Dan Brown, call your agent

July 15, 2009 By

I know that neither the Vatican nor the White House made it easy to cover President Obama’s meeting with Pope Benedict XVI last week, but the situation seemed especially desperate when a reporter must begin interpreting body language for coded messages. Here’s Jeff Israely of Time:

Body language says a lot about a world leader’s audience with the Pope. During his 2007 visit to Pope Benedict XVI’s private library, President George W. Bush sat down across the desk from the Pontiff as if he had just landed on his own porch in Crawford, Texas: leaning back in the velvet chair, legs crossed, apparently eager to show his command of the situation.

When President Barack Obama sat down in that same spot on Friday, July 10, for his first papal meeting, his posture was altogether different. Leaning forward from the front edge of the chair, his shoulders slightly hunched, his crossed hands resting softly on the edge of the Pope’s desk, the leader of the free world looked more like a schoolboy who’d arrived to humbly plead his case to the principal.

It couldn’t have been that Bush felt more at ease with the Pope because of their affinity on issues, could it? No, cocky Bush versus humble Obama makes more sense.

Israely compounds the damage with these scare quotes:

And during the oddly scheduled Friday afternoon meeting, crammed between the end of the Group of 8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, and Obama’s departure for Ghana, the Pope had no intention of papering over differences on what the Vatican calls “life” issues, such as abortion and euthanasia.

Yes, the Vatican does tend to be obstinate about “life” issues, especially when they happen to involve human lives. Veteran observers tell me the Vatican also has shown occasional stubbornness about what it calls “theology,” and what it calls “ethics,” and what it calls “the Mass.” It’s a highly complicated and eccentric jargon, which has so very little to do with real life.

Israely’s brief report was a masterpiece of journalism compared to Newsweek‘s publishing an attack on the Pope even before the meeting occurred.

The short piece, by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, offers no insight that one has not heard multiple times from Catholic politicians who openly reject their church’s teaching on pelvic issues, to use ex-Catholic Matthew Fox’s memorable label.

It is amusing, however, to watch Townsend attempt to make Karol Wojtyla (otherwise known as Pope John Paul II) into the man most to blame for the church’s continued teaching against artificial contraception:

But authority — not truth, not love — prevailed: Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority.

Who knew? Perhaps the Vatican ought to add a new credit point as it considers future saints: Ticking off American Catholic politicians who presume to hector a sitting Pope.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Politics, Sex, Social Issues
  • Julia

    From the Time article:

    Benedict, who doesn’t have the same instincts in world diplomacy as Pope John Paul II and has had some notable verbal missteps, has a new opportunity with a like-minded Obama Administration to have more of a say on a vast array of foreign policy challenges.

    1) John Paul II notably defied the Communist world by travelling to Poland, daring the the rulers to prevent him from speaking his mind, raising the spirits of the Polish people and supporting the Solidarity movement of Lech Walensa. He was as bold and confrontational as Reagan telling the Communists to tear down their wall. And now Benedict’s bold statements regarding Islam, the problem ideology of our age, are misteps? Come the next Pope, we’ll start reading great things about Benedict.

    2) Barak Obama has the power to grant or not grant the Pope a say on foreign policy challenges? Benedict has to play “Barak, may I?” before he opines on foreign policy?
    How does our president have such control over a foreign head of state?

  • Jerry

    Finding bad coverage is like shooting ducks in a barrel. I thought http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/religion/2009/07/10/obama-stresses-common-ground-with-pope-benedict.html was a good, balanced view of the meeting once we got past the headline. It outlined both of their positions in what seemed to be a balanced way and, gasp, shock, actually pointed out that there are areas of agreement between the President and the Pope.

    Though some U.S. Catholic bishops have been vocally critical of the Obama administration, the Vatican has taken a warmer tone. Pope Benedict phoned Obama last year to congratulate him on winning the election, as opposed to waiting until his inauguration, as is Vatican protocol.

    While dozens of U.S. bishops criticized Obama’s appearance at the University of Notre Dame in May, the official Vatican newspaper praised the president’s commencement speech. “The search for a common ground: This seems to be the path chosen by the president . . . in facing the delicate question of abortion,” the paper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote in response to the address.

