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I hope that by going to visit the pope I have enabled everybody to see that the words Catholic and Protestant, as ordinarily used, are completely out of date. They are almost always used now purely for propaganda purposes. That is why so much trouble is caused by them.

The pope is a very... passionate man. He likes to get out with the people, and with that comes a large security risk.

Romanists tell us that the Pope is the vicar of Christ; that he is his successor as the universal head and ruler of the Church on earth. If this is so, he must be a Christ.

It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It's clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society.

A pope going through a faith crisis would be funny to see.

Catholicism is so steeped in imagery. It's one of the many reasons Catholicism has given birth to so many great filmmakers compared to the Protestant tradition - even in America, where we're primarily Protestant.

I think it is quite remarkable actually that Pope Benedict has a sense of the variety of ways in which it is possible to be a Catholic. I think he is more comfortable with a plurality of expressions of Catholicism in different rites, traditions than many of us are.

We are monitoring very closely threats against the pope as he comes in to the United States.

Every time the Catholic Church takes one step forward, it seems to take one giant step back.