Bush, The First Catholic President?: Some Think Pope Approves George Bush’s “Use” of Catholic Social Teachings?
April 15th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Again, a disclosure: I am a Catholic.
Catholic social teachings
disagree with abuses of power,
disagree with politics that omit and oppress the poor and needy,
disagree with trampling the preciousness of the life force,
disagree with any idea that preemptive war is good,
disagree with any idea that humans are not worthy of justice and dignity… and much more.
These principles are in place to keep the world from going dead black with avarice and sloth and cruelty and the sounds of many mouths banging in scorn like empty pots. They are not always easy to live, but they are to be rooted in the heart and soul, and to be striven toward even though it is hard in the winds that swirl through this world.
Here, one journalist writes about some who present George Bush as having a seemingly ‘Catholic conscience.’ You can read the entire article by Daniel Burke here “A Catholic Wind in the White House,” and you can read my article I filed this morning at The National Catholic Reporter in my weekly column there where, speaking as a Catholic, I felt I had to refute the idea that George Bush is in any way following sacred Catholic social teachings. You can see that article, entitled, “Silencing a Woman: Retrieving Her Voice,” here.
April 13, 2008, in the Washington Post, Daniel Burke, a national correspondent for Religion News Service, writes about how some imagine President George Bush is actually a secret Catholic ‘believer,’ and has met with and surrounded himself by Catholics during his administration… that his policies have directly grown out of Catholic social justice teachings… and that the Pope is coming to see the President and his Catholic appointees specially, as the Pope is his ally… even though the Pope disagrees with President Bush’s Iraq war and torture.
“Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, another evangelical with an affinity for Catholic teaching, says that the key to understanding Bush’s domestic policy is to view it through the lens of Rome. Others go a step further.
“Paul Weyrich, an architect of the religious right, detects in Bush shades of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism last year. “I think he is a secret believer,” Weyrich says of Bush. Similarly, John DiIulio, Bush’s first director of faith-based initiatives, has called the president a “closet Catholic.” And he was only half-kidding.”
Mr. Burke’s article goes on to say,
“As the White House prepares to welcome Benedict on Tuesday, many in Bush’s inner circle expect the pontiff to find a kindred spirit in the president… this Protestant president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics — and thus Catholic social teaching — have for the past eight years been shaping Bush’s speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history….”
But, I must say otherwise:
…At a time when hardworking fathers and mothers are literally piling the children’s toys and bunk beds at the curb, for they are losing their homes in the sub-prime mortgage bunco scheme promoted by the grotesquely avaricious…
…at a time when 25% of older women only have a social security check to live on and nothing more… and they have inherited nothing but a President who wishes to do away with social security… and who admires those who call this hard earned savings account belonging to individuals who worked all their lives long, “an entitlement…”
…during a time when the last small farmers, ranchers, and overland independent truckers are being run out of business from sudden spikes in fuel and government’s one-sided subsidies… and our farmers, ranchers and trucker-heroes are becoming desperate for they not only take care of their own families, but have long taken care of us, their nation’s families at a root level, delivering the food and necessities we need…
…at a time when pharmaceutical companies produce much good, and have some charitable programs, yet still, at the back door, many also hold onto medicine patents that would have expired, thereby allowing the formulas into public domain and bringing down the costs of vital medicines for human beings in need…. but instead, some change the formula in slight and meaningless ways and thereby file to re-patent the medicine again, so they are its only producers, and prices remain high… often out of reach of those in most dire straights… and all this is okay-ed by our government…
To read the rest of both Mr. Burke’s article and mine, please see the links above….
————–
h/t Helaine
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under Christian Conservatives, Vatican, Pope, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Religion, George W. Bush, As Yet Unassigned. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
