Apparently Bushie is concerned that he hasn’t made same-sex marriage enough of a wedge issue in the upcoming election and that not enough of America’s bishops are speaking out forcefully enough against it. So in a recent meeting with the Pope, Bush asked him to push any reluctant bishops into condemning SSM and any Catholic who isn’t as violently opposed to SSM as Bush is.
Never mind that the presumptive Democratic nominee is also opposed to SSM. Never mind that the Catholic heirarchy is already threatening to withhold communion from Catholics who don’t hew to the church line on SSM and abortion. Never mind that it’s only those church positions which are stereotypically Democratic (gay rights, reproductive rights) which are incurring the wrath of the bishops while stereotypically Republican positions (pro death penalty) don’t engender the same threats.
Are you surprised at anything GWB will do to get his way? Can you say “weapons of mass destruction”? I’m sure you can.
On the other hand, from the linked report:
And it should be noted that the public reports of the meeting all mentioned that the pope repeated his opposition to the Iraq invasion, so it seems to be a wash.
No he’s not. He merely needs to be in office when the normal economic cycle swings up enough to make most people think they are not about to drown in debt (along with persuading his Saudi buddies to produce enough oil to get gas prices down through the end of November). Neither of those events are miracles and both will help his re-election.
Really? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Is it on the line with the pope’s somewhat recent “you shouldn’t go to movies or watch football on sunday” [url="http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/news/stories/20040406/localnews/179221.html"proclamation*, or is it more strongly-suggested than that?
*Oh, I know it’s a plenty biased cite. I haven’t been able to find a better one.
Dunno, but the guy looks shifty. I wouldn’t put it past him to be storing weapons of mass destruction underneath Vatican City. There’s only one way to be sure. Unless, of course, you wanted to support us in this very crucial election. Nice place, John Paul. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it…
Next thing you know, George has the Pope’s staff as a trophy in the Oval Office right next to Saddam’s gun.
Huh, economic cycles? What are these you speak of? Didn’t you know that Clinton saved us from GHW Bush? There are no cycles, only Dummycrats that save us from ourselves. Get it right, man.
Oh goody. JUST what the Catholic Church needs - more bad PR.
On the one hand, I’m glad I got out ~4 years ago. Other hand, I still have family members who will have to put up with this sort of bullshit “no communion for you, sash-wearer” (my immediate family is Catholic and pro-gay).
Will have to have a talk with my mother about this and see if the Ffx Cardinal has been honoring this (or dishonoring WRT the sash bit):
“A second Vatican statement said it is “gravely immoral” not to oppose legalization of same-sex unions.”
The Vatican announced a worldwide campaign against same-sex marriages months ago, this is not new news nor is Bush’s attempts to use it politically at all remarkable.
And if Americans United & Call to Action are against something, I’m usually for it & vice versa (with exceptions, of course )
Wow, being Catholic, I’m really starting to understand the notion of the “ugly American”.
It seems to me, and this is a lay-man’s observation, that many American Catholics want to “liberalize” the doctrines of the faith. I have no problem with people forming differing opinions of the Catechism, you’re welcome to find a faith more in tune with your worldview. God is God, no matter how you worship Him, there are just differences in how you show your faith. The problem I have is it’s a doctrine that has stood for many centuries. There are more than a billion people worldwide that follow it. If you don’t like, you leave. It’s not like you don’t have an option in the matter.
I’m for the death penalty. That goes against my faith. However, as a human I try to find a deeper understanding of my faith and beliefs and try to reconcile them. I have other issues that don’t mesh with Dogma, and I’ll work through those. When I decide not to, I’ll switch to a form of Protestentism. I won’t try to change an entire faith.
What is remarkable is Bush’s attempt to enlist a foreign head of state into more or less overt participation in a presidential campaign. Imagine if Kerry went out and recruited a foreign leader to encourage Americans of that national descent to vote for him. How loud would the Bush campaign squawk about that (hint: look how loudly they squawked over the “foreign leaders” Kerry misquote)?
