According to the Wall Street Journal — “Vatican disputes White House guest list for papal visit,” by Francis X. Rocca: “On the eve of Pope Francis’s arrival in the U.S., the Vatican has taken offense at the Obama administration’s decision to invite to the pope’s welcome ceremony transgender activists, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an activist nun who leads a group criticized by the Vatican for its silence on abortion and euthanasia…According to a senior Vatican official, the Holy See worries that any photos of the pope with these guests at the White House welcoming ceremony next Wednesday could be interpreted as an endorsement of their activities.”
Where was the Vatican rage when Bolivian President Evo Morales gave him an image of the crucified Christ featuring the Communist hammer and sickle?
Now that Pope Francis has become a buddy of President Obama, he’s finding out that worst thing anyone can do is become a friend of the President. Obama is kinder and gentler with his enemies than with his friends.
So what about the photos of Pope Benedict with Nosferatu in Havana? What about the photos of Pope Francis with Cuba’s current totalitarian tyrant at the Vatican? What about Ortega’s mass for the recovery of Fidel when he was close to kicking the bucket? How were Cubans who yearn to be rid of the Castro plague supposed to interpret those signals?
The Vatican [despite protestations to the contrary] is an eminently political entity. It explains away pictures of the pope with nosferatu with the lame and tired excuse that its is not political. The lie goes: the pope is only interested in the soul of men and women, so it meets with the totally unrepentant man responsible for the death of thousands and the destruction of Cuba because he is a Son of God. Of course, the truth is the total opposite. It is political entity, it conspires and cuts deals and jockeys for positions of powers [at the expense of the downtrodden, i.e. Cuba] in the world arena. The previously mentioned Vatican excuse is nothing more than an excuse to get us off of their backs. The fact that the pope cares about being photographed next to certain people [like those LGBTQ activists] proves how full of shit he is, but then again, isn’t that true of most politicians?
Ray, Holy Mother Church ceased being a “religious” organization when Emperor Constantine made it the official religion of Rome…
The most palatable explanation for the Vatican’s Cuba policy is that it is playing the long game, though nobody addresses how long “long” is supposed to be (presumably, as long as it takes). The same sort of thing could be (and has been) said about American policy towards communist China, and we all know how well that’s worked out for the ordinary Chinese masses.
Obviously, the now-canonized JPII did not take the same approach towards Soviet control of his native Poland, meaning we’re not talking about a consistent Vatican approach but about what could be called situational ethics, or ethics dictated by personal preferences or biases, even if Rome argues that it is simply using different methods for different circumstances or situations. JPII also did not treat someone like Chile’s Pinochet with anything like the cordiality and complacency shown to both Fidel Castro and his heir by three successive popes (reaching a level which could be called obscene with the current pope and Cuba’s current tyrant). While this kind of selectivity or inconsistency may seem perfectly reasonable to the Vatican, it is not and cannot be acceptable to Cubans who want an end to the seemingly interminable Castro nightmare, and since Cuba is their country, they are entitled to respond accordingly to any entity which condones or helps prolong Cuba’s totalitarian misery and darkness.
It bears noting that Fidel has been pushing his own version of the “long game” for decades, as a way to rationalize failures and broken promises, buy time and retain power. In other words, even if the Vatican truly believes this is the right way to proceed, it should at least realize this approach is highly problematic, meaning it can easily cut both ways, and it is virtually guaranteed to offend, alienate and repel many Cubans. Evidently, the Vatican thinks it knows best, but even the dogma of papal infallibility does not apply to politics or “diplomacy,” and there are all too many historical instances where the acting pope clearly did NOT know best, with correspondingly adverse results.
I have no doubt a Jesuit could find a way to justify the Marxist crucifix business, and in fact, a Jesuit has–just as he could find a way to justify many other related matters like so-called liberation theology. I believe it’s called spin, which can justify practically anything, or close to it. Of course, it’s entirely possible, even plausible, that this pope genuinely believes in the validity of such justifications, meaning he could be on the level. The question is, what level? Where is he coming from? What is his frame of reference or basis? You’d better believe it’s not just Roman Catholicism.