We Can Be Frinds If You Send Me An Ambassador Who Hates Your Guts As Much As I Do
From the Science Blog’s, Dispatches From The Culture War blog, comes news that pope Ratzinger finds President Obama’s ambassadors lacking in some basic quality…
It was reported a couple weeks ago that the Vatican had rejected three possible nominees to be the next ambassador to the Holy See because the people they’d nominated were pro-choice on abortion:
The Vatican has quietly rejected at least three of President Obama’s candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See because they support abortion, and the White House might be running out of time to find an acceptable envoy before Mr. Obama travels to Rome in July, when he hopes to meet Pope Benedict XVI.
Italian journalist Massimo Franco, who broke the story about the White House attempts to find a suitable ambassador to the Vatican, said papal advisers told Mr. Obama’s aides privately that the candidates failed to meet the Vatican’s most basic qualification on the abortion issue.
Okay…so this is about Abortion…right? The pope doesn’t want President Obama slapping him in the face with a pro-choice ambassador…right?
Hahahahaha….
Now the London Times identifies two of the names rejected by the Vatican: Caroline Kennedy and Doug Kmiec.
Caroline Kennedy, the Roman Catholic daughter of the assassinated President, has been rejected by the Vatican as the next US ambassador to the Holy See because of her liberal views on abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, according to Vatican insiders…
Mr Obama was said to have wanted to reward Ms Kennedy for supporting his election. The other rejected nominees reportedly included Douglas Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and a former legal adviser to Presidents Reagan and George Bush Sr, who urged American Catholics to vote for Mr Obama.
But Kmiec is firmly anti-choice on abortion and always has been. He endorsed Obama despite disagreement over abortion. Which means the only basis for rejecting him is that he supported someone who is pro-choice. And on that basis, Obama would have to pick someone who does not support his presidency in order to satisfy the Vatican.
Kmiec was probably a worse pick then a pro-choice candidate. Kmiec is probably a traitor in Ratzinger’s eyes. It doesn’t matter that he opposes abortion. He supported Obama. Probably because he, like a lot of social conservatives who, after eight years of watching the republican party run itself into the ground, put his country before his personal views on abortion. That is precisely the kind of thing that would have made him absolutely unpalatable to Ratzinger. The first thing you have to abandon in the culture war, is your conscience.
April 25th, 2009 at 4:34 am
It seems to me that Papa Ratty will only accept an ambassador who doesn’t like Obama. Since Obama is always going to be the person sending the ambassador (for the next 4 or 8 years that is) this could be a problem if Obama refuses to send someone he doesn’t trust. On the other hand, Obama could use this an an opportunity to get rid of an inconvenient opponent. Papa Ratty clearly doesn’t see the Vatican’s relationship with the planet’s greatest military power and second largest economy to be of much significance (something which, incidentally, tallies very neatly with his increasingly condescending attitude towards the planet’s biggest economy – the EU) so why should Obama accord it any great significance either? If the Vatican wants to render itself even more irrelevant through such idiotic foreign policy, so be it.
There’s somethng vaguely… satisfying… about watching bigots tear down their own castle, don’t you think?
April 25th, 2009 at 10:00 am
There’s somethng vaguely… satisfying… about watching bigots tear down their own castle, don’t you think?
Yeah. And seeing that startled look on other people’s faces as they realize that, yes, the bigots really Are that nuts.