The Pope will be here next week and has sent a message to the United States in advance of the trip and here is an excerpt from the full message posted on the Catholic World News site.
Pope sends advance message to US
Vatican, Apr. 8, 2008 (CWNews.com)
- Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) has released a message to the people of the United States, in preparation for his trip to America next week.
In his message the Holy Father says that he is coming to the US to proclaim that "Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture, and social condition." The Pontiff also confirms that in his address to the UN he will emphasize the importance of natural law, "the law written on the human heart."
The papal message, released by the Vatican press office on April 8, came in the form of a video. The message was released one week before the Pope is scheduled to arrive in the US. The Pope spoke mostly in English, with a brief portion in Spanish.
The full text of the Pope's message follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in the United States of America,
The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you! In just a few days from now, I shall begin my apostolic visit to your beloved country. Before setting off, I would like to offer you a heartfelt greeting and an invitation to prayer. As you know, I shall only be able to visit two cities: Washington and New York. The intention behind my visit, though, is to reach out spiritually to all Catholics in the United States. At the same time, I earnestly hope that my presence among you will be seen as a fraternal gesture towards every ecclesial community, and a sign of friendship for members of other religious traditions and all men and women of good will. The risen Lord entrusted the apostles and the Church with his Gospel of love and peace, and his intention in doing so was that the message should be passed on to all peoples.
At this point I should like to add some words of thanks, because I am conscious that many people have been working hard for a long time, both in Church circles and in the public services, to prepare for my journey. I am especially grateful to all who have been praying for the success of the visit, since prayer is the most important element of all. Dear friends, I say this because I am convinced that without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavors would achieve very little. Indeed this is what our faith teaches us. It is God who saves us, he saves the world, and all of history. He is the shepherd of his people. I am coming, sent by Jesus Christ, to bring you his word of life.
Together with your bishops, I have chosen as the theme of my journey three simple but essential words: "Christ our hope." Following in the footsteps of my venerable predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, I shall come to United States of America as Pope for the first time, to proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture, and social condition. Yes, Christ is the face of God present among us. Through him, our lives reach fullness, and together, both as individuals and peoples, we can become a family united by fraternal love, according to the eternal plan of God the Father.
I know how deeply rooted this Gospel message is in your country. I am coming to share it with you, in a series of celebrations and gatherings. I shall also bring the message of Christian hope to the great assembly of the United Nations, to the representatives of all the peoples of the world. Indeed, the world has greater need of hope than ever: hope for peace, for justice, and for freedom; but this hope can never be fulfilled without obedience to the law of God, which Christ brought to fulfillment in the commandment to love one another. Do to others as you would have them do to you, and avoid doing what you would not want them to do.
This "golden rule" is given in the Bible, but it is valid for all people, including non-believers. It is the law written on the human heart; on this we can all agree, so that when we come to address other matters we can do so in a positive and constructive manner for the entire human community.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Just War & Iraq War
It is important to discuss the Iraq War from a Catholic just war perspective.
In my opinion, it is a just war.
Here is the definition of just war from the Catechism:
"2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
"- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
"- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
"- there must be serious prospects of success;
"- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
"These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
"The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." (Vatican Website Catechism)
Here, in my opinion, is the response to that definition from the perspective of the war in Iraq.
The damage inflicted on our nation by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the killing of thousands of innocent people, was lasting, grave, and certain.
Virtually all attempts to defeat terrorism throughout history have generally met with failure.
Attacking terror-supporting states like Afghanistan and Iraq, where terrorism has shown potent growth, with the long-range goal of creating a democratic society where tyranny once ruled, has a serious chance of succeeding.
The care of the use of arms which US troops have generally demonstrated has not produced evils or disorders graver than that which they seek to eliminate.
In my opinion, it is a just war.
Here is the definition of just war from the Catechism:
"2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
"- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
"- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
"- there must be serious prospects of success;
"- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
"These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
"The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." (Vatican Website Catechism)
Here, in my opinion, is the response to that definition from the perspective of the war in Iraq.
The damage inflicted on our nation by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the killing of thousands of innocent people, was lasting, grave, and certain.
Virtually all attempts to defeat terrorism throughout history have generally met with failure.
Attacking terror-supporting states like Afghanistan and Iraq, where terrorism has shown potent growth, with the long-range goal of creating a democratic society where tyranny once ruled, has a serious chance of succeeding.
The care of the use of arms which US troops have generally demonstrated has not produced evils or disorders graver than that which they seek to eliminate.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Marketing the Church
A wonderful use of marketing, and a reminder of the great call of Vatican II to each individual to reach out and bring people to the truth through whatever personal or organized apostolate they are called to be part of.
Here is some information from the magisterium about the apostolate, followed by an excerpt from the article.
“Apostolate: “The activity of the Christian which fulfills the apostolic nature of the whole Church by working to extend the reign of Christ to the entire world. (Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Glossary, p. 867)
“ The apostolate: “The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is “sent out” into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, through in various ways. “The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well.” Indeed, we call an apostolate “every activity of the Mystical Body” that aims “to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth.”” (CCC, Section 863)
"Millions of people, who, spurred on by the social Magisterium, have sought to make that teaching the inspiration for their involvement in the world. Acting either as individuals or joined together in various groups, associations and organizations, these people represent a great movement for the defense of the human person and the safeguarding of human dignity. Amid changing historical circumstances, this movement has contributed to the building up of a more just society or at least to the curbing of injustice." (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, Introduction)
Catholic website drawing thousands back to faith
Phoenix, Apr 7, 2008 / 10:28 am (CNA).-
In less than three weeks, 3,000 Catholics returned to the Church in the Diocese of Phoenix due to the effort of a new lay apostolate, CatholicsComeHome.org. The program consists of a website and commercials aired on local television that effectively portray the truth and goodness of the Catholic Church.
In an interview with CNA, Catholics Come Home, Inc. founder and president, Tom Peterson explained that the ads are designed to take people to the website, CatholicsComeHome.org, where they can find answers to questions about Church teachings, and also to put them into contact with their local parish to be led home, back to the Catholic Church.
