Posted on 01/05/2004 5:41:48 AM PST by SJackson
Why would a Roman Catholic cardinal who leads a papal commission express public sympathy for a murderous, sadistic tyrant?
Cardinal Renato Martino unintentionally motivated thoughtful people to ask that question after his remarks following the capture of Saddam Hussein by American troops December 12.
Martino, president of the Pontifical Commission on Peace and Justice, told a press conference that he "had a sense of compassion for him" after watching the video confirming Saddam's capture.
"I feel pity to see this man destroyed, being treated like a cow as they checked his teeth," Martino said.
Many Catholics, such as American conservative Michael Novak, say Martino was not speaking for Pope John Paul II or for the Catholic Church. Regardless, Martino's comments reflect the Vatican's position of appeasing Arab dictators and Islam to satisfy its own geopolitical agenda.
That agenda regarding Israel involves seeking balance between Israeli and Palestinian claims, writes Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, professor of international relations at the Catholic University of Milan.
"The Vatican's political stance remains directed by a cornerstone and long-held principle within Church tradition: Attention must be given to peoples and not their governments," Parsi writes in the October-December edition of the Italian magazine, Diritto e Liberta.
Tragically, that approach explains the pope's inability or refusal to go beyond pro-forma condemnations of terrorism and publicly denounce the "culture of death" within Palestinian society.
The Vatican's geopolitical agenda includes creating a more peaceful world through inter-religious dialogue. The pope hopes he can keep Islam from hardening into a permanent fundamentalism that would "lead to the clash of civilizations that (he) considers ominous for the fate of humanity," Renzo Guolo, professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Trieste and a specialist in Muslim fundamentalism writes in his book, Xenophobes and Xenophiles: Italians and Islam.
But the emphasis on dialogue is so extreme that Rome seems willing to ignore former Muslims who face isolation and persistent threats as the result of converting to Catholicism.
"We feel abandoned," a woman named Nura told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. "After our conversion, we have no one to support us. We ask the Church and Italy: Protect us, defend us."
Those bishops who oppose the papal approach remembered how the pope, "who ordinarily speaks about all topics, had spread a veil of silence over the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries," Guolo writes.
THE POPE'S goals, while noble, reflect a simplistic, almost naive world view. "For Karol Wojtyla, religious dialogue is necessary – to foster the common good of humanity," Guolo writes. "This dialogue is sustained by the awareness (of) common values across cultures, because these values are rooted in human nature. He seems to believe that only the prophetic message, the utopian perspective, the mystical leap powered by an intense spirituality, can achieve this objective."
Papal objectives aside, Martino's comments also reflect pervasive, virulent anti-Israeli and anti-Western sentiment within the Church's upper echelons. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, published the following on its front page during the siege at the Church of the Nativity:
"Rarely has history been so rudely forced and pushed backward by a clear intention to offend the dignity of a people. The land of the Risen One is profaned with iron and fire, and is the victim of an aggression that amounts to extermination."
Two years earlier, Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, the head of a Vatican delegation to Baghdad, called his visit "one of solidarity with the Iraqi people in the face of the international embargo against their country" and "thanked Iraq for its moral and material support for the Palestinian cause."
Some of the pope's highest officials criticize Western culture while ignoring the problems in Arab and Muslim cultures – and seem to reflect the jihadists' justification for attacking innocents.
Take the comments of Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, made one day before the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks: "Many of the so-called values of present Western civilization are anything but values; the destruction of the family, the exaltation of homosexuality, the spread of pornography, growing immorality, abortion, gratuitous violence, the exclusion of God in the edification of society stir contempt and hatred for decadent Western society in other civilizations."
Or, take Martino's comments five months later: "Not only the United States but the entire West should make an examination of conscience of how we oppress the rest of the world – unkept promises, spreading ways of life that are not moral or acceptable to the rest of the world." Unkept promises? To whom? For what? Osama bin Laden could not have said it any better.
Yet things in Rome seem to be changing. Civilita Cattolica, the official magazine of the Vatican secretary of state, published in October an article decrying Islam's "warlike and conquering face" throughout history and criticizing the "perpetual discrimination" Christians face in Muslim countries.
Given Rome's internal rivalries, however, it remains an open question whether a pope and his Vatican that behaved like Winston Churchill in the face of communism will continue to behave like Neville Chamberlain in the face of jihadism and Islam.
The writer is a Catholic free-lance writer from Fullerton, California.
Would he rather the US let Saddam suffer with bad cavities? I don't recall reading that he had any Crest in the spider hole.
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He need not worrry about humanity. As a whole, humanity will do fine in any such clash of civilizations.
Islam, on the other hand, will suffer terribly.
-ccm
Why if the Church fills that Western society is full of corrupt values do they continue to support American politicians that believe in abortion and immorality, like the Kennedeys. Ted Kennedy should be excommunicated Church until he renounces abortions, if the Church wants to make a point about Western values. Mother Theresa sure let the Western leaders know her viewpoints of abortion. She didn't hesitate to tell the Clintons off.
Because he's a dumbass.
God sometimes tests His Church by giving it inept bishops---and even popes.
Why would a Roman Catholic cardinal who leads a papal commission express public sympathy for a murderous, sadistic tyrant?
Cardinal Renato Martino unintentionally motivated thoughtful people to ask that question after his remarks following the capture of Saddam Hussein by American troops December 12.
Martino, president of the Pontifical Commission on Peace and Justice, told a press conference that he "had a sense of compassion for him" after watching the video confirming Saddam's capture.
"I feel pity to see this man destroyed, being treated like a cow as they checked his teeth," Martino said.
This is what the Cardinal actually said:
"I felt pity to see this man destroyed. The military looking at his teeth, as if he were a beast. They could have spared us these pictures. Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him."
Rather pathetic. All of the warbots have been purposefully misquoting what he said. I would read the rest of the author's "quotes" of other Church officials with a heavy dose of suspicion. These people are despicable.
Or perhaps he avoided it because in the opinion of many conservative Catholics (though admittedly not all), Vatican spokemen mangled their statements on the subject of Just War leading up to our invasion. So much so, it requires an article of its own just to get through, in my opinion.
Unless you came to the table already well schooled in it, you'd think Just War theory is all amout multi-lateral negotiation and international law, and little else. And if you came to the table with even a bit of knowledge on the topic, you came away even more confused because of what was not said by very high Vatican officials in attempts to lecture our government on the subject.
In light of the lack of WMDs and no links between Saddam and 9/11, it would seem that the Bush Administration did not meet the criteria laid out by the Vatican that Novak, to his credit, did lay out.
I guess I cannot blame 'Catholic conservative' Iraq war supporters for simply ignoring the issue.
Malachi Martin,
in his book, the Windswept House
says US contacts
once "advised" the Pope
that if he publicly spoke
against the US
foreign policy
"exporting" birth control to
third world countries, then
the Pope would "find out"
Popes get assassinated...
I can imagine
not everyone there
at the Vatican feels love
for the USA...
Though if you don't believe Iraq had WMDs or that Saddam had any links to 9/11, you're not a very serious observer of the events in any case.
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