(Photo Source: Salon.com)
Bush Owes Benedict
Pope Benedict XVI is flying to America this week to meet, presumably, American Catholics (my original tribe), but he will also reunite with the “closet Catholic” (see Daniel Burke’s incisive article “A Catholic Wind in the White House” in Sunday’s Washington Post) President, George XLIII (Bush 43, if you don't want to do the Roman numeral math). They are friends from way back in 2004, when then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition, but we won’t hold that against him) in Rome sent a letter to American bishops, instructing them to have their priests deny communion to certain Catholic politicians who favored abortion - and any parishioners who voted for them. Now, it so happened that the most prominent pro-choice American Catholic politician back then was Democratic Senator John Kerry, who was vying with George XLIII to take the White House away from the Republicans. You know the rest of the story. The point is, in their pews on Sundays back in 2004, many Catholics took away the message – whatever that stuff about “an obstinate persistence in grave sin” – that they should vote for George W. Bush.
Reflecting on Kerry's defeat, Sidney Blumenthal wrote of the Bush-Benedict alliance in "Holy Warriors" in Salon.com in 2005, saying "Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote." It should be essential background for this visit in another Presidential election year:
Bush has already returned the favor, making a pilgrimage to Pope Benedict last June. At the time, the Pope had a full list of issues to take up with the President, including the war in Iraq and the plight of Christians in the Middle East. No doubt these items will still be on the agenda. But readers wanting to put in their two cents (asking, for example, “how come France, which didn’t invade Iraq, just announced that it’s taking in hundreds of Iraqi Christians, when America has taken in only 3,000 of the up to 4 million displaced Iraqis?”) can contact the White House Chief of Staff, Anita McBride, who is eager to answer questions about the Pope’s visit.
Don't Expect an Act of Contrition
Religion is on the minds of the Democratic candidates too, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continuing to fight it out in the arena – even on Sundays – until there’s only one gladiator-Democrat left to face 'Maverick' McCain. But why does Obama get all the grief, whether it’s over his congregational ties to Reverend Wright or his family ties to Islam, when McCain slides by with his chums on the fundamentalist evangelical right? Will the Pope meet with Republican presidential contender John McCain, and will he mention McCain endorser John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “The Great Whore?” Or has the Pope’s own membership in the Hitler Youth (though we won’t hold that against him either) made him skittish about throwing stones?
Actually, no. This pope is not shy about in-your-face confrontation over religion, as we’ve seen with his sometimes maladroit pronouncements on Islam. But with Benedict's list of “new” Seven Deadly Sins, it's just too bad that George W. Bush is not an actual Catholic. Otherwise, Benedict might have heard his confession. Consider:
The agenda should be full. But, Mein Papst, don’t dare tell Catholics how to vote (we wouldn't want a repeat of your 2004 Kerry-slam or the more recent February 2008 Spanish episcopal instruction on how to vote). Maybe just sitting with the radioactively unpopular Bush will be enough to send American Catholics back into the arms of whichever Democrat emerges from the Coliseum.
Bush Owes Benedict
Pope Benedict XVI is flying to America this week to meet, presumably, American Catholics (my original tribe), but he will also reunite with the “closet Catholic” (see Daniel Burke’s incisive article “A Catholic Wind in the White House” in Sunday’s Washington Post) President, George XLIII (Bush 43, if you don't want to do the Roman numeral math). They are friends from way back in 2004, when then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition, but we won’t hold that against him) in Rome sent a letter to American bishops, instructing them to have their priests deny communion to certain Catholic politicians who favored abortion - and any parishioners who voted for them. Now, it so happened that the most prominent pro-choice American Catholic politician back then was Democratic Senator John Kerry, who was vying with George XLIII to take the White House away from the Republicans. You know the rest of the story. The point is, in their pews on Sundays back in 2004, many Catholics took away the message – whatever that stuff about “an obstinate persistence in grave sin” – that they should vote for George W. Bush.
Reflecting on Kerry's defeat, Sidney Blumenthal wrote of the Bush-Benedict alliance in "Holy Warriors" in Salon.com in 2005, saying "Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote." It should be essential background for this visit in another Presidential election year:
President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season. About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops...Once elevated to the infallible papacy, Pope Benedict proceeded to clean house in the US Catholic Church. As the conservative American Spectator gloated in 2005: "'Pope Benedict knows better than any one else who the trouble makers are in the United States, and he knows who has worked against the Church's teachings there,' says an ordained source at the Vatican. 'You will be seeing changes soon'." His victims included liberal Jesuit editors and recalcitrant bishops.
Bush has already returned the favor, making a pilgrimage to Pope Benedict last June. At the time, the Pope had a full list of issues to take up with the President, including the war in Iraq and the plight of Christians in the Middle East. No doubt these items will still be on the agenda. But readers wanting to put in their two cents (asking, for example, “how come France, which didn’t invade Iraq, just announced that it’s taking in hundreds of Iraqi Christians, when America has taken in only 3,000 of the up to 4 million displaced Iraqis?”) can contact the White House Chief of Staff, Anita McBride, who is eager to answer questions about the Pope’s visit.
Don't Expect an Act of Contrition
Religion is on the minds of the Democratic candidates too, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continuing to fight it out in the arena – even on Sundays – until there’s only one gladiator-Democrat left to face 'Maverick' McCain. But why does Obama get all the grief, whether it’s over his congregational ties to Reverend Wright or his family ties to Islam, when McCain slides by with his chums on the fundamentalist evangelical right? Will the Pope meet with Republican presidential contender John McCain, and will he mention McCain endorser John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “The Great Whore?” Or has the Pope’s own membership in the Hitler Youth (though we won’t hold that against him either) made him skittish about throwing stones?
Actually, no. This pope is not shy about in-your-face confrontation over religion, as we’ve seen with his sometimes maladroit pronouncements on Islam. But with Benedict's list of “new” Seven Deadly Sins, it's just too bad that George W. Bush is not an actual Catholic. Otherwise, Benedict might have heard his confession. Consider:
1. “Thou shall not pollute the earth” – will the Pope convince Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol?Then again, Bush has never admitted to the American public or to the world that he was wrong about anything. No absolution if you are not truly contrite.
2. Genetic manipulation – “Sorry, your Holiness, but gotta check with Monsanto on that one.”
3. Accumulating excessive wealth – has the Pope cleared the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?
4. Inflicting poverty – see Sin No. 3. Also see Iraqi economy.
5. Drug trafficking and consumption – generally a pass, but there is that burgeoning Afghan drug-lordistan...
6. Morally debatable experiments – see Sins 3 and 4: do experiments in impoverishing the US count?
7. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature – what will the Pope say to the Prez on American torture?
The agenda should be full. But, Mein Papst, don’t dare tell Catholics how to vote (we wouldn't want a repeat of your 2004 Kerry-slam or the more recent February 2008 Spanish episcopal instruction on how to vote). Maybe just sitting with the radioactively unpopular Bush will be enough to send American Catholics back into the arms of whichever Democrat emerges from the Coliseum.