Prior to founding Catholics Come Home, Peterson worked in advertising until he attended a retreat that completely changed his life. It was then that he knew God was calling him to use his advertising talents for evangelization.
Years later, he was contacted by the Diocese of Phoenix to help start a three-week campaign which was launched last month. In Phoenix, the commercials were aired on all major television networks and also ESPN, Lifetime, FOX News and others.
After the first commercial campaign, not only did the diocese report a marked increase in Mass attendance, but over “31,000 unique visitors came to the website from Phoenix and other US cities plus 60 foreign countries, with questions, to look up Mass times, to read information on marriage issues, to watch testimonies or to order Matthew Kelly’s book, ‘Rediscovering Catholicism.’”
The commercials aired on television are produced by CatholicsComeHome.org. Before airing the ads, two of the clips, “Epic”, and “Movie,” were shown to a focus group that consisted of former and practicing Catholics, non Catholic Christians, as well as those without any faith.
The feedback received from the group was outstanding. Seventy-eight of the 100 participants had positive responses to the ads. In another assessment, the organization found that before watching the videos, 90% of the participants had negative impressions of the Catholic Church. After viewing ads one time, 54% had a much more favorable impression. Hearts and minds were changed after viewing these creative and inspired ads.
The first commercial, “Epic” portrays the history, beauty, and spirituality of the Church that Jesus started 2,000 years ago. Peterson mentioned that “many people don’t realize the history of the Church. They don’t realize that Peter – the Apostle from the Bible – was the first Pope. They don’t realize the vast accomplishments that the Church has made over the centuries.”
Here is some information from the magisterium about the apostolate, followed by an excerpt from the article.
“Apostolate: “The activity of the Christian which fulfills the apostolic nature of the whole Church by working to extend the reign of Christ to the entire world. (Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Glossary, p. 867)
“ The apostolate: “The whole Church is apostolic, in that she remains, through the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, in communion of faith and life with her origin: and in that she is “sent out” into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, through in various ways. “The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well.” Indeed, we call an apostolate “every activity of the Mystical Body” that aims “to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth.”” (CCC, Section 863)
"Millions of people, who, spurred on by the social Magisterium, have sought to make that teaching the inspiration for their involvement in the world. Acting either as individuals or joined together in various groups, associations and organizations, these people represent a great movement for the defense of the human person and the safeguarding of human dignity. Amid changing historical circumstances, this movement has contributed to the building up of a more just society or at least to the curbing of injustice." (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, Introduction)
Catholic website drawing thousands back to faith
Phoenix, Apr 7, 2008 / 10:28 am (CNA).-
In less than three weeks, 3,000 Catholics returned to the Church in the Diocese of Phoenix due to the effort of a new lay apostolate, CatholicsComeHome.org. The program consists of a website and commercials aired on local television that effectively portray the truth and goodness of the Catholic Church.
In an interview with CNA, Catholics Come Home, Inc. founder and president, Tom Peterson explained that the ads are designed to take people to the website, CatholicsComeHome.org, where they can find answers to questions about Church teachings, and also to put them into contact with their local parish to be led home, back to the Catholic Church.
Prior to founding Catholics Come Home, Peterson worked in advertising until he attended a retreat that completely changed his life. It was then that he knew God was calling him to use his advertising talents for evangelization.
Years later, he was contacted by the Diocese of Phoenix to help start a three-week campaign which was launched last month. In Phoenix, the commercials were aired on all major television networks and also ESPN, Lifetime, FOX News and others.
After the first commercial campaign, not only did the diocese report a marked increase in Mass attendance, but over “31,000 unique visitors came to the website from Phoenix and other US cities plus 60 foreign countries, with questions, to look up Mass times, to read information on marriage issues, to watch testimonies or to order Matthew Kelly’s book, ‘Rediscovering Catholicism.’”
The commercials aired on television are produced by CatholicsComeHome.org. Before airing the ads, two of the clips, “Epic”, and “Movie,” were shown to a focus group that consisted of former and practicing Catholics, non Catholic Christians, as well as those without any faith.
The feedback received from the group was outstanding. Seventy-eight of the 100 participants had positive responses to the ads. In another assessment, the organization found that before watching the videos, 90% of the participants had negative impressions of the Catholic Church. After viewing ads one time, 54% had a much more favorable impression. Hearts and minds were changed after viewing these creative and inspired ads.
The first commercial, “Epic” portrays the history, beauty, and spirituality of the Church that Jesus started 2,000 years ago. Peterson mentioned that “many people don’t realize the history of the Church. They don’t realize that Peter – the Apostle from the Bible – was the first Pope. They don’t realize the vast accomplishments that the Church has made over the centuries.”
Monday, April 7, 2008
Pope Benedict & America
The strong religious grounding our country retains from its founding has slowly won over the often cranky relations that have historically defined Rome and America. It was not that long ago that one presidential candidate had to specifically promise that his Catholic faith would have no impact on his political decisions to even be elected; something that seems unthinkable today in an atmosphere where Catholics constitute a majority in Congress and on the supreme court.
Now, as this excellent article excerpted here, notes, there has been quite a change.
The America of Benedict XVI, a Model for Catholic Europe
The agenda of the papal voyage to the United States. And a major study by the Pew Forum. On the nation in which the religions are the most changeable in the world, losing or gaining faithful each day
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, April 4, 2008 – When, in mid-April, Benedict XVI lands at the military airport of Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, the United States will take the lead in the list of the countries most visited by the popes, tieing Poland for the number of visits, with nine, and Turkey for the number of popes who have visited, with three, following his predecessors Paul Vi and John Paul II.
The latter, a ceaseless traveler, made the rounds all over the United States. During his first visit, in 1979, he visited seven cities in six days, delivering 63 speeches. The more sedate Joseph Ratzinger, who also make a visit of seven days, will instead stop in only two places: Washington – where he will meet George W. Bush at the White House on April 16 – and New York. He will deliver just 11 speeches. But the mere announcement of at least two of these are already causing jitters, after the current pope showed the world in Regensburg to what daredevil extremes he is willing to go. These will be the speech on April 17, in Washington, to representatives of Judaism, Islam, and other religions, and the one on April 18, in New York, to the general assembly of the United Nations.
