The Greatest Story Ever Told was the name of an epic 1960s movie about the life of Jesus Christ. If one were to shoot a similar biopic about the current Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, who today marks the fourth anniversary of his installation, perhaps the most accurate title would instead be “The Greatest Story Never Told.”

Perhaps no world figure of modern times has up ended expectations, in a positive sense, quite as much as Benedict XVI – and, paradoxically, few figures have been so maladroit at telling their own story to the public. As a result, arguably the most striking aspect of Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy, four years into his pontificate, is the enormous gap between “insider” and “outsider” perceptions.

This, of course, also marks Benedict’s most striking contrast with his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who was the ideal pope for the media age.

For insiders, Benedict XVI has been the pope of surprises. Elected amid stereotypes as “God’s Rottweiler” and “Herr Panzer Kardinal,” Benedict XVI has not proven to be the great disciplinarian many expected. To date, not a single Catholic theologian has been excommunicated on his watch, and his major teaching documents have been devoted not to cracking heads but rather to the uplifting themes of love and hope.

The spirit of Benedict’s papacy can best be expressed by the phrase “affirmative orthodoxy”: a rock-solid commitment to the core principles of Christian identity, along with a determination to phrase those principles in the most positive fashion possible.

Benedict laid out this vision in a 2006 interview with German television: “Christianity, Catholicism, is not a collection of prohibitions,” the Pope said. “It is a positive option. It is very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We have heard so much about what is not allowed that now it is time to say: we have a positive idea to offer.”

While Benedict XVI obviously sees secularism and relativism as enemies of the faith, for the most part he has opted to do battle not with the weapons of anathema and excoriation, but by attempting to reintroduce Christianity as a positive cultural alternative.

In that spirit, devotees of papal pronouncements – not just the high-profile examples, but the Pope’s routine teaching during his Wednesday General Audiences, his Sunday addresses, and so on – say that if you close your eyes when Benedict is on stage, and forget who’s speaking, you could easily believe you’re listening to one of the great Fathers of the Church, such as Ignatius of Antioch, John Chrysostom, or Augustine of Hippo. Benedict’s material is almost always inspiring, spiritually rich, and rhetorically well-crafted, leading some analysts to declare him one of the greatest “teaching popes” in Church history.

Yet it has become virtually impossible to communicate any of this to the world outside the small band of papal devotees, because Benedict XVI, and the regime in the Vatican over which he presides, have repeatedly demonstrated an almost staggering ineptitude at public relations.

Consider that in the opening months of 2009 alone, the Vatican has lived through a global uproar triggered by Benedict’s decision to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust-denier; the hastily withdrawn appointment of a bishop in Austria who declared Hurricane Katrina in the United States to be God’s vengeance upon a sinful New Orleans, and who regards the Harry Potter series as Satanic; the embarrassing acknowledgment that a renowned Mexican priest who founded the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful religious order repeatedly favored by the late Pope John Paul II, carried on a long-term affair and fathered a child out of wedlock; and a European backlash against the Pope’s recent comments on condoms and AIDS, including a formal censure from the Belgian parliament.

The truly stunning dimension is that in virtually every case, there was a positive way to view what Benedict said or did; and in virtually every case, the Vatican didn’t even bother trying to present things that way until after the fact. (For example, readmitting the Holocaust-denying bishop was intended to entice him to renounce his views, not to endorse them. The Vatican waited until almost a week after the announcement, however, to explain this point.)

As a result, the world doesn’t see “Benedict the Teacher,” creatively elaborating an affirmative version of Christian orthodoxy; instead, it sees “Benedict the Bungler,” repeatedly striking the wrong note if his aim is to entice modernity to take a sympathetic look at the Christian message.

To return to the cinematic metaphor, perhaps the best gift Benedict XVI could give himself on this fourth anniversary of his election is, therefore, a new screenwriter. God knows the Pope’s public script could benefit from a rewrite.

John L. Allen Jr. is the Senior Correspondent of the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter, and author of The Rise of Benedict XVI

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