Each time Pope John Paul II has visited the United States, his hard-line message of Catholic fealty has grown a little sterner. Back in 1979, all of the papal fanfare obscured the realities of papal conservatism. Onlookers were too busy watching the popemobile whiz by to hear John Paul II's call for a return to pre-Vatican II Catholicism, cloaked in the rhetoric of adherence to the "spirit and essence" of the post-conciliar age.

By the time of his second visit in 1987, U.S. Catholics began to realize that their pontiff was less concerned with episcopal ...

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