In Regensburg, Benedict XVI denounced as the chief errors of today's world its separation of faith from reason, of which he accused Islamism, and the loss of faith and reason, which he instead imputed to the dominant culture in Europe and America. It's a good bet that he will go even farther at the podium of the UN, and will offer the world a primer on peace founded upon natural law, on the inviolable rights engraved in the conscience of each person, but also written in the "universal declaration" that marks its 60th birthday in 2008.
This is an easy forecast to make, if one only looks at what the pope said last February 29, while receiving the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon. For Benedict XVI the United States is a model to be imitated by all. It is the country born and founded "on the self-evident truth that the Creator has endowed each human being with certain inalienable rights," among the first of which is liberty.
With this pope, the United States is no longer held up for scolding by the Vatican authorities. Until a few decades ago, it was tasked with being the temple of Calvinist capitalism, of social Darwinism, of the electric chair, with a hair trigger in every corner of the world.
Today these paradigms seem to have been set aside to a great extent. The Church of Rome vigorously contested the military attack on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Even Benedict XVI. But it is not now pressing for the withdrawal of the soldiers. It wants them to remain there "on a peacekeeping mission," including the defense of the Christian minorities.
Now, as this excellent article excerpted here, notes, there has been quite a change.
The America of Benedict XVI, a Model for Catholic Europe
The agenda of the papal voyage to the United States. And a major study by the Pew Forum. On the nation in which the religions are the most changeable in the world, losing or gaining faithful each day
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, April 4, 2008 – When, in mid-April, Benedict XVI lands at the military airport of Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, the United States will take the lead in the list of the countries most visited by the popes, tieing Poland for the number of visits, with nine, and Turkey for the number of popes who have visited, with three, following his predecessors Paul Vi and John Paul II.
The latter, a ceaseless traveler, made the rounds all over the United States. During his first visit, in 1979, he visited seven cities in six days, delivering 63 speeches. The more sedate Joseph Ratzinger, who also make a visit of seven days, will instead stop in only two places: Washington – where he will meet George W. Bush at the White House on April 16 – and New York. He will deliver just 11 speeches. But the mere announcement of at least two of these are already causing jitters, after the current pope showed the world in Regensburg to what daredevil extremes he is willing to go. These will be the speech on April 17, in Washington, to representatives of Judaism, Islam, and other religions, and the one on April 18, in New York, to the general assembly of the United Nations.
In Regensburg, Benedict XVI denounced as the chief errors of today's world its separation of faith from reason, of which he accused Islamism, and the loss of faith and reason, which he instead imputed to the dominant culture in Europe and America. It's a good bet that he will go even farther at the podium of the UN, and will offer the world a primer on peace founded upon natural law, on the inviolable rights engraved in the conscience of each person, but also written in the "universal declaration" that marks its 60th birthday in 2008.
This is an easy forecast to make, if one only looks at what the pope said last February 29, while receiving the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon. For Benedict XVI the United States is a model to be imitated by all. It is the country born and founded "on the self-evident truth that the Creator has endowed each human being with certain inalienable rights," among the first of which is liberty.
With this pope, the United States is no longer held up for scolding by the Vatican authorities. Until a few decades ago, it was tasked with being the temple of Calvinist capitalism, of social Darwinism, of the electric chair, with a hair trigger in every corner of the world.
Today these paradigms seem to have been set aside to a great extent. The Church of Rome vigorously contested the military attack on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Even Benedict XVI. But it is not now pressing for the withdrawal of the soldiers. It wants them to remain there "on a peacekeeping mission," including the defense of the Christian minorities.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI’s Visit to the United States
This is a very important event for the people of the United States, in particular the Catholic community, and this recent forum features two prominent writers discussing what to expect from the visit.
Event Transcript
The Pope Comes to America
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Washington, D.C.
Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. as pontiff comes amid a turbulent election year. He has planned stops at the White House, the U.N. and the Sept. 11 “Ground Zero” site. How should we assess the first three years of Pope Benedict’s papacy? How has the global role and influence of the papacy changed under this pope? How has the Vatican’s relationship with the U.S. Catholic Church changed over the years, and what is its current state? What are the political implications of this trip?
To discuss these issues, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life invited John Allen, Vatican correspondent at National Catholic Reporter and Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR, and George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow with expertise in Vatican issues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Vatican analyst for NBC News.
Speakers:
John Allen, Vatican Correspondent, National Catholic Reporter
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Moderator:
Luis Lugo, Director, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
LUIS LUGO: Well, good afternoon to all of you, and thank you for joining us today. I’m Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which is a project of the Pew Research Center. The center is a nonpartisan organization and does not take positions on issues or policy debates.
This luncheon is part of an ongoing Forum series that brings together journalists and policy leaders to discuss timely topics at the intersection of religion and public affairs. I am pleased to welcome you today to a discussion on Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit to the United States.
If the interest you folks have shown in this is any indication, then the pope’s visit is sure to attract considerable attention. Now in this roundtable, we want to discuss where things stand with Pope Benedict three years into his pontificate, as well of course as what his visit might mean for Catholics and other Americans. To help us explore these issues, we are delighted to have with us two very distinguished experts…
George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center here in Washington, D.C., in fact just a couple of blocks away, where he serves as the chair of the center’s Catholic Studies Project. George is also a Vatican analyst for NBC News and a regular contributor to Newsweek.
John Allen is a senior correspondent for National Catholic Reporter and a Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR. He is the author of Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith, about the future pope’s years as a cardinal…
JOHN ALLEN: I thought what I would do first is just give you a couple of basic facts and figures about the pope’s trip, which may be helpful for those transition graphs in the pieces you have to do, or the set-up comments on your broadcasts. Then I’d like to say a little bit something about what we might expect to hear from Benedict XVI when he is in the States. And then I’ll touch on a couple of questions that, in my experience of doing media about the pope, repeatedly surface, and I’ll try to engage those. One would be what we might expect to hear and not hear from the pope on the sex abuse crisis, and then also some comments about the pope and politics, looking ahead to the ’08 elections.
