Posted on 06/15/2024 5:06:32 PM PDT by ebb tide
The Pope’s address to the G7 summit in Italy on the subject of Artificial Intelligence was a necessary and thoughtful contribution to the implications of a technology that is transforming the very idea of what it is to be human. If only the same could be said of his private meeting with the US president, Joe Biden. The image of the meeting on Friday, with the president touching foreheads with the Pope in what looked like an affectionate embrace, has had a global resonance. What is Pope Francis thinking of?
In the first place, in a US election year, it is improper for the Pope to give the impression of personal friendship with one candidate; it is unlikely that he would be seen fist-bumping with Donald Trump. Some Catholics may be swayed in their voting intentions by the notion that President Biden and Pope Francis are friends; that is something that will not be lost on the President, however remote he may sometimes seem from reality.
The other problem is that President Biden is absolutely committed to policies on abortion which have cost hundreds of thousands of innocent prenatal lives and which are utterly at odds with the teaching of the Church. Abortion is prenatal homicide and the President has unequivocally supported access to it, and not just early in the gestation of the foetus. He has sought to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who are guaranteed to be supportive of greater abortion access. He has not even been neutral on this life and death issue; he has been vigorously and consistently partisan.
The Pope has had meetings with the president before – this is the fifth, according to CNN. After a previous meeting in 2021 he was able to pronounce triumphantly that the Pope had urged him to continue to take communion, notwithstanding his abortion stance, thereby confounding those who sought to remind him that his position was incompatible with respect for human life and with his own faith. Intimate dealings with the Pope do not seem to have shifted his position on abortion in any respect but President Biden has been the gainer from them.
Of course the Pope sees world leaders privately often and seeks to impress on them the importance of the pursuit of peace, religious freedom and the protection of the vulnerable. He had, for instance, a meeting at the G7 with President Zelensky of Ukraine, in which he doubtless urged on him the necessity of bringing the war to a close. Granted, his meeting with President Biden will have covered important issues such as the war in Israel-Palestine and the necessity of taking a robust approach to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza.
Yet the optics of the meeting are simple; President Biden is the Pope’s good friend and if he has used his office to promote abortion, the Pope can live with it. The Pope has demonstrably had no influence on the President in this most crucial area and should ask himself whether his policy of open access and constant engagement has achieved anything worthwhile.
The US bishops are seeking to impress on the candidates in this election the importance of the protection of human life from its beginning in the womb to its natural end; in what way does the Pope’s apparently unqualified approbation of President Biden help them? In an election year, the Pope should act with more sense.
The other problem is that President Biden is absolutely committed to policies on abortion which have cost hundreds of thousands of innocent prenatal lives and which are utterly at odds with the teaching of the Church.
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The Pope has had meetings with the president before – this is the fifth, according to CNN. After a previous meeting in 2021 he was able to pronounce triumphantly that the Pope had urged him to continue to take communion, notwithstanding his abortion stance, thereby confounding those who sought to remind him that his position was incompatible with respect for human life and with his own faith. Intimate dealings with the Pope do not seem to have shifted his position on abortion in any respect but President Biden has been the gainer from them.
Ping
This “pope” Will support abortion and gay marriage. He wants to be the “cool” pope. His tacit support of both is obvious.
“Why don’t you two put your heads together and make an ass of yourself.”-
Rodney Dangerfield
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