The Pope and the President

A good friend passed this article  on to me, from the magazine, Chronicles. It offers some insightful commentary on the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States, and in particular his visit to the White House to meet with President Bush. Recall that second day after his arrival when both Benedict and the president gave speeches in the rose garden. 

SBW

Here are some excerpts:

If you relied on wire service accounts, Catholic commentary, and the few snippets of video on the evening news, you can be forgiven for believing that the White House Welcoming Ceremony held for Pope Benedict XVI on April 16 was entirely “warm,” “friendly,” and marked by “mutual admiration and respect.”

But beneath the surface, the waters weren’t so calm, as anyone who watched the entire ceremony, listened closely to President Bush’s speech, and paid attention to the symbolism knows.

The shadow of the Iraq war hung over the festivities, however. President Bush had sought the approval of Pope John Paul II in the run-up to the war in 2002 and 2003, and he had been disappointed when Benedict’s predecessor spoke out strongly against the war. Cardinal Ratzinger himself had made it clear after the war had started that “reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist,” and that a preemptive war could never be a just war.

Five years after the start of the war, President Bush might simply have refrained from any reference to it, but, for whatever reason, he could not bring himself to do so. Ironically, he began his remarks with a reference to Saint Augustine, usually regarded as the first expositor of Christian just-war theory. He quickly moved on, though, to describe America as “a nation of compassion,” and his description of what such compassion entails included a veiled reference to the war:

Each day across the world the United States is working to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair.

Interestingly, the Holy Father’s remarks, prepared in advance, read at points as if they were a direct response to President Bush. Stressing the link between freedom and the moral order, which “calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate,” Pope Benedict invoked George Washington’s Farewell Address:

Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation.

Those decisions include not only domestic but foreign policy:

For well over a century, the United States of America has played an important role in the international community. . . . I am confident that this concern for the greater human family will continue to find expression in support for the patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts and promote progress.

President Bush, however, would have the final word, as the U.S. Army Chorus chimed in in support of his vision that compassion can be spread at the point of a sword. The decision to perform “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for a religious leader known as a man of peace, one who has stated that he chose the name “Benedict” in part in emulation of Benedict XV, who campaigned unstintingly for peace during World War I, was odd enough. Set aside Julia Ward Howe’s Unitarianism, which leads to serious theological errors in the verses; set aside even the role that the Battle Hymn played in stoking the fires of fratricide. Focus, instead, on the symbolism at an event in which the President of the United States has justified an unjust war in the name of “compassion.”