But, first, some just basic data. This is the ninth visit of a pope to the United States. The first was Paul VI on Oct. 4 of 1965. There were then seven visits by John Paul II, that is, assuming that you want to count two refueling stopovers in Alaska. But the Vatican counts them, and so I suppose we have to too. And then this of course is the first by Benedict XVI.
This trip actually will pull the United States into a tie with Poland for the most-visited country outside of Italy by popes in the modern era. It is also – and here is a bit of trivia that, if you’re blogging on this or if you have to do a box on, a kind of cover about the pope in America, this may be a good nugget – Benedict XVI will be the third pope to visit the United States, that is, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But he will actually be the fourth pope to set foot onto American territory. And the way that works is this: In 1849, Pius IX was taking refuge in Naples because he had been kicked out of Rome by Garibaldi and the revolutionaries. And one bright spring day, King Ferdinand of Naples, who was his host, was invited to tour the USS Constitution, which happened to be anchored in a port near Naples.
Pius IX tagged along. It was actually a breech of protocol for the captain of the ship, a guy by the name of John Gwinn, to allow the pope on board because the United States was officially neutral on the contest between the pope and the Italian revolutionaries. The captain was actually submitted to a court martial for allowing Pius IX onto the ship, but he actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage before the trial could reach conclusion. One other footnote: Pius IX is reported to have become seasick while he was aboard the Constitution and actually had to take a nap in the captain’s quarters before he left. So the fourth pope to be in American airspace.
One other point is that there are only seven countries that have received at least five visits by popes in the modern era. The United States is the only one that is not a majority Catholic nation. I think that and the fact that it will now become, again, tied with Poland for the most-visited nation clearly is a recognition of the importance that the Holy See, the Vatican, attaches both to the political and cultural role of the United States on the global stage, and also to the importance of the Catholic Church in this country. Seventy million Catholics, representing one-quarter of the national population, the United States is the third-largest Catholic country in the world after Brazil and Mexico, and just ahead of the Philippines. So clearly, all of this suggests to us this is an important moment for the Vatican and for Benedict XVI.
Now just a couple of words about what we might expect. Typically speaking, when the pope travels, he has two audiences in mind. He has the audience of the country he is visiting – that is, the broad public, Catholic and not – and he would have sort of social, cultural, political messages for that broad audience. And then he will have something to say of course also to the Catholic community in that place, so a kind of insider Catholic message.
Now, on this trip, there are actually three audiences in mind because Benedict XVI is also addressing the United Nations on the morning of April 18, which means that in a sense he’s also talking to the whole world. And, by the way, this will be the fourth time a pope has spoken to the U.N. Paul VI did it in 1965. John Paul II did it in 1979 and again in ’95.
So just a quick word about each of these levels – first of all, his message to the world. I think in the U.N. address you will get the kind of standard checklist of Vatican diplomatic concerns, so things like peace in the Middle East, responsible transition in Iraq, concern for religious freedom around the world – the kind of standard, global concerns that we’ve come to expect when popes speak on global policy.
But I think the heart of his pitch before the U.N. probably will cut a little bit deeper. It will be Benedict’s argument that what the world desperately needs today is a global moral consensus – that is, a consensus on fundamental moral truths that are universal and unchanging that can serve as a basis for things like protection of human rights and human dignity. I think his analysis is that in an era in which you have several important players on the world stage – China and Iran come to mind – arguing that the whole concept of human rights is a sort of Western cultural artifact, I think the pope believes that the construction of a kind of moral consensus that we can all agree upon based on truths about human nature and open to the wisdom of spiritual traditions and religious traditions is a critical priority.
And I think that probably will be the heart of that speech.
In terms of his American message, again, this standard checklist of concerns I would expect. You will hear the Holy Father talk about the defense of human life, beginning with unborn life. I suspect there will be references to the defense of marriage based on union between a man and a woman. I think there will also be references to the Vatican’s concern about the ongoing carnage in Iraq and elsewhere, and the desire to see peace restored to Iraq and to other parts of the world.
Probably there will be at least veiled references to the Vatican’s desire to see the Holy See operate in a somewhat more multilateral fashion in its approach to global policy, foreign affairs.
Event Transcript
The Pope Comes to America
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Washington, D.C.
Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. as pontiff comes amid a turbulent election year. He has planned stops at the White House, the U.N. and the Sept. 11 “Ground Zero” site. How should we assess the first three years of Pope Benedict’s papacy? How has the global role and influence of the papacy changed under this pope? How has the Vatican’s relationship with the U.S. Catholic Church changed over the years, and what is its current state? What are the political implications of this trip?
To discuss these issues, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life invited John Allen, Vatican correspondent at National Catholic Reporter and Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR, and George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow with expertise in Vatican issues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Vatican analyst for NBC News.
Speakers:
John Allen, Vatican Correspondent, National Catholic Reporter
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Moderator:
Luis Lugo, Director, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
LUIS LUGO: Well, good afternoon to all of you, and thank you for joining us today. I’m Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which is a project of the Pew Research Center. The center is a nonpartisan organization and does not take positions on issues or policy debates.
This luncheon is part of an ongoing Forum series that brings together journalists and policy leaders to discuss timely topics at the intersection of religion and public affairs. I am pleased to welcome you today to a discussion on Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit to the United States.
If the interest you folks have shown in this is any indication, then the pope’s visit is sure to attract considerable attention. Now in this roundtable, we want to discuss where things stand with Pope Benedict three years into his pontificate, as well of course as what his visit might mean for Catholics and other Americans. To help us explore these issues, we are delighted to have with us two very distinguished experts…
George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center here in Washington, D.C., in fact just a couple of blocks away, where he serves as the chair of the center’s Catholic Studies Project. George is also a Vatican analyst for NBC News and a regular contributor to Newsweek.
