The Pope Has Left the USA- What is Next?

How to put into action what happened with Pope Benedict's visit is now the job at hand.

Often we do not have a great job as Catholics here in the USA of implmenting plans of action. That is partly to do with the fact that it will done differently, if at all, in 119 individual Dioceses. In reality for all the talk of a United States Catholic Church it is truly up to the local Bishop.

Amy Welborn has a challenging article on "What is next" at Come and Gone?

I totally agree with this part and I have a idea of what Conference she is talking about:
I think in these present confused times, there are just a lot of missing links that Benedict is trying to help us refit.
Two examples.
A conference was recently held in which many involved in Catholic ministry, ordained and lay, came together to contemplate the future. The focus of the discussions and papers and conclusions was all on, well..ministry. How can we make members of the Church more aware of and appreciative of lay ministry? How can we interest people in lay ministry? What structural changes need to happen?

Could, perhaps, a pastoral letter be written to highlight these issues?

Thousands of people. Good-hearted, faithful people. Challenging each other, not to go out and evangelize, but to revision, refashion, and think yet one more time about structures. Very anxious about numbers, about energy, about the Spirit, but totally blind, either through ignorance or a kind of bigotry, to the new movements and initiatives right under their noses which are drawing people to Christ through the Church, seeing all of these things, somehow, as problems instead of as good news. (I wish she was more explicit here on what movements some are seeing as problems but I can guess)

It is so ironic to me that so many who have so much disdain for the institutional Church in terms of structure and even teaching function are fixated on structure and can’t seem to think about much else.......

That is so true. I think this is often because meetings like this have as some of their leaders people that truly irked at the Church and have been for years. They often approach it through the lens of "power".