As Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to the U.S. nears, the most common perception of him could be boiled down to this:He was pretty conservative before he became pope, wasn't he?
He was old when he got the job.
Since then, he's been kind of quiet.
Doesn't seem real outgoing.
He made a speech that angered Muslims.
He brought back the Latin Mass, or something.
And doesn't he wear Prada shoes?
On this Easter, as Benedict nears the end of his third year as pope, it's safe to say that he remains something of a white-robed enigma to most Americans - including Catholics.
"I don't think most people have figured him out, that's for sure," said the Rev. Thomas Berg, executive director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, a Catholic think tank in Thornwood, N.Y. "People may be scared away, since he is kind of an intellectual. A lot of people may not know how to get their hands around him."
The thing is, the pope is probably not that concerned about initial perceptions of him. Three years is a blink of an eye in Catholic time.
But Benedict is destined to be compared to the actor/poet/philosopher who preceded him as bishop of Rome. Pope John Paul II seemed to be conducting an orchestra wherever he went, with people of all faiths and no faith following his every move.
Benedict is more bookish. He tends to write and speak for those who follow Catholic life closely. And he's kind of shy.
"He's not the charismatic rock star pope that John Paul II was," said David Gibson, author of "The Rule of Benedict." "Part of it is age - he was 78 when elected. But he also wants to lower the profile of the person of the pope. He doesn't want the pope to be the object of people's faith or veneration. He wants that to be Jesus. John Paul tried to draw people to the faith through his own faith, his own personality. Benedict wants to get out of the way, to present the faith and step aside."
The funny thing is, of all the cardinals who went into the conclave in April 2005 to choose John Paul II's successor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger probably had the highest profile. People thought they knew him.
As overseer of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was Catholicism's warden on doctrine - nicknamed the German Shepherd, God's Rottweiler, a potential panzer pope (for a German tank), and on and on.
But that image has largely dissipated, giving way to something far less stark and, for many, less clear.
"All of that was something of a caricature to start with," said the Rev. Joseph Komonchak, a senior theologian at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. "But he has been far more collegial and accommodating than condemnatory. Temperamentally, he is a quiet person, shy, an intellectual. His main emphasis has been to draw Catholics back to what is central, what we have to offer the world, what we believe about Jesus Christ."
It says a lot about Benedict's pontificate so far that his most prominent address, in Regensburg, Germany in 2006, is best known for angering Muslims by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. The rest of the speech actually dealt with the relationship between faith and reason and focused on one of Benedict's favorite themes: a loss of faith in the West.
The controversy also spurred a new dialogue with Islam that will yield a Catholic-Muslim summit in Rome this November.
The bottom line: It's hard to get a quick handle on this pope.
"John Paul had the mastery of facial expressions, the just-right gesture, soundbites," said John Allen, a leading Catholic analyst and author of a pre-papal biography of Ratzinger. "Benedict doesn't speak in soundbites but in tersely crafted paragraphs. To understand what he's trying to say, you actually have to listen from start to finish, which is very much a challenge to our soundbite culture. That's why there is a tremendous gap between what the Catholic insider knows about him and what the average person knows."
Those wanting to label Benedict can pick and choose from his actions.
If you want to see him as conservative, there's his Regensburg speech, his loosening of restrictions on the Latin Mass, a Vatican document restating the Catholic position that Protestant churches are not full churches, his approval of a policy that men with gay "tendencies" should not be priests, and his statement in Brazil last year that missionaries did not impose their beliefs on native cultures.
If you want to see him as surprisingly moderate, you can look to his many statements about protecting the environment, his meeting with dissident theologian and longtime nemesis Hans Kung, his desire to meet with Muslim leaders, and his overall desire to be a teaching pastor to all Catholics who want to listen.
Allen has coined the term "affirmative orthodoxy" to describe Benedict's papal approach. So far, the pope has chosen to explain and explore classic Catholicism in a positive light, rather than issuing warnings or sounding alarms.
"In his first three years as pope, he has tried to bring the people of the church back to the basics of the faith, back to the Eucharist, back to prayer as the center of Christian life," said George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.
It's important to note that had he not become pope, Benedict was prepared to move home to Bavaria and write books. Being a scholar, an academic, is still central to who he is.
The Rev. Gerald Rafferty, chair of the Scripture Department at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., had a 45-minute chat with Ratzinger in Rome during the mid-1980s and also watched him address a group of American priests.
"He is very much an academic, a man who studies, who reads, who is interested in how to express realities," Rafferty said. "He is quiet and unassuming, as many academics are. There is a humility in that - he is someone who wants to learn. Even now, if you watch him when he's out, he's learning, he's watching, he's absorbing what is going on around him."
But how will this shy, scholarly, even-keeled pope play in Washington and New York, where memories of John Paul II are still fresh?
Many Americans will be expecting him to address the sex-abuse crisis of recent years - a subject he's avoided as pope. Many Catholics will hope for his perspective on the declining number of priests, a challenge that will affect parish life.
"It's not just a question of what he does, but what he does not do," Gibson said.
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