Pope Benedict XVI receives a picture from U.S. President George W. Bush (L) after a meeting in the medieval St John’s Tower in the Vatican Gardens on June 13, 2008. Pope Benedict gave Bush an unprecedented welcome in the tranquillity of the Vatican Gardens on Friday before the U.S. president resumed his campaign to rally European support for sanctions against Iran. REUTERS/Filippo Monteforte/Pool (VATICAN)
By Peter Popham in Rome
President George Bush was given such a splendid welcome by Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that rumours started flying that the President, like Tony Blair before him, was on the verge of converting to Catholicism.
It was a Vatican visit such as no other head of state has ever enjoyed. Instead of greeting him, like all previous high-ranking visitors, in the papal library of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope took Mr Bush round the medieval St John’s Tower then gave him a tour of the Vatican gardens, culminating in a brief open-air concert by the Sistine Chapel Choir.
The Pope waited for the President at the entrance of the tower. As he arrived, the President was overheard gushing “What an honour” as the two men disappeared for a half-hour tête-à-tête, details of which have not been made public.
The special reception was seen as a return of favours for the magnificent party thrown for the Pope two months ago when he turned 81 during his US tour, attended by up to 9,000 guests. But yesterday the Vatican was seething at rumours that there was much more to it than protocol: George Bush,lifelong Methodist, was about to convert.
The notion was given extra mileage by the fact that the President’s brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida, converted to Catholicism on marrying his wife Columba, a Mexican.
The Vatican differs from the White House on immigration and the death penalty but on other issues including stem cell research, gay marriage and abortion there has been, as the Catholic daily L’Avvenire put it, “total harmony.”
Cardinal Pio Laghi, the papal envoy to the White House, said: “Bush believes in the values of the Church and his brother is a convert.”
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George W. Bush could well be the nation’s first Catholic president.
“Certainly much more Catholic than Kennedy.”
2 responses so far ↓
wil // June 15, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Though he already had? So would be faith of the future is Masonic Islamatholicism? Heavy on the green and light on the population?
Andrew Weaver // June 18, 2008 at 12:45 am
Neocon Catholics target mainline Protestants
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D.
August 11, 2006
Institute on Religion and Democracy leads serious breach of ecumenical good will
“There is a kind of Henry V quality about all this. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’ I mean, that really is true. [We are] people who have been together in a great moral cause…”– George Weigel, describing Neoconservatives
When President George W. Bush met with religious journalists in May of 2004, the religious authority he cited most often was not a fellow United Methodist or even another Protestant. It was a man the president affectionately calls “Father Richard.” He is Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus, who, the President explained, “helps me articulate these [religious] things” (Time, 2005). A senior administration official confirmed to Time magazine that Neuhaus “‘does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence’ on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment” (Time, 2005).
Father Neuhaus, 69, has been a leading culture warrior in the Neoconservative camp (Berkowitz, 2003). Although his ideological positions have been challenged by fellow Catholics as inconsistent with church teachings (Cocozzelli, 2006; Commonweal, 2006; Linker, 2006), few mainline Protestants are aware of his activities or those of other influential Neocon Catholics such as Michael Novak, George Weigel, and Robert P. George. Fewer still realize that these Catholics direct a group of paid political operatives who work ceaselessly to discredit mainline Protestant leaders and their Christian communions (Swecker, 2005; Weaver et al, 2005). The Washington-based think tank that they lead is the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD – website).
Six of the 17 current members of IRD’s board of directors, a full 35 percent, are prominent conservative Catholics (Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2006). They include founders Father Richard John Neuhaus of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, along with George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Professor Robert P. George of Princeton University, Mary Ellen Bork (wife of Judge Robert Bork), and board chair, Professor J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin (IRD, 2006). In addition, four other conservative Catholics sit on the IRD advisory board: Professor Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard University School of Law; Opus Dei evangelist and Catholic priest, Rev. John McCloskey; Russell Hittinger, Warren Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, as well as Jesuit priest and professor, Rev. James Schall at Georgetown University (IRD, 2006).
These prominent Catholics confer their prestige and considerable power to encourage right-wing donors to finance IRD. They are key links to the patrons of IRD which include Richard Mellon Scaife, Howard Ahmanson and the Bradley, Coors, Smith-Richardson, Randolph, and Olin foundations with whom these Neoconservative Catholics have had a long working relationship (Media Transparency, 2006a).
All of these benefactors have a common political aim (National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 1997), which is to neutralize and overturn the social justice tradition of mainline Protestant churches because they are in tension with unfettered capitalism (Swecker, 2005; Clarkson, 2006). Between 1981 and 1984, the seed money for IRD, consisting of several hundred thousand dollars, came primarily from Richard Mellon Scaife and the Smith-Richardson foundations (Howell, 2003). Between 1985 and 2005 right-wing patrons donated an additional $4,764,000 to IRD (Media Transparency, 2006a). During these same years, at least $70,688,171 was given by conservative donors directly to these same Catholic Neocons or organizations in which they are employed or serve on boards (Media Transparency, 2006a; Blumenthal, 2006; Powell, 2003). However, that is not the total amount, because Christian Reconstructionist patron, Howard Ahmanson, (Blumenthal, 2004) gives money to IRD and other groups in a manner that cannot be tracked through current tax laws (Naughton, 2006).
While Father Neuhaus and his Catholic cohorts have built and sustained an organization that has consistently labored to generate suspicion and hostility about mainstream Protestant leaders, not a penny has been spent nor staff member assigned to attempt to change anything about the Catholic Church. This conduct constitutes the single greatest breach in ecumenical good will between Roman Catholics and Protestants since Vatican II.
Full Story Here
http://www.mediatransparency.org/storyprinterfriendly.php?storyID=142