The question is a valid one, I believe.
Did you ask this same question when other heads of state have come to visit? Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher etc... How about when Bush went to Africa, or even to Visit the Pope, did you ask then?
I think mine is just as valid as yours
“Did you ask this same question when other heads of state have come to visit?”
Ah, we’re not ignorant of this idiocy of accepting the Vatican as a state needing such diplomatic license. If the pope puts on a suit (just so to speak — he can wear any robe he wants), and comes to meet with our nations leaders about USA-Vatican relations, then that’s one thing. (Actually, I believe that would be a farce, too.) But he didn’t come to the USA for that purpose, but as the potentate of a CHURCH, not a nation.
I am not required to accept the man in any capacitiy; and I don’t. I don’t want to pay one dime of my tax dollars for him or anything he does. Vatican, a state? No non-Catholic must just bend to that notion. It’s very, very clever, but it’s not right. And we should have no more diplomatic mission to the Vatican than we do to any other headquarters of any other denomination. All this is, is Catholicism trying to shove down the throats of the rest of us it’s own idea that it is the final and supreme representative of Christianity on this earth.
WASTE OF MONEY!