This scene struck me as something special. Everyone looked really happy, including the President. This is a quite beautiful moment, and it made me feel good to watch it.I do feel the need to comment that when Obama met the Pope the media was all over the paper that the Pope gave Obama about abortion, on which the two of them disagree. Only one person commented on an even longer paper that the Pope also gave to him regarding economic matters, on which the Pope thinks Obama is doing a lot of the right things.
Well duh, the media don't like complicated issues, and love to make trouble where it doesn't already exist. Benedict and Obama are both "liberals" in the traditional sense of caring about the poor, the weak, the oppressed and exploited. Gee, kind of like their common Lord, and how he said in Matthew 25 that He'd judge them and every one else.
ReplyDeleteOf course the media don't want to deal with the fact that most Americans don't fit into "liberal" and "conservative" pigeon-holes. Neither ideological extreme has ever articulated a CONSISTENT ethic for their social policy positions with moral bases, implications, or consequences. Unlike, say the Roman Catholic Church, or Evangelicals for Social Action, or Sojourners, or... I could go on. Talking heads don't have the patience (or perhaps wits) to deal with such theologically conservative groups that doesn't bow to Reagan's economics or Dubya's social policies or libertarian environmental ideas.
For more on this media blindness, and moral inconsistency in politics, may I recommend Jim Wallis's book "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get It".
As to the Pope's and our president's personal positions and their conflict over abortion rights, is the problem that they disagree about whether murder is wrong? Be serious, not conceivable. Or is it about whether abortion is actually murder? Much more likely. Or is it perhaps about whether abortion should be against the law. Benidict saying "yes", because murder is always immoral; Obama saying "no", because he governs a democracy, where there is not the required consensus on the subject. (My guess is the latter, in case you are wondering.)