Posted on 03/06/2003 12:40:07 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- A Vatican envoy Wednesday carried the pope's message to the White House that a U.S.-led war against Iraq without United Nations' approval would be "unjust and illegal."
The stern words from Cardinal Pio Laghi, who met for 40 minutes with Bush, underscored the rift between the president, who considers himself a deeply religious man, and a number of Christian leaders over Iraq.
Pope John Paul II has regularly preached against the war and asked Catholics worldwide to pray for peace and fast on Ash Wednesday.
Several mainstream Protestant denominations also have come out against a pre-emptive strike by the United States against Baghdad.
But the dispute between the White House and the pope over Iraq poses an especially difficult political quandary for Bush, who has aggressively sought to woo traditionally Democratic Catholic voters to the Republican fold.
The meeting Wednesday did not appear to bridge the gap.
While Bush has signaled that he is prepared to confront Saddam Hussein even without the Security Council's approval, Laghi said that the Vatican believes a just war can be waged only with the United Nations' endorsement.
Laghi said before going to war the United Nations should take into account "the grave consequences of such an armed conflict: the suffering of the people of Iraq and those involved in the military operation, a further instability in the region and a new gulf between Islam and Christianity."
He said that any war without U.N. approval "is illegal, it is unjust, it's all you can say."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Bush defended his policy to the Cardinal, telling him, "if it comes to the use of force he believes it will make the world better."
Officials said that Bush disagreed with the Vatican's contention that a war would widen the gulf between the West and the Muslim world. The president argued that U.S. efforts to expand educational opportunities for children in Afghanistan had brought the cultures closer.
Laghi, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States who was close to Bush's father, delivered a letter from the pope to the president, which concluded "I ask the Lord to inspire you to search for ways of stable peace -- the noblest of human endeavors."
The White House was clearly nervous about the publicity of the rift between Bush and the Vatican, particularly coming during a period of tense negotiations at the United Nations.
Laghi, addressing reporters at the National Press Club, said that administration officials would not allow him to hold a press conference in the White House. It is customary for visitors to field media questions in the driveway in front of the West Wing after they meet with the president.
The growing tension with the Vatican could undercut Bush's efforts to court Catholic voters.
Since assuming office Bush has twice visited the pope in Italy and has spoken at the commencement at Notre Dame University. The president also has appealed to more observant Catholics by opposing abortion and cloning.
But experts said Bush risks losing support from those voters by pressing ahead with war.
"Bush goes to Catholics and talks about how he is opposed to abortion. It is the same values that lead Catholics to oppose abortion that lead them to oppose war," said John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
Dan Bartlett, the president's chief communications adviser, rejected the contention that the pope's appeal may erode support among American Catholics for possible war.
"There are many Catholics who support," Bush's Iraq policy, Bartlett said. "I am one of them."
Recent polls suggest that so far the Vatican's influence has been limited in the United States.
A recent survey by the Pew Center for the Public and the Press found that about two thirds of American Catholics backed military action in Iraq -- similar to the overall backing for war.
The poll found the highest backing for war comes from evangelical Christians, who have long provided the backbone of Bush's political support.
And not surprisingly it is evangelical leaders who have broken with many Protestant churches on the issue of Iraq.
A practicing Methodist who was raised an Episcopalian, Bush speaks the language of evangelical Christians, according to a number of religious scholars who have studied his speeches.
The president laces his speeches with references to faith and citations from the Bible, often linking his religious faith to domestic and international policy.
"I welcome faith to solve the nation's deepest problems," he recently told a convention of religious broadcasters.
Bush's use of religious rhetoric, however, has troubled a number of secular and religious critics who say the president is unfairly endowing himself with moral authority to justify war.
Patrice Brodeur, a scholar of Islam from Connecticut College, says "corporate repentance" is not part of Islamic theology. "Theologically, from a Muslim perspective, people are only responsible individually for their actions," he said. "They do disagree with the killing of innocent victims in the name of jihad, but they can't take it upon themselves to apologize for other members of the community who did something wrong."***
Pope Devotes Weekly Audience to 9/11 Anniversary ***VATICAN, Sep 11, 02 (CWNews.com) -- Pope John Paul II broke from his usual pattern at his weekly public audience on Wednesday, September 11, setting aside his series of catechetical talks to speak instead about last year's terrorist attacks on the US.
Speaking to about 8,000 people (including US ambassador James Nicholson) in the Paul VI auditorium, the Holy Father said that the "barbarous and cruel" attacks deserved universal condemnation. He went on to say that the international community should be united in its response to terrorism-- a response that is both "necessary" and "urgent."
Terrorism, the Pope said, "is an always will be a manifestation of human cruelty, which for that very reason can never resolve conflicts among men." The deliberate killing of innocent people, he continued, is inherently evil: "no instance of injustice, no feeling of frustration, no philosophy or religion can justify such an aberration." Respect for human life, he said is a natural and essential element of human life: "God commands it, international law sanctions it, the human conscience proclaims it, and peaceful coexistence requires it."***
No, a Church hierachy that allows and encourages the rape of children by homosexual priests is unjust and illegal.
As long as they are playing the role of useful idiots the Islamaddogs will not touch them.
If the Pope has some free time - Leonardo Miguel Bruzón Avila - Rights group pushes for release of dying dissident
I'd like that answer too. The Church needs to condemn evil not condone a group that ignores it.
I have been criticized as a Catholic basher for bringing this up, but...
Consider this, from Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in their public acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
[24] The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine...
Has the Papacy joined the 'axis of evil' ???
I have a number of Catholic friends who seem to think so.
Most of the really off the wall "advice" on war came from Pio Laghi, who is a retired liberal nuisance. Many of the worst US Catholic bishops were appointed by him during his long tenure as nuncio, and he did nothing to help get complaints about the gay seminaries to Rome. In fact, it was only after he left that everything came to the surface here.
I also read that the Pope - not Pio L. - said the other day that Bush is a man of great integrity and morality. But did this get publicized? No, of course not.
Pio Laghi, however, is just the type of guy the press loves, so any nonsense that comes out of his lips is reported with absolute joy.
This is insulting. Everyone in the press believes the rightness of an action, any action, is judged by the number of votes it gains or loses.
Then again, Bush shouldn't have followed Powell into the UN pit.
The war could have been justified simply by saying that Sadam failed to abide by the terms of peace to which he agreed, saying in effect that the first war has not yet ended. Taking this dispute to an international body "with controlling legal authority" was a mistake.
And then turn around and claim to be Christians themselves.
You have a source for that?
The Pope knows that the ends do not justify the means. I believe that he sincerely thinks that this action will represent a war of aggression, not to the degree of Hitler's attack of Poland in 1939, but a war of aggression nonetheless. Just War theory permits only defensive war.
Nevertheless, I don't believe that this action will represent a war of aggression. This war is going to be waged to enforce the terms of peace to which Sadam agreed after the first war. Technically, it's the same war.
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