I would like to welcome all the visitors who arrived via Peter Robinson’s superb “THE PONTIFF AND THE WAR” post on The Corner today. And thanks, Peter!
The post of mine to which Robinson referred is “‘Pope condemns Bush,’ wish Times, others.”
God bless America!
Now you KNOW, don’t you, that he linked to you for your vote for the Corner…I’ll bet that Geraghty was in on that scam as well.
Ah, well. Congratulations on getting nice name placement.
You think that was his motive? I just assumed all decent Americans were voting for The Corner.
Hello sir. I’ve found some instances where Pope has condemned the war in Iraq:
Vatican says world no safer after US war on Iraq.
264 words
29 September 2004
17:01
Reuters News
English
(c) 2004 Reuters Limited
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The war in Iraq has left neither Iraq nor the world a safer place, the Vatican said on Wednesday, disputing a key claim of President George W. Bush a little over a month before the Nov. 2 U.S. election.
“Everyone can see that it did not lead to a safer world, either inside or outside Iraq,” Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, secretary for the Holy See’s Relations with States, told the U.N. General Assembly.
“The Holy See believes it is now imperative to support the present government in its efforts to bring the country to normality and to a political system that is substantially democratic and in harmony with the values of its historic traditions,” Lajolo said.
Bush has said frequently that even though the United States found none of the weapons of mass destruction he had insisted Baghdad was making, the war made the world safer because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was no longer in power.
Pope John Paul strongly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, telling Bush during the U.S. leader’s visit to Rome last June of his concern about the “grave unrest” in the Middle East and calling for the speedy return of Iraq’s sovereignty.
The United States ended its occupation of Iraq a few weeks after Bush’s visit, turning power over to an interim government in anticipation of January 2005 elections.
Security in Iraq has greatly deteriorated since the handover, casting doubt on whether elections can be held.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2875555.stm
Pope’s plea
As 10,000 anti-war protesters marched through the Italian city of Naples towards a Nato base in Bagnoli, Pope John Paul II made his first public comment on the conflict.
In Jakarta, demonstrators gathered at the US embassy
“When war, like the one now in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is even more urgent for us to proclaim, with a firm and decisive voice, that only peace is the way of building a more just and caring society,” he said.
Thanks for writing, ShanNYC.
Your Reuters story is of course completely inadmissible, in that it is not a quote from John Paul II. (It does quote two words, namely “grave unrest.” But that’s not even a sentence, much less a condemnation of the invasion of Iraq.)
Your BBC story comes a teensy bit closer, in that it actually quotes a full sentence that was actually spoken by Pope John Paul II. But he forgot to condemn the invasion of Iraq.
Some will accuse me of hairsplitting, and say, “Sean, what difference does it make whether he used the particular formulation you’re insisting on? The pope said the war in Iraq threatens humanity, fercryinoutloud, and that sounds like a condemnation to me!”
But what he said here was war threatens the fate of humanity. All war does. “Like the one now in Iraq” was a parenthetical clause, so the war in Iraq threatens the fate of humanity, but no more than any war does. And much more to the point — my point, at any rate — is: His Holiness neglected to condemn the United States for invading Iraq, which is the only condemnation I was looking for. A general condemnation of “the war” can (and should) be taken as a rebuke of the Iraqi dictator, not of the allies who were forced to fight him.
Think of it this way: if I were to make the absurd claim that Pope Pius XII condemned England for fighting against Nazi Germany, and the only evidence I could muster was his desire “that people will be freed from the cruel nightmare of war” in his 1942 encyclical, you’d be right to reject my conclusion. I’m rejecting yours.
Thanks, Sean, for replying.
I’d tend to agree with you: the Pope is certainly against war (not a difficult position to take), but he has not condemned the United States for her actions in Iraq.
What struck me, doing a Lexis-Nexis search, was how every