Cryptica, you have this frustrating habit of posting one-liners which lend themselves to multiple interpretations without any context from which to obtain any clarification. Who are you calling “ugly Americans”? Those who oppose the idea of using faith to blackmail adherents? Those who oppose a foreign leader from interfering in American politics? Bishops who blackmail their followers? Who?
But Catholic doctrine hasn’t stood for many centuries unchanged. Presumably at least some of the changes to doctrine came about on the basis of people challenging it. And if a thousand or a million or a billion people believe something that’s “wrong,” it doesn’t suddenly become “right” just because that many people agree with it.
As far as leaving the faith if one disagrees with it, I saw a documentary the other day called Trembling Before G-d, about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews. The subjects spoke of the idea of leaving their faith behind in much the same way that you might speak of leaving an arm behind. It is so intrinsically a part of them that they feel they have no choice but to remain within it, despite the pain it causes them as they attempt to reconcile it with their sexuality. Personally as an atheist I have absolutely no conception of what it must be like to hold to a faith so closely that it becomes literally inseparable from you but it strikes me as a bit cavalier and perhaps a bit insulting on your part to blithely say “if you don’t like it, leave.”
Damnit Otto you know what my point was. Yeah, people leaving a faith experience a loss. The point is, if they leave the faith it’s because they decide they can’t or won’t live by its tenets. Therefore (Christians anyway) find another faith that allows them to follow Christ under a different set of rules, as it were. The Catholic Church does not allow for practicing homosexuality. Read again the practicing part. I demand you show me where being gay is against God in any way. Even us troglodite Catholics know the doctrine is to not practice it. Being gay isn’t a sin, gay actions are. Don’t like it? Follow a different church. Again, it’s the same God.
If anyone has a problem with what the Vatican says or decrees, follow your heart. My point was don’t expect that because you’re an American and have a national activist group, that the rest of the world gives a shit. This is why I opened my post with the “ugly American” line. Not everything we do is wanted by the rest of the world. You may want to consult Reeder on this one.
With all the real problems facing this country—the war, terrorism, our declining profile throughout the world, the torture scandal, the economy—I am disgusted (though hardly surprised) that Bush still feels the urgent need to keep people from marrying one another.
Well, there’s reason to hope. Influencing votes is hardly a new tactic of the Catholic Church, and in the long run, at least, it tends to fail.
Here in Quebec, Premier Maurice Duplessis kept power for two decades partly by enlisting the help of the Catholic Church in elections. Duplessis’s party, the Union Nationale (commonly called the “Blue Party” or the “Blues”) was very conservative and very tight with the Church, and the Liberals (“The Red Party”) tended towards secularism, or even anti-clericalism.
The Church made it clear to the flock that they had to vote Union Nationale, or risk hell. Duplessis decided to work that into at least one campaign with the slogan "Le ciel est bleu, l’enfer est rouge – “The Sky/Heaven is Blue, Hell is Red.” The Catholic Church further helped by maintaining an index of banned books, including anything lefty-political.
It’s no surprise that when Duplessis died and his party collapsed, the pendulum swing to the left more or less obliterated the Catholic Church’s political and social power in this province. While most of the province still describes itself as Catholic, the Church has little influence over voting habits and personal values here.
In other words, it backfired. It’ll backfire in the US, too.
BushII is an utterly ruthless campaigner. That’s either a plus or minus, depending on one’s view. He scraped though the last election because he was willing to go balls-to-the-wall-anything to win.
This doesn’t suprise me at all, but it lessens my miniscule residual respect for the man. He honestly seems to feel right is on his side, whatever immediate needs comprise his side.
Remember building a lofty tent, welcoming to many? Ha. Deliberately inflaming religious differences hardly speaks to the best in anyone. BushII is so intent on winning he’s entirely forgotten about leading.
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