The world's two most prominent LIARS, dissemblers, hiders of
criminals, and crimes against humanity will meet today, as your
Nincompoop-In-Chief greets "Pope Benedict XVI" as the "Pontiff" kicks
off his U.S. visit.
Lying as usual, Bush remarked, "I subscribe to his [Pope's] notion
that there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a
danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free
societies."
Considerations aside that it's no better than 50-50 whether "moral,"
or much less, "relativism" are in Bush's real vocabulary, Bu****e is
confident that his red-carpet hosting of Joe Ratzinger, aka the
"Pope," will minimize any Popal [sic] reference to your White House
war criminal's Iraq bloodbath, which, notably, is bereft of hope and
freedom.
Ratzinger is expect to present himself as "God's Rottweiler," a tag
applied to him by others before his election three years ago, when he
was known as an "orthodoxy enforcer." In other words, he is an
unstinting "believer" (so he'd have you believe) in "profound
supernatural religious faith," which we thought had gone the way of
witch burning and The Inquisition.
Whether Ol' Joe will bring up the still hot topic of priests-on-boys'-
butts remains to be seen.
But you can bet his eternal "Church" messages of ignorance, poverty,
fear, and intolerance will resonate with the many illegal immigrants
and their groups that are expected to ask him to call for a stop to
Americans' wishes to have the illegals de****ted.
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"Building Ties With Catholics A Bush Priority"
"President Identifies With Church on Key Issues"
By Michael Abramowitz
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 15, 2008; A07
During a private meeting in the White House living quarters last year
with the Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, President Bush expressed
passionate appreciation for the church's defense of human life on
abortion and other issues.
As recounted by former speechwriter Bill McGurn, who was at the
meeting, Bush told Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun that "the church is the
rock -- it is the only thing that can withstand the wave of
secularization, which says you can kill someone else to make your own
life more convenient. He said the Catholic Church must never give in
on this."
To McGurn, a Catholic, it was striking that a Protestant president
would see the Catholic Church as a rock. But it was also
characteristic of a politician who has come to identify closely with
Catholics and the powerful men who have led the church during his
tenure in the White House.
A sign of this respect will come this afternoon, when Bush and first
lady Laura Bush greet Pope Benedict XVI after his plane lands at
Andrews Air Force Base, the first time in his seven years in office
that the president will leave the White House to receive a visiting
foreign dignitary. Bush will host Benedict tomorrow for a private 45-
minute meeting in the Oval Office after an elaborate official arrival
ceremony featuring soprano Kathleen Battle singing "The Battle Hymn of
the Republic." About 9,000 invited guests are expected on the South
Lawn, more than were present for the arrival ceremony for Queen
Elizabeth II last May.
In an interview last week with the Eternal Word Television Network, a
Catholic news outlet, Bush said the robust White House welcome for
Benedict reflects the pope's immense significance as a religious and
moral leader. "I [also] subscribe to his notion that . . . there's
right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of
undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies,"
Bush said. "I want to honor his convictions."
Building strong ties with Catholics in general -- and Benedict and his
predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in particular -- has been a major
element of the president's agenda since the 2000 political campaign.
Former aides say his "compassionate conservative" agenda and emphasis
on a "culture of life" have been shaped by the teachings of the
church, while his political advisers have seen an op****tunity to wrest
Catholic voters from the Democratic Party.
But recently these efforts have met with the same mixed success Bush
has experienced with other groups. In 2004, Republican identification
ticked up among Catholics, and for the first time in exit polls dating
to 1972, more Catholics by a narrow margin -- 38 to 36 percent --
called themselves Republicans than Democrats. But in the 2006 midterm
elections, 41 percent identified as Democrats, 34 percent as
Republicans. And that year, 55 percent of Catholics sup****ted
Democratic House candidates.
Bush's approval rating among Catholics stands at 33 percent in
Wa****ngton Post-ABC News polling, matching his rating among the
general public (Story, A4). At the start of the president's second
term, 51 percent of Catholics approved of the way he was doing his
job; the last time a majority of Catholics approved of his performance
in office was three years ago.
"There's not one Catholic vote," said John C. Green, a senior fellow
at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. "Bush, with Karl
Rove's help, targeted certain elements of the Catholic community very
effectively, and they didn't try or were not effective with other
parts of the Catholic community."
One source of tension with Catholics and the Vatican has been the Iraq
war. During one of their meetings in Rome, in 2004, John Paul seemed
to scold Bush over the conflict and the "deplorable events" connected
to it. Catholic allies of the White House said they think the current
pope has moved past that criticism and is focused primarily on the
safety and security of the Christian minority inside Iraq, an issue
they expect him to raise with Bush when they meet tomorrow.
"We're not living in 2003," said George Weigel, a prominent
conservative Catholic theologian. "The Holy See, in its leader****p
positions, is in a very adult place -- they have turned the page, and
I think the White House has turned the page. There is a shared goal --
namely, a stable, democratic Iraq that is safe for pluralism."
This will be the second time Bush has met with Benedict (he met with
John Paul three times in Italy). When Bush and Benedict met for the
first time, at the Vatican last June, among the subjects of
conversation were efforts to address AIDS in Africa and religious
liberty in China, Iraq and the broader Middle East, according to Rove,
who traveled with the president before leaving the White House later
in the summer.
"They know the president has spoken out publicly and privately about
religious freedom in China, and they are appreciative of that," Rove
said yesterday.
Some Catholic intellectuals say Bush and the pope have a different
outlook on a number of issues, including how aggressively government
should try to help the poor, but they do not expect to see such
differences surface when the two leaders meet tomorrow.
"While they are going to have strong differences, I don't think they
are going to have a confrontation," said John-Peter Pham, a James
Madison University professor and former Vatican diplomat. The pope "is
enough of a scholar to recognize that with all the faults and defects
you could have, especially the whole issue of invading Iraq, that the
United States presents a model for human rights, for good relations
between church and state."
Weigel said Benedict and his aides see a confluence of interests with
the Bush administration on many issues, such as AIDS in Africa and the
role "life" issues should play in international organizations. "We're
so obsessed on Iraq here, we see it as a huge stumbling block," he
said. "They see the whole picture, and the whole picture is one of
striking parallelism of concerns and initiatives."
[Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this re****t.]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041402652.html
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