Youth gather for 'Catholic Woodstock'

[DemsUnite]

When Pope Benedict XVI takes the stage on Sunday to perform mass before hundreds of thousands of young Catholics in the culmination of World Youth Day celebrations in Cologne, he's likely to feel a little out of his element.

Whereas Pope John Paul II reveled in the attention of millions, working the crowd like a rock star, his successor's reputation as a reserved and rigid defender of the faith has left many wondering whether he'll be able to connect to the future of the Roman Catholic Church in the same way, sparking the sort of long-term commitment to the faith that the church desperately needs.

"We will have to wait see whether Pope Benedict XVI can imitate that," says Siegfried Wiedenhofer, a Frankfurt theology professor who studied under the pope when he was a theology professor in Bonn in the 1960s and remains friends with him to this day. "I would say that through his unpretentiousness and his warm personality he will be able to fulfill the role. But it's not one in which he feels comfortable."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20050819/wl_csm/ojamboree;_ylt=Ao4GTcW9mPNcMa2XxPik5E2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b3JuZGZhBHNlYwM3MjE-

[Ian David]

1. How many will get heat stroke, and how many struck by lightning?

Gawd seems to have a low-threshold right now.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. Catholic Woodstock?

All the sex of a regular Woodstock, with none of the contraceptives.

[VegasWolf]

3. None of the sex, none of the drugs, a few religious songs. Woodstock?!?

[Kelvin Mace]

9. You don't know Catholic youth

the way i do.

The sex, drugs and alcohol IS present.

[VegasWolf]

11. Sure I do, I was one! I was one of the bad ones. I was a leader

of bad ones.

[Karenina]

13. Actually they are rather surreptitious about it

and are careful not to be seen patronizing the kiosks. On my bike tonight I actually met some Americans from Woodstock, N.Y. They were chaperoned. Every 2 hours or so 15-50 kids pass under my window, logoed backpacks and flags waving, hooting and hollering. The French, Italians and Brazilians are in the 'hood. Every Catholic church (and THEY are EVERYWHERE) has several HUNDRED kids milling about on the plazas. There were 800,000 (that is the population of this city) in Marienfeld cheering the Pope on. What a circus!

[Orsino]

4. "Catholic Woodstock" is an oxymoron. n/t

Gathering to celebrate The Man is antithetical to anything anyone wanted Woodstock to stand for.

[The Blue Knight]

5. A "Catholic Woodstock"

Rofl. Oxymoron indeed. Good call Orsino.

[4_Legs_Good]

6. My favorite image from the Woodstock movie

is when the nun is walking in and waves the camera the peace sign.

Ahhhh, those were the days!

david

[Rambis]

7. 15 year old girls sleepin in a field, never shoulda happened!

Just say no to Catholic Woodstock-

[K-W]

8. Does that make Ratzinger the Catholic Jimmy Hendrix? EOM

[Orsino]

10. Complete with a screaming, feedback-laden version...

...of "Deutschland, Uber Alles."

[HockeyMom]

12. Pope Benedict is joining the ranks of

Falwell, Dobson and Perkins.

No thank you.

[fshrink]

14. Gimme an "F"!