Perhaps, just this once, we can excuse television commentators and the secular press for misstating the importance and meaning of Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis. After all, many Catholics will misunderstand it, too.

Of course, the media ought not do what they do. They see a gracious visit by a world-renowned peace-maker and moral leader to an enthusiastic flock. They report on the health of the peace maker; they measure the extent to which the followers have strayed from the moral leadership; and they suggest that the enthusiasm is a brief spectacle of garish excitement in a sad, divided flock. Then, they wonder aloud who the next Pope might be.

And, certainly, the Catholics who misunderstand the visit will not fall very far from the mark. They will respond with joy and gratitude to a man who has not just showed them signs of hope — but who is a sign of hope. They will cheer a spiritual celebrity whose personality has captured the imagination of the world.

So, what might their misunderstanding be?

The “celebrity” part.

One newspaper was told, by a Catholic, that a particular cardinal could very easily be the next pope because, after all… he has a personality that will capture the imagination of the world.

That is indeed a terrible prerequisite to put on the successors to Peter. New paradoxes immediately arise. There are all too many people who capture the imagination of the world — usually for a fleeting moment. And there are all too few who do anything useful with the world's imagination while they have it.

John Paul has captured the imagination of the world and done a great deal with it. He has deepened our understanding of so many things: our selves (“the human being is by nature a philosopher”) the family, (“a sovereign society,”) our nation, (“a nation has to have a soul”) our culture, (“different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence”) and humanity (“man is the way of the Church.”)

We should be awe-struck when John Paul visits our country. But it is not his wisdom or charisma which should inspire our awe.

The people didn't line cots along the streets of Jerusalem hoping to be touched by Peter's shadow because they were attracted by a personality, but because they saw in him a rare power: the power to heal the sick and to speak words of rare truth.

These are the gifts that, from Peter to Linus, Cletus, and Clement; from Leo the Great to John Paul the Great, have stood like a bright sign pointing to the one reason to respect the Pope. He is the Vicar of Christ. He is the Father's way of reminding us that we belong to but one flock. He holds keys that open doors our imaginations will never penetrate.

We join the voices of confusion in the media when we allow the Holy Father to be demoted to celebrity status.

What will we do if the next Pope's personality doesn't capture the imagination of the world? What if we are glued to our televisions and the next Pope appears on the balcony over St. Peter's square to great fanfare and stands there for the whole world to see… an unattractive man who looks sincere, and vaguely uncomfortable, and doesn't know quite what to say? How many of us will frown, feel inwardly embarrassed, and never speak with the same enthusiasm about the Holy Father again?

We are — all of us — members of a media-driven, susceptible to its noisy excesses and its scientifically engineered enticements, market-tested to please us and all but guaranteed to mislead.

The Holy Father himself recognizes the disastrous effects our media culture can have on our attitudes. In his October ad limina remarks to bishops of the Northwest, he dwelled on the role of the priest and liturgy.

We must remember that the priest is “the servant of the liturgy, not its inventor or producer,” he said, and later warned, “In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.”

We certainly must be counter- cultural as regards the Eucharist, which is the “source and summit of the Christian life,” according to the Second Vatican Council. We must also be counter-cultural as regards the Pope.

“For,” the Second Vatican Council also said, “the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.”

It is hard to imagine a more counter-cultural statement.

If that is the truth about the Pope — and (thank God for his foresight) it is — then we must have an entirely different attitude toward his visit to St. Louis.

We should cheer the Pope and lean out to see him as he passes by. But we should remember that we do it because Christ has given us an enormously important gift: a Church with a visible structure, a body of successors to the apostles — and, at its head, a face like ours.

And then the cheers should stop. We should pay our Lord the respect of a meditative quiet when his vicar speaks. We should show other Christians that Catholics follow Peter's successor the way Christ intended: as “belonging to the Church's very foundation,” to quote the Catechism.

Only in this way can we keep a proper distance from the culture of the media, and ground ourselves in the culture of faith.

Tom Hoopes writes from Falls Church, Virginia.