John Allen is a senior correspondent for National Catholic Reporter and a Vatican analyst for CNN and NPR. He is the author of Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith, about the future pope’s years as a cardinal…
JOHN ALLEN: I thought what I would do first is just give you a couple of basic facts and figures about the pope’s trip, which may be helpful for those transition graphs in the pieces you have to do, or the set-up comments on your broadcasts. Then I’d like to say a little bit something about what we might expect to hear from Benedict XVI when he is in the States. And then I’ll touch on a couple of questions that, in my experience of doing media about the pope, repeatedly surface, and I’ll try to engage those. One would be what we might expect to hear and not hear from the pope on the sex abuse crisis, and then also some comments about the pope and politics, looking ahead to the ’08 elections.
But, first, some just basic data. This is the ninth visit of a pope to the United States. The first was Paul VI on Oct. 4 of 1965. There were then seven visits by John Paul II, that is, assuming that you want to count two refueling stopovers in Alaska. But the Vatican counts them, and so I suppose we have to too. And then this of course is the first by Benedict XVI.
This trip actually will pull the United States into a tie with Poland for the most-visited country outside of Italy by popes in the modern era. It is also – and here is a bit of trivia that, if you’re blogging on this or if you have to do a box on, a kind of cover about the pope in America, this may be a good nugget – Benedict XVI will be the third pope to visit the United States, that is, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But he will actually be the fourth pope to set foot onto American territory. And the way that works is this: In 1849, Pius IX was taking refuge in Naples because he had been kicked out of Rome by Garibaldi and the revolutionaries. And one bright spring day, King Ferdinand of Naples, who was his host, was invited to tour the USS Constitution, which happened to be anchored in a port near Naples.
Pius IX tagged along. It was actually a breech of protocol for the captain of the ship, a guy by the name of John Gwinn, to allow the pope on board because the United States was officially neutral on the contest between the pope and the Italian revolutionaries. The captain was actually submitted to a court martial for allowing Pius IX onto the ship, but he actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage before the trial could reach conclusion. One other footnote: Pius IX is reported to have become seasick while he was aboard the Constitution and actually had to take a nap in the captain’s quarters before he left. So the fourth pope to be in American airspace.
One other point is that there are only seven countries that have received at least five visits by popes in the modern era. The United States is the only one that is not a majority Catholic nation. I think that and the fact that it will now become, again, tied with Poland for the most-visited nation clearly is a recognition of the importance that the Holy See, the Vatican, attaches both to the political and cultural role of the United States on the global stage, and also to the importance of the Catholic Church in this country. Seventy million Catholics, representing one-quarter of the national population, the United States is the third-largest Catholic country in the world after Brazil and Mexico, and just ahead of the Philippines. So clearly, all of this suggests to us this is an important moment for the Vatican and for Benedict XVI.
Now just a couple of words about what we might expect. Typically speaking, when the pope travels, he has two audiences in mind. He has the audience of the country he is visiting – that is, the broad public, Catholic and not – and he would have sort of social, cultural, political messages for that broad audience. And then he will have something to say of course also to the Catholic community in that place, so a kind of insider Catholic message.
Now, on this trip, there are actually three audiences in mind because Benedict XVI is also addressing the United Nations on the morning of April 18, which means that in a sense he’s also talking to the whole world. And, by the way, this will be the fourth time a pope has spoken to the U.N. Paul VI did it in 1965. John Paul II did it in 1979 and again in ’95.
So just a quick word about each of these levels – first of all, his message to the world. I think in the U.N. address you will get the kind of standard checklist of Vatican diplomatic concerns, so things like peace in the Middle East, responsible transition in Iraq, concern for religious freedom around the world – the kind of standard, global concerns that we’ve come to expect when popes speak on global policy.
But I think the heart of his pitch before the U.N. probably will cut a little bit deeper. It will be Benedict’s argument that what the world desperately needs today is a global moral consensus – that is, a consensus on fundamental moral truths that are universal and unchanging that can serve as a basis for things like protection of human rights and human dignity. I think his analysis is that in an era in which you have several important players on the world stage – China and Iran come to mind – arguing that the whole concept of human rights is a sort of Western cultural artifact, I think the pope believes that the construction of a kind of moral consensus that we can all agree upon based on truths about human nature and open to the wisdom of spiritual traditions and religious traditions is a critical priority.
And I think that probably will be the heart of that speech.
In terms of his American message, again, this standard checklist of concerns I would expect. You will hear the Holy Father talk about the defense of human life, beginning with unborn life. I suspect there will be references to the defense of marriage based on union between a man and a woman. I think there will also be references to the Vatican’s concern about the ongoing carnage in Iraq and elsewhere, and the desire to see peace restored to Iraq and to other parts of the world.
Probably there will be at least veiled references to the Vatican’s desire to see the Holy See operate in a somewhat more multilateral fashion in its approach to global policy, foreign affairs.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Iraq, Rome & Washington
Contrary to the narrative prevalent around many college campuses, the streets of Berkeley, and various media newsrooms, Iraq policy is congruent with Vatican policy, as George Weigel notes in this insightful article.
The amazing outflow of the Regensburg address continues to energize the dialogue around religion and violence, and that is also addressed in this excerpt from his article.
March 31, 2008, 1:00 a.m.
The McBrien Prize
And the winner is...
By George Weigel
By combining low-grade sourcing, a faux-authoritative voice, and leftist political spin in equally impressive measures, Michael Sean Winters and the editors of the Washington Post’s “Outlook” section have won the pole position in this year’s chase for the coveted Father Richard McBrien Prize in Really Inept Vaticanology (named for the Notre Dame theologian who memorably announced that Joseph Ratzinger couldn’t possibly be elected pope, less than 24 hours before Ratzinger was elected).
In “Not Eye to Eye: Wholly Different Angles on the World,” a front-page “Outlook” piece on March 30, Winters claimed that, during his forthcoming visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI will “show how much his worldview differs from President Bush’s when he denounces the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly — a denunciation that’s expected to be especially harsh after the recent martyrdom of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop killed by insurgents in Mosul.” In that one sentence, Winters managed to commit several of the capital sins of Vaticanology: He confused the views of low-ranking bureaucrats with the thinking of senior Vatican officials, the pope’s own thinking, and the official position of the Holy See; he assumed that the pope comes into international forums like the U.N. as a policy proponent rather than as a voice of moral reason; and, perhaps worst of all, he somehow imagined the Benedict XVI would cheapen the sacrifice of the slain Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho by using the Chaldean prelate’s death as a way to score a political point.
In my own conversations with senior Vatican officials over the past 18 months, I have been struck by the fact that the debates of 2002-2003 are over. That there was serious disagreement between the U.S. government and the Holy See prior to the invasion of Iraq is, and was, obvious. Today, however, the page has been turned, and despite what Winters’s Vatican leakers may be telling him, the people who make the decisions tell me, as they have told the Bush administration, that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster for both Iraq and the entire Middle East.
Pope Benedict will likely urge President Bush to demand that the Iraqi government be more assertive in defending the Christian minority population of Iraq; but that means more and stronger American involvement in the evolving politics of Iraq, not the end of an “occupation.” As for a papal “denunciation” at the U.N., Winters and his friends among Catholic Democrats are likely to be disappointed; Benedict XVI is far too shrewd to give fall campaign sound-bites to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (either of whose victory in November would cause nightmares for the Holy See at the U.N. and other international agencies).
Moreover, the pope is coming to the U.N., not to give a pontifically guided tour of the world scene, praising this and lamenting that. In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he is far more likely to challenge the world body to take more seriously the moral truths that undergird the human dignity the U.N. was founded to defend — moral truths that can be known by reason.
Winters also argues that the Vatican’s “foreign policy” apparatus thinks rather like the Eurocrats in like Brussels. There is a truth here, but Winters misses it, badly.
Yes, the default positions in the Second Section of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State (usually referred to as “the Vatican’s foreign ministry”) tend to reflect the default positions in chancelleries and foreign ministries in western Europe. But to conclude from this that those defaults are shared by Benedict XVI and his most senior advisers on world politics is to make a very serious mistake. If the permanent bureaucracy in the Vatican Secretariat of State had had anything to say about it, Benedict XVI would never have given his historic Regensburg Lecture on faith and reason in September 2006 — the lecture that caused a firestorm of protest in parts of the Islamic world.
Eighteen months later, however, Benedict has been thoroughly vindicated in his challenge to Islam to think seriously about religious freedom and the separation of spiritual and political authority in the state. For the Regensburg Lecture, as intended, dramatically reshaped the Catholic-Islamic conversation, focusing it on the issues where Islamist aggression makes pluralism and peace difficult, rather on the exchange of banalities that too often characterizes interreligious dialogue. The new Catholic-Muslim Forum that was established following last year’s “Letter of 138” Muslim leaders (itself a response to Regensburg) is one example; negotiations with the government of Saudi Arabia on the construction of a Catholic Church in the kingdom are another; King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s call for a new dialogue among the monotheistic religions is yet another. None of this would have happened had Benedict XVI deferred to those of his diplomats who “think Brussels.”
The amazing outflow of the Regensburg address continues to energize the dialogue around religion and violence, and that is also addressed in this excerpt from his article.
March 31, 2008, 1:00 a.m.
The McBrien Prize
And the winner is...
By George Weigel
By combining low-grade sourcing, a faux-authoritative voice, and leftist political spin in equally impressive measures, Michael Sean Winters and the editors of the Washington Post’s “Outlook” section have won the pole position in this year’s chase for the coveted Father Richard McBrien Prize in Really Inept Vaticanology (named for the Notre Dame theologian who memorably announced that Joseph Ratzinger couldn’t possibly be elected pope, less than 24 hours before Ratzinger was elected).
In “Not Eye to Eye: Wholly Different Angles on the World,” a front-page “Outlook” piece on March 30, Winters claimed that, during his forthcoming visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI will “show how much his worldview differs from President Bush’s when he denounces the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly — a denunciation that’s expected to be especially harsh after the recent martyrdom of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop killed by insurgents in Mosul.” In that one sentence, Winters managed to commit several of the capital sins of Vaticanology: He confused the views of low-ranking bureaucrats with the thinking of senior Vatican officials, the pope’s own thinking, and the official position of the Holy See; he assumed that the pope comes into international forums like the U.N. as a policy proponent rather than as a voice of moral reason; and, perhaps worst of all, he somehow imagined the Benedict XVI would cheapen the sacrifice of the slain Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho by using the Chaldean prelate’s death as a way to score a political point.
In my own conversations with senior Vatican officials over the past 18 months, I have been struck by the fact that the debates of 2002-2003 are over. That there was serious disagreement between the U.S. government and the Holy See prior to the invasion of Iraq is, and was, obvious. Today, however, the page has been turned, and despite what Winters’s Vatican leakers may be telling him, the people who make the decisions tell me, as they have told the Bush administration, that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster for both Iraq and the entire Middle East.
Pope Benedict will likely urge President Bush to demand that the Iraqi government be more assertive in defending the Christian minority population of Iraq; but that means more and stronger American involvement in the evolving politics of Iraq, not the end of an “occupation.” As for a papal “denunciation” at the U.N., Winters and his friends among Catholic Democrats are likely to be disappointed; Benedict XVI is far too shrewd to give fall campaign sound-bites to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (either of whose victory in November would cause nightmares for the Holy See at the U.N. and other international agencies).
Moreover, the pope is coming to the U.N., not to give a pontifically guided tour of the world scene, praising this and lamenting that. In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he is far more likely to challenge the world body to take more seriously the moral truths that undergird the human dignity the U.N. was founded to defend — moral truths that can be known by reason.
Winters also argues that the Vatican’s “foreign policy” apparatus thinks rather like the Eurocrats in like Brussels. There is a truth here, but Winters misses it, badly.
Yes, the default positions in the Second Section of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State (usually referred to as “the Vatican’s foreign ministry”) tend to reflect the default positions in chancelleries and foreign ministries in western Europe. But to conclude from this that those defaults are shared by Benedict XVI and his most senior advisers on world politics is to make a very serious mistake. If the permanent bureaucracy in the Vatican Secretariat of State had had anything to say about it, Benedict XVI would never have given his historic Regensburg Lecture on faith and reason in September 2006 — the lecture that caused a firestorm of protest in parts of the Islamic world.
Eighteen months later, however, Benedict has been thoroughly vindicated in his challenge to Islam to think seriously about religious freedom and the separation of spiritual and political authority in the state. For the Regensburg Lecture, as intended, dramatically reshaped the Catholic-Islamic conversation, focusing it on the issues where Islamist aggression makes pluralism and peace difficult, rather on the exchange of banalities that too often characterizes interreligious dialogue. The new Catholic-Muslim Forum that was established following last year’s “Letter of 138” Muslim leaders (itself a response to Regensburg) is one example; negotiations with the government of Saudi Arabia on the construction of a Catholic Church in the kingdom are another; King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s call for a new dialogue among the monotheistic religions is yet another. None of this would have happened had Benedict XVI deferred to those of his diplomats who “think Brussels.”
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Race in America
It is a volatile subject and one most of us really are tired of talking about, optimistically believing that, for most Americans, the horrors of slavery and segregation are past, and as the glittering images of Oprah, Condoleezza, Colin, and Barack so clearly show, there is as little resisting force stopping blacks from succeeding in this country and culture as there is stopping women, and that is a very good thing.
What is transpiring for political speech around this subject over the past few weeks is dismaying, and Fr. Neuhaus puts it in perspective in his admirable and scholarly way, in this excerpt from a First Things article.
The Strange Ways of Black Folk
By Richard John Neuhaus
Friday, March 28, 2008, 6:23 AM
“To understand all is to forgive all.” It’s a beguiling French adage, although of doubtful truth. Senator Barack Obama, we were told, has invited America to engage in a “national dialogue about race.” This morning’s paper describes the dialogue as “last week’s big story.” So quickly do national dialogues come and go. It is worth staying with this one for a while.
Obama’s Philadelphia speech in response to the furor generated by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s preaching was in many ways brilliant and admirable. Mitt Romney’s speech on faith in America was also remarkable, but it bore all the marks of a staff product with carefully calibrated sound-bites. We are told that Obama spent two days in isolation writing this text, and I believe it. No doubt staff members went over it and offered suggestions, but every line has the feel of a thoughtful man’s long-considered judgments on a vexing cluster of questions surrounding race in America. Is there any other national politician today capable of offering in public such a candid and personal reflection on an issue of such great moment? The question answers itself. Not wishing to invoke the ghost of Ronald Reagan, Obama partisans shy away from calling him the great communicator, but he is that.
Conservatives have not been inhibited in pointing out gaps, inconsistencies, and even contradictions in the speech, and all three are there to be derided. Yet I expect that many, if not most, conservatives experience a measure of ambivalence. They think that, all things being equal, it would be a fine thing to have a black president. Not because they want a dialogue on race but because they want to get beyond tedious and rancorous disputes about race, and a black president would put a stake through the heart of liberal guilt-mongering about our putatively racist society.
Of course, all things are never equal. In the speech, Obama once again invoked the boilerplate leftisms of class warfare and the grievances of what he depicts as a nation, black and white, of seething resentments. Without using the phrase, he calls for a new war on poverty and massively increased spending on urban public schools, even though such spending has been multiplied in recent decades to no discernible effect. The teachers’ unions make sure that the alternative of school choice never gets mentioned.
In this speech, he did not mention abortion, the single most polarizing question in our public life, but his promise is to move us beyond our divisions by taking a position so extreme that he refuses to support even the “born alive” legislation that would protect the lives of infants who survive the abortion procedure. Not for nothing is he rated the most liberal member of the Senate. His call for national reconciliation, however rhetorically appealing, is more believably a call for capitulation by those who disagree.
But our subject is the Philadelphia speech and race in America. Watching the speech on C-Span, one noticed that the usually exuberant Obama crowd offered only occasional and tepid applause, except for the familiar populist passages excoriating our exploitation by the rich and powerful. They seemed uneasy about his decision to put race front stage center in his campaign. But this is obviously something he thought he had to do, if only to return the subject to the wings.
Slavery is, politically speaking, the “original sin” of our national founding, just as Obama says. And he is surely right in forthrightly condemning the “incendiary” words of his pastor. The great offense is not in the Reverend Wright’s “God damn America.” Biblical prophets called down the judgment of God on their people. But they invoked such judgment in order to call the people to repentance. They spoke so harshly because they had such a high and loving estimate of a divine election betrayed. The Reverend Wright—in starkest contrast to, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr., whose death we mark next week—was not calling for America to live up to its high promise. He was pronouncing God’s judgment on a nation whose original and actual sins of racism are beyond compassion, repentance, or forgiveness. He apparently relishes the prospect of America’s damnation.
And he does so for reasons that are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply crazy. For instance, the claim that the government unleashed the HIV virus in order to exterminate people of color. The question inevitably asked is why Senator Obama, for fifteen or more years, attentively listened to, generously supported, and submitted his children to the ministrations of a man who espoused such odious and bizarre views. To ask the question is not to deny that, as the senator emphasized, the Reverend Wright also did and said many good things. That a peddler of hate and vile slanders is not without virtues is quite beside the point.
…Perhaps the single most telling statement in the Philadelphia speech is this: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” The most reasonable interpretation of that statement, maybe the only reasonable interpretation, is that the Reverend Wright represents “the black community.” This ignores the great majority of blacks in America, who are in the working and middle classes and participate fully in the opportunities and responsibilities of the American experience.
The senator lends his prestige to the claim promoted by sundry race hustlers that Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Cosby, along with millions of other black Americans, are not black enough to be part of “the black community.” One can understand why a Harvard law-school graduate born in Hawaii with a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas would, for political and perhaps personal reasons, seek the street credential of having “roots” in a militantly black sector of the intensely race-conscious city of Chicago. But complicity in the explicit slander of America and the implicit slander of most blacks in America is a very high price to pay for a ticket of admission to “the black community.”
…I don’t know what all this means for the presidential election. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote some while back that the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama depends on whether Americans feel more guilty about their sexism or their racism. It seems now that Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Most Americans do not feel guilty about either sexism or racism, and are thoroughly tired of being incessantly nattered about both. Those who do feel guilty about racism may feel they have now been given a pass by the depiction of blacks as incorrigibly irresponsible children.
In any event, and whoever is the Democratic nominee, it is worth remembering that running on a platform of America’s guilt has not usually been an electoral winner. Political punditry is not my forte, but, as I watch this race develop, I can’t help thinking about George McGovern in 1972.
What is transpiring for political speech around this subject over the past few weeks is dismaying, and Fr. Neuhaus puts it in perspective in his admirable and scholarly way, in this excerpt from a First Things article.
The Strange Ways of Black Folk
By Richard John Neuhaus
Friday, March 28, 2008, 6:23 AM
“To understand all is to forgive all.” It’s a beguiling French adage, although of doubtful truth. Senator Barack Obama, we were told, has invited America to engage in a “national dialogue about race.” This morning’s paper describes the dialogue as “last week’s big story.” So quickly do national dialogues come and go. It is worth staying with this one for a while.
Obama’s Philadelphia speech in response to the furor generated by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s preaching was in many ways brilliant and admirable. Mitt Romney’s speech on faith in America was also remarkable, but it bore all the marks of a staff product with carefully calibrated sound-bites. We are told that Obama spent two days in isolation writing this text, and I believe it. No doubt staff members went over it and offered suggestions, but every line has the feel of a thoughtful man’s long-considered judgments on a vexing cluster of questions surrounding race in America. Is there any other national politician today capable of offering in public such a candid and personal reflection on an issue of such great moment? The question answers itself. Not wishing to invoke the ghost of Ronald Reagan, Obama partisans shy away from calling him the great communicator, but he is that.
Conservatives have not been inhibited in pointing out gaps, inconsistencies, and even contradictions in the speech, and all three are there to be derided. Yet I expect that many, if not most, conservatives experience a measure of ambivalence. They think that, all things being equal, it would be a fine thing to have a black president. Not because they want a dialogue on race but because they want to get beyond tedious and rancorous disputes about race, and a black president would put a stake through the heart of liberal guilt-mongering about our putatively racist society.
Of course, all things are never equal. In the speech, Obama once again invoked the boilerplate leftisms of class warfare and the grievances of what he depicts as a nation, black and white, of seething resentments. Without using the phrase, he calls for a new war on poverty and massively increased spending on urban public schools, even though such spending has been multiplied in recent decades to no discernible effect. The teachers’ unions make sure that the alternative of school choice never gets mentioned.
In this speech, he did not mention abortion, the single most polarizing question in our public life, but his promise is to move us beyond our divisions by taking a position so extreme that he refuses to support even the “born alive” legislation that would protect the lives of infants who survive the abortion procedure. Not for nothing is he rated the most liberal member of the Senate. His call for national reconciliation, however rhetorically appealing, is more believably a call for capitulation by those who disagree.
But our subject is the Philadelphia speech and race in America. Watching the speech on C-Span, one noticed that the usually exuberant Obama crowd offered only occasional and tepid applause, except for the familiar populist passages excoriating our exploitation by the rich and powerful. They seemed uneasy about his decision to put race front stage center in his campaign. But this is obviously something he thought he had to do, if only to return the subject to the wings.
Slavery is, politically speaking, the “original sin” of our national founding, just as Obama says. And he is surely right in forthrightly condemning the “incendiary” words of his pastor. The great offense is not in the Reverend Wright’s “God damn America.” Biblical prophets called down the judgment of God on their people. But they invoked such judgment in order to call the people to repentance. They spoke so harshly because they had such a high and loving estimate of a divine election betrayed. The Reverend Wright—in starkest contrast to, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr., whose death we mark next week—was not calling for America to live up to its high promise. He was pronouncing God’s judgment on a nation whose original and actual sins of racism are beyond compassion, repentance, or forgiveness. He apparently relishes the prospect of America’s damnation.
And he does so for reasons that are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply crazy. For instance, the claim that the government unleashed the HIV virus in order to exterminate people of color. The question inevitably asked is why Senator Obama, for fifteen or more years, attentively listened to, generously supported, and submitted his children to the ministrations of a man who espoused such odious and bizarre views. To ask the question is not to deny that, as the senator emphasized, the Reverend Wright also did and said many good things. That a peddler of hate and vile slanders is not without virtues is quite beside the point.
…Perhaps the single most telling statement in the Philadelphia speech is this: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” The most reasonable interpretation of that statement, maybe the only reasonable interpretation, is that the Reverend Wright represents “the black community.” This ignores the great majority of blacks in America, who are in the working and middle classes and participate fully in the opportunities and responsibilities of the American experience.
The senator lends his prestige to the claim promoted by sundry race hustlers that Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Cosby, along with millions of other black Americans, are not black enough to be part of “the black community.” One can understand why a Harvard law-school graduate born in Hawaii with a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas would, for political and perhaps personal reasons, seek the street credential of having “roots” in a militantly black sector of the intensely race-conscious city of Chicago. But complicity in the explicit slander of America and the implicit slander of most blacks in America is a very high price to pay for a ticket of admission to “the black community.”
…I don’t know what all this means for the presidential election. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote some while back that the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama depends on whether Americans feel more guilty about their sexism or their racism. It seems now that Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Most Americans do not feel guilty about either sexism or racism, and are thoroughly tired of being incessantly nattered about both. Those who do feel guilty about racism may feel they have now been given a pass by the depiction of blacks as incorrigibly irresponsible children.
In any event, and whoever is the Democratic nominee, it is worth remembering that running on a platform of America’s guilt has not usually been an electoral winner. Political punditry is not my forte, but, as I watch this race develop, I can’t help thinking about George McGovern in 1972.
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