  • Julia

    These articles keep repeating that the bishops were upset about the invitation to Obama to speak at graduation. No, it was the award.

  • danr

    Douglas, you and the fine GR folks know by now that Newsweek “articles”, especially regarding religion, are now good for nothing more than comic relief (or disbelief?).

  • http://www.mikehickerson.com Mike Hickerson

    Wow, that Newsweek article was something else. From Townsend:

    Even more intriguing is the pope’s support for political activism…As a member of a family that preached that politics is an honorable profession, I see that he is opening the church to roles that for too long have been neglected

    Joe Biden will be so glad to hear that Catholics can now get involved in politics.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    I would like to see a few articles about how the Kennedy family has disgraced the Catholic Faith, both by their ignorance of the Faith (as made blatant in Mike’s Kennedy quote above) and by the arrogant, predatory sexual practices of so many men in that family starting with the Founding Father bootlegger, Hollywood star bed-hopping, Old Man Joe.

  • Julia

    Deacon:

    I’ve always found it distressing that Rose Kennedy was presented as and believed to be the wonderful, devout, Irish Catholic mother – who actually enabled her sons and husband in their promiscuity and counseled her daughters and daughters-in-law to look the other way, too.

    I’m sure the Kennedy PR machine was behind her appearing in all those Good Housekeeping et al ladies magazines, but the media went along with it and unfortunately stories on her sold lots of magazines. Unfortunately, a lot of those magazines were bought by Catholics.

  • http://www.post-gazette.com Ann Rodgers

    Regarding Humanae Vitae: Karol Wojtyla’s influence on Pope Paul VI regarding church teaching on artificial contraception is well established. There’s a detailed account in George Weigel’s Witness to Hope. If I recall correctly,Weigel substantiates earlier claims that Wojtyla dissuaded Paul VI from accepting certain forms of contraception for married couples, but also maintains that the future Pope John Paul II was very unhappy with the arguments put forth in Humanae Vitae. He found it to be rather, dry, philosophical, negative stuff, when he thought teaching on contraception should be put forth in a positive, evangelical declaration about the meaning of love. (However, having read a number of JP II’s Theology of the Body addresses, I have to say that I found them pretty dry and philosophical also).

  • Caleb

    That NW article is beneath comment.

    Except that one.

  • Dan

    Here’s how I remember the history concerning Cardinal Wojtyla and Humanae Vitae:

    In the 1960s, at the direction of the Pope (I can’t recall if it was John XXIII or Paul VI but I think the former), a commission was formed to study the question of artificial contraception. Pope Paul VI, who was thought to be sympathetic to those who favored “allowing” artificial contraception, expanded the commission to include prominent lay leaders and experts. The commission voted in a lopsided manner in favor of changing Church teaching on contraception so as to allow it in marriage and issued a report with that recommendation. Cardinal Wojtytla was in the small minority that was contra and wrote the minority report. Paul VI, although reportedly sympathetic to the majority position, felt he could not change clear Church teaching and for that reason did not accept the majority recommendation. Cardinal Wojtyla’s minority position was adopted, although, as Ann Rodgers notes, George Weigel says that Cardinal Wojtyla was critical of how Humanae Vitae presented the teaching.

    Post Script: The Holy Spirit then made Cardinal Wojtyla the Pope, thereby enabling the what came to be known as The Theology of the Body.

  • Julia

    Since I’m older than dirt, I remember a few more details.

    The Catholic banning of contraception was always expressed in terms of artificial barriers preventing the union of sperm and egg. A Catholic scientist experimented and came up with “the pill” which prevented ovulation by manipulation of the woman’s hormones. Voi la ! No artifical barrier involved.

    I got married after the pill became available and 3 years before Humanae Vitae was promulagated. Everybody expected the pill would be approved for the purposes of getting settled in marriage before the first child and for spacing children an ideal 2 years. Doctors were very careful about prescribing it. Catholic doctors associated with St Louis U med school would prescribe the pill starting a month before the wedding and would then monitor its use.

    We were all greatly shocked when Humanae Vitae came out. The problem is that the pill had already been accepted and was in use in good faith by Catholics for about 5 – 6 years before Paul VI made his stunning announcement. The cat was already out of the bag. Paul VI was a known ditherer; he should have acted sooner.