Fighting over Obama

Today, as indicated by Pope Benedict's lifting of that excommunication, the Vatican is the sponsor of such anti-liberal rebels. Instead of reading the Bible uncritically, as Protestant fundamentalists do, Catholic traditionalists read Papal statements that way. To affirm the eternal validity of prior papal statements, as in the case of the on-going Papal condemnation of "artificial birth control," traditionalists willingly sacrifice common sense and honesty.

If the Catholic Church is as opposed to abortion as it claims, why has it not embraced the single most effective means of reducing abortion rates, which is birth control? The answer, alas, is evident: the overriding issue for Catholic fundamentalists is not sexual morality, or even "life," but papal authority. As Protestant fundamentalists effectively make an idol of biblical texts, Catholic fundamentalists, in obedience to the Vatican, make an idol of the papacy.

When it comes to Notre Dame, ironically, American Catholic fundamentalists, including the bishops leading the charge against Obama's appearance, are not going to be backed up by the Vatican. In Rome, a tradition of realpolitik tempers the fundamentalist urge of the current establishment. The highest Church authorities have long been accustomed to putting issues of theological purity second to the exigencies of state power.

So, no insults of the American president will be coming from the Vatican this weekend, and its silence on the Notre Dame controversy will speak more clearly than any official statement on the subject might. Indeed, the long history of Roman Catholicism, where Puritanism has steadily lost out to robust earthiness, and doctrinal rigidity has regularly bent before the pressures of lived experience, is itself reason to think that Notre Dame University has found the truest Catholic response to the world's present moment: its brave decision to honor President Barack Obama.

This article is reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

James Carroll is a scholar-in-residence at Suffolk University, columnist for the Boston Globe, and author of the bestselling Constantine's Sword. His most recent book is Practicing Catholic, from which this essay draws.

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the TomDispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.