Over the past few weeks, we’ve learned quite a bit about the candidates and their religious affiliations. What a pity it has nothing to do with religion. The YouTube site is busy running videos of black pastors ranting and raving about politics, but I’m inclined to believe the beneficent sermons preached in Tyler Perry movies more likely represent the norm in the black community. Forgive me if I do not comment on these pastors but I’m a Roman Catholic who’s never attended a Protestant service. The Pope, however, is coming to New York in a few weeks. Can we talk about religion now?

Every February, the New York Archdiocese celebrates Black History Month with a special “black mass.” The main celebrant is a black priest and the choir may offer special African-American hymns, but the mass is still the mass. There will be readings from the Old and New Testaments, and the sermon will be about Christ and his teachings, not about who’s running for president.

Pope Benedict XVI will make his first visit to America as the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church Tuesday, April 15. This is a historic trip, since the Holy Father will address the United Nations General Assembly, meet with President George Bush, and visit Ground Zero. He’ll only be in New York for two days, between April 18 and April 20, and the clamor to be present at one of his public appearances is somewhat frantic. Tickets for the public mass to be held at Yankee Stadium have been allocated to the parishes for distribution.

Pope Benedict will be celebrating his 81st birthday in Washington, D.C. on April 16, and his visit here is still considered by many older Catholics who never dreamed of seeing the Pope to be somewhat of a miracle. Our popes used to be remote, living thousands of miles away and rarely heard from in any form other than an encyclical. That changed with the arrival of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, aka Pope John XXIII, the roly-poly smiling pontiff who some traditionalists claimed destroyed the church when he convened Vatican II and introduced ecumenism to the world. Fortunately, I was still attending a Catholic high school and learned that the church was not modernizing but rather going back to its origins. Catholics were being made more aware of the reasons behind the church laws. With the relaxation of some rules we were given more responsibility over our personal behavior, but just like the cradle-to-grave Communists who have difficulty with their freedom, some rigid Catholics preferred mysticism to truth in dogma.

Pope Benedict’s visit is not without controversy. He has managed to disturb both Jewish and Muslim leaders, and no doubt their bone of contention will be addressed by the pontiff during his visit.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, wrote to Pope Benedict in January expressing concern that a revised Good Friday prayer that Jews abandon their own religious identity would be devastating to the deepening relationship and dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.

I was a little surprised at this statement because I had never even heard of this Good Friday prayer, and when I did discover it in my Sunday missalette I found it rather innocuous. It reads: “Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.”

But the prayer that Foxman referred to is actually only in the Tridentine Latin Mass and it does call for the conversion of Jews. But really, how strange is that? Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the messiah and that his coming is good news for all humanity. The church wants the whole world to accept him as their savior. Jesus was born a Jew, as were the early Christians, and I believe that Pope Benedict feels that this kinship should not be denied.

On the other hand, Muslims who were upset when the pope repeated the lines of a Byzantine emperor who used harsh words to describe Islam will have a more difficult dialogue with the pontiff. In his book, “Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures,” written when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the pope wrote that Christianity is incompatible with Islam as practiced by the jihadists because, “Our God is a God of Love who would never order the death of innocents.”

I hope that in a few weeks, we’ll hear dialogue about religion that actually means something.

acolon@nysun.com