Overlapping Agendas
Things haven’t always been tense
between Bush and Benedict. They share similar views regarding abortion,
gay marriage, and other hot-button conservative issues. Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger (as Benedict was known before becoming Pope in April 2005)
even helped Bush secure the White House for a second term.
Specifically,
after Bush visited the Vatican in June 2004, complaining that “Not all
the American bishops are with me,” Ratzinger sent a letter to US
bishops, ordering them to
refuse Communion to “a Catholic politician …
consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and
euthanasia laws” – a thinly-veiled reference to John Kerry. Ratzinger
added that any person even voting for this Catholic politician “would
be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present
himself for Holy Communion.” Probably no surprise, then, that Bush
increased his margin among Catholics by 6% from 2000 to 2004.
In
an interesting twist,
Ratzinger also partnered with George W. Bush’s
brother Neil in a foundation “to promote ecumenical understanding and
publish original religious texts” in 1999. Oddly enough, business
credit reports listed the foundation as a “management trust for
purposes other than education, religion, charity or research,” leaving
the true nature of the Neil Bush/Cardinal Ratzinger venture unclear.
In
2005, Ratzinger was named as a defendant in a U.S. lawsuit suit
accusing him of conspiring to cover up the sexual abuse of minors. At
the center of the controversy was a May 2001 confidential letter he had
sent Catholic bishops across the world ordering them to keep evidence
of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy secret until 10 years after the
child had reached adult status.
Soon after becoming Pope,
however,
Ratzinger was dismissed from the case. A US federal judge
decided the lawsuit would be “incompatible with the United States’
foreign policy interests.”
Disagreements Multiply
On many
contentious issues since then, Pope Benedict XVI has disagreed with the
Bush administration’s policies, but only politely and indirectly. For
example, Benedict has spoken in favor of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, which is often at loggerheads with Bush administration
foreign policy.
Similarly, Benedict’s Vatican has taken a firm
stance against global warming, even acquiring a carbon offset forest to
make the Vatican the “
first entirely carbon neutral sovereign state.”
He has called for greater international co-operation to fight ozone
depletion, yet he has not overtly criticized White House foot-dragging
in that area.
The gloves came off, however, regarding the war
in Iraq. In a May 2003 interview, Ratzinger said, “
There was not
sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq. To say nothing of the fact
that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go
beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it
is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war.’”
The
U.S. invasion of Iraq was similarly contentious for former Pope John
Paul II, who sent a special envoy to the White House in March 2003 in
an effort to prevent an attack. The papal envoy’s
pleas fell on deaf
ears.
Vatican criticisms of the Bush administration’s military
intervention in Iraq have continued unabated. French Cardinal
Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious
Dialogue, told an Italian magazine in August 2007, “The facts speak for
themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push
for war) was a mistake.” Tauran, who has referred to the invasion and
occupation as a “
crime against peace,” also said that Christians in
Iraq “paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship” of
Saddam Hussein.
Rice Rebuffed
As such, it is perhaps
unsurprising that Benedict failed to honor Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice’s urgent request for a private meeting last month. The
Italian periodical Corriere della Sera reported that Rice was hoping to
capitalize on the Pope’s moral authority by having a papal audience
focused on the Middle East. Instead, Rice was told that Benedict was on
holiday and had to settle for a telephone conversation with a lower
Vatican official.
The ongoing tensions between Bush and
Benedict over Iraq put America’s over 75 million Roman Catholics in a
tricky position for 2008. By supporting candidates hawkish on the Bush
administration’s Iraq policies, are they defying the Pope and the
Catholic Church?
For its part, the powerful United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has taken a firm stance against
the US presence in Iraq. A July 2007 letter to House Republican Leader
John Boehner (R-OH), USCCB noted, “
The current situation in Iraq is
unacceptable and unsustainable, as is the policy and political
stalemate among decision makers in Washington … our nation must have
the moral courage to change course in Iraq.”
Dissent is
swelling up from the grassroots as well. In August 2007, an alliance of
religious groups calling itself Catholics for an End to War collected
10,000 signatures for an online petition “urging leaders to commit to a
responsible withdrawal of U.S. troops.”
Sister Simone Campbell of the
national Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK said, “Church leaders
and individual Catholics have opposed U.S. policy in Iraq since before
the war began,” adding that the petition “lets
thousands of Catholics
unite to speak out even more strongly for an end to the violence and
occupation.”
In other words, being dovish on Iraq might help the
next Democratic presidential contender win Roman Catholic votes.
Whether the current front-runners qualify for that distinction,
however, is another matter.
Writings 
The Vatican’s recent snub of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is only the latest salvo in the battle between Pope Benedict XVI and President George W. Bush. 
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One might well remember that at the height of clerical pedophelia in the world, It was with the Pope's specific help and good will that George Bush came to power. And now that the writing has been truly on the wall , and that the Pope has received the overwhelming number of negative messages from his agents across the world, he wants to detach himself belatedly from what has happened on his watch.
Before the elections he got his bishops to vote against John Kerry -- the rationale put about at the time was that John Kerry was pro-choice on abortion whereas George Bush was. Some people believe , however, that the Pope was really punishing Massachusettes for standing up to Bishop Law as well as the Pope's for very lax attitudes to clerical pedophelia in general and to the negligence of Bishop Law in particular.
Furthermore, the cultivation of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern , both in their sortie in East Timor as a prelude to the the war-- and the general support of Bush by an orchestrated Papal effort to homogenise Anglo-America around Christianity,is further evidence of the Pope's interest in the military ventures of the Americans. Their common hatred of Communism has seem them through so many campaigns from Vietnam to South America, that their relations , whatever the theatre that accompanies them says, are cement hard.
Finally, prior Vatican-American campaigns aside, the obvious animus of Pope Benedict XVI for Islam, as revealed quite clearly in his Regensberg Lecture, belies any distancing he now wishes to achieve before the star of George Bush, in line with Blair's and the venality of Ahern, falls out of total focus. If Regensberg wasn't an attempt at 'preaching' the tenth and final crusade against Islam, then I don't know what is.
Vatican hypocrisy is not an anomaly; it's a way of life!
Seamus Breathnach
www.irish-criminology.com