Swiss Observer wrote:
Politics in red robes
Bush's attendance at the Pope's funeral merely masks White House
exploitation of Catholic division
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday April 07 2005
The Guardian
President Bush, a militant evangelical Protestant, has lowered the
American flag to half-staff for the first time at the death of a
pope.
Also for the first time, a US president will attend a papal funeral.
Bush's political rhetoric is deliberately inflected with Catholic
theological phrases, in particular "the culture of life", words he
used to justify his interference in the case of Terri Schiavo, the
brain-damaged woman, the removal of whose feeding tube was upheld 19
times by state and federal courts.
In the 2004 election, Bush's campaign helped organise the attack on
John Kerry's Catholic authenticity by conservative bishops who
threatened to deny him communion. Inside the White House, policy and
personnel are coordinated in line with rightwing Catholicism. Not
only
are issues like international population control, reproductive health
and women's rights vetted, but so are appointments.
Since the accession of Pope John Paul II, the conservative
mobilisation within the American church has been a microcosmic
version
of the ascendancy of the conservative movement in the country
generally. As the authority of the Vatican was marshalled on behalf
of
the conservatives, the Republican right adopted its position as its
own in order to capture Catholic votes. Now the social agendas of
conservative Catholics and Republicans are indistinguishable.
John Paul II welcomed American democracy as a counter to communism,
but he had no experience with democracy of any kind. He envisioned
his
mission as restoring the authority of the church. America appeared to
him as a liberal inferno - its citizens, he lectured American bishops
last year, were "hypnotised by materialism, teetering before a
soulless vision of the world".
The Pope asserted his control over the American church in 1984 with
his naming of conservatives Bernard Law and John O'Connor as
archbishops of Boston and New York. They became his chief agents. At
the same time, the Vatican refused to deal with the elected officers
of the US conference of Catholic bishops, who were largely imbued
with
the spirit of Vatican II.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was acknowledged as the leader
of
the bishops and represented the broad progressive tradition of the
American church. He articulated the concept of Catholicism as a
"seamless garment" in which abortion was only one among many
important
issues. In 1994 he announced a common ground initiative, entitled
Church in a Time of Peril, calling on the church to overcome its
polarisation and suppression of discussion on the issues tearing it
apart - from women's changing roles to the fact that many Catholics
did not accept most church teachings on sexuality to the declining
numbers of priests. Bernardin was a consensus builder and believed he
had touched all bases with the Vatican before unveiling his project.
But the same day, Cardinal Law, clearly acting with Vatican
authority,
denounced it: "The fundamental flaw in this document is its appeal
for
'dialogue' as a path to 'common ground'. "
Bernardin died months later and was replaced by a protege of Law's.
In
2002, the Boston Globe ran the first of more than 250 stories on
paedophilic molestation by parish priests. Law resisted investigating
the sex scandal and faced potential criminal prosecution for his
cover-ups. The Pope rescued him with a sinecure in the Vatican. In
the
aftermath of the sex scandal, conservatives under siege lashed out
more ferociously. As they saw it, their failure to overturn the law
on
abortion demonstrated that they had not been hardline enough. Thus
the
sex scandal set the stage for the rightwing Catholic offensive on
behalf of Bush in the 2004 campaign.
With the Pope's death, American Catholics yearn for openness.
According to a poll by Gallup, 78% want the next pope to allow
Catholics to use birth control; 63% say he should let priests marry;
59% believe he should have a less strict policy on stem cell
research;
55% say he should allow women to be priests.
But the Republicans are moving aggressively on the conservative
social
agenda. This week, in Kansas, gay marriage was banned in a
referendum.
Four states have passed bills permitting pharmacists to refuse to
fill
prescriptions for contraceptives. The governor of Illinois has issued
an emergency order to ensure that pharmacists fill all prescriptions.
California's legislature is debating a law to require druggists to do
the same.
By consolidating power, the Pope believed that he was strengthening
the church. Now the conservatives want a post-John Paul papacy to
extend his stringency. Others want moderation, openness and
discussion. Catholics in America do not now hold the same principle
of
hope. No one monitors the church's crisis more closely than the White
House, and no one plots to exploit its division more ruthlessly.
Religion is politics under red robes. So Bush travels to Rome.
==============
Bush is a true hypocrite who "probably" is an atheist despite his
wallowing in religious mud. He would surely prey along with a Haitian
Voodoo priest if he thought it would get another Republican,like
himself, a single vote. How many votes do you think a politicain would
get if he/she told the truth and said he/she was an atheist? Right.
Damn few. [AND there are elected atheists in the US Government.]
Some Catholics, like some other overly religios nuts, don't have the
sense to see through his *****.
Kerry was against the death penalty and the handling of the war in
Iraq; he was pro-labor and had a better record on health care,
education, jobs and the environment than Bush had. He was even a
Catholic. But Kerry was politically in favor of pro-choice. On the
other hand, Bush was politically pro-life, even though he seemed to
fail at so many of the other social issues.
What's a Catholic to do? Follow Bush to Hell where he is destined to
go?
On June 18, the American Council of Catholic Bishops, meeting in
Colorado, declared it acceptable (though not necessary) for a priest to
withhold communion from any Catholic in public office who dissents from
Catholic teaching or, more specifically, does not actively pursue the
criminalization of abortion. And they wonder why Catholics are leaving
the church, or at least attending mass.
The repercussions of this decision are explosive and daunting. A
handful of bishops seem to be accepting the notion that any one person
may presume to know the conscience of another. This is troubling to
many others.
In his most recent Pastoral Letter, Archbishop Alex Brunett stated last
week that, "Ministers of the Eucharist should not take it upon
themselves to deny Holy Communion to anyone who presents themselves."
"Because it is the source of our communion with God and each other,"
Brunett wrote, "the Eucharist must never become an instrument of
division." Apparently, the bishops themselves are divided in this
belief.
Let's face it. There is no political candidate or party that stands in
line with all of the church's social teachings. Still, I believe
Catholic Democrats can vote according to their informed conscience and
still work to end abortion -- but maybe our work needs to take a
different tack.
After 30 years, you'd think the pro-life advocates would realize their
strategy is failing. You simply cannot legislate a ban on abortion in a
democracy without the overwhelming support of the people.
Efforts to criminalize abortion are not effective. So why do the
bishops insist we stay the ineffective course that fails the unborn,
decade after tired decade; one that divides us and places people of
goodwill at greater odds with one another? Might we take a more graded
approach? Might we follow our informed conscience and vote for the
tools we need to end poverty and ignorance; the direct end of which is
this culture of death?
How we vote, or which party we support, is always an indirect action,
the results of which will never be perfectly aligned with our
individual conscience, because we live in a community of many voices.
More?
See: When the subject is life, what's a Catholic to do?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/183348_focus25.html
Hannah Arendt:
"What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of
vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other
vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true,
confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite
is really rotten to the core."
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