering his own analysis. This might be a good piece to pass on to the stubborn Benedict-doubters in your life who are still insistent on viewing through the lens of caricacture:
But it is the complete itinerary that reveals the vision of this pope. At one event after another, Ratzinger made this a pilgrimage to the sources of faith, for himself and for everyone.
The greeting and the prayer in the central square of Munich, on Saturday, September 9, were the overture. The pope presented himself as God’s “beast of burden,” one assigned a heavy task, but certain that his “Owner” is near and is guiding him in “building the Church.”
In the homily for the Mass on Sunday, September 10, Benedict XVI kept himself – as he does at all the other celebrations – to the readings from the liturgy of the day. The Gospel told of Jesus’ healing a deaf-mute. The pope called attention to the deafness toward God that afflicts our age. And he warned clerics not to put social activism before the primacy of evangelization. Because the real threat for the people of the world is “disdain toward God,” the complete opposite of the proclamation of Jesus and his “love to the very end.”
Perhaps an antidote to the media summation: "On a nostalgic visit to his homeland, the Pope slammed Islam." Etc.
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