[Mb-civic] Politics in Red Robes

[Jack Sullivan]

Michael:

Why nothing in mb-civic about the moment that the world stopped to consider
the life of John Paul II.  Was mine censored?
Indeed nanorobots?

Jack


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 4:42 AM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Politics in Red Robes


    Go to Original

    Politics in Red Robes
    By Sidney Blumenthal
    The Guardian UK

    Thursday 07 April 2005

    Bush's attendance at the Pope's funeral merely masks White House
exploitation of Catholic division.

    President Bush, a militant evangelical Protestant, has lowered the
American flag to half-staff for the first time at the death of a pope. Also
for the first time, a US president will attend a papal funeral. Bush's
political rhetoric is deliberately inflected with Catholic theological
phrases, in particular "the culture of life", words he used to justify his
interference in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman, the
removal of whose feeding tube was upheld 19 times by state and federal
courts.

    In the 2004 election, Bush's campaign helped organise the attack on John
Kerry's Catholic authenticity by conservative bishops who threatened to deny
him communion. Inside the White House, policy and personnel are coordinated
in line with rightwing Catholicism. Not only are issues like international
population control, reproductive health and women's rights vetted, but so
are appointments.

    Since the accession of Pope John Paul II, the conservative mobilisation
within the American church has been a microcosmic version of the ascendancy
of the conservative movement in the country generally. As the authority of
the Vatican was marshalled on behalf of the conservatives, the Republican
right adopted its position as its own in order to capture Catholic votes.
Now the social agendas of conservative Catholics and Republicans are
indistinguishable.

    John Paul II welcomed American democracy as a counter to communism, but
he had no experience with democracy of any kind. He envisioned his mission
as restoring the authority of the church. America appeared to him as a
liberal inferno - its citizens, he lectured American bishops last year, were
"hypnotised by materialism, teetering before a soulless vision of the
world".

    The Pope asserted his control over the American church in 1984 with his
naming of conservatives Bernard Law and John O'Connor as archbishops of
Boston and New York. They became his chief agents. At the same time, the
Vatican refused to deal with the elected officers of the US conference of
Catholic bishops, who were largely imbued with the spirit of Vatican II.

    Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was acknowledged as the leader of
the bishops and represented the broad progressive tradition of the American
church. He articulated the concept of Catholicism as a "seamless garment" in
which abortion was only one among many important issues. In 1994 he
announced a common ground initiative, entitled Church in a Time of Peril,
calling on the church to overcome its polarisation and suppression of
discussion on the issues tearing it apart - from women's changing roles to
the fact that many Catholics did not accept most church teachings on
sexuality to the declining numbers of priests. Bernardin was a consensus
builder and believed he had touched all bases with the Vatican before
unveiling his project. But the same day, Cardinal Law, clearly acting with
Vatican authority, denounced it: "The fundamental flaw in this document is
its appeal for 'dialogue' as a path to 'common ground'. "

    Bernardin died months later and was replaced by a protégé of Law's. In
2002, the Boston Globe ran the first of more than 250 stories on paedophilic
molestation by parish priests. Law resisted investigating the sex scandal
and faced potential criminal prosecution for his cover-ups. The Pope rescued
him with a sinecure in the Vatican. In the aftermath of the sex scandal,
conservatives under siege lashed out more ferociously. As they saw it, their
failure to overturn the law on abortion demonstrated that they had not been
hardline enough. Thus the sex scandal set the stage for the rightwing
Catholic offensive on behalf of Bush in the 2004 campaign.

    With the Pope's death, American Catholics yearn for openness. According
to a poll by Gallup, 78% want the next pope to allow Catholics to use birth
control; 63% say he should let priests marry; 59% believe he should have a
less strict policy on stem cell research; 55% say he should allow women to
be priests.

    But the Republicans are moving aggressively on the conservative social
agenda. This week, in Kansas, gay marriage was banned in a referendum. Four
states have passed bills permitting pharmacists to refuse to fill
prescriptions for contraceptives. The governor of Illinois has issued an
emergency order to ensure that pharmacists fill all prescriptions.
California's legislature is debating a law to require druggists to do the
same.

    By consolidating power, the Pope believed that he was strengthening the
church. Now the conservatives want a post-John Paul papacy to extend his
stringency. Others want moderation, openness and discussion. Catholics in
America do not now hold the same principle of hope. No one monitors the
church's crisis more closely than the White House, and no one plots to
exploit its division more ruthlessly. Religion is politics under red robes.
So Bush travels to Rome.

    Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and
author of The Clinton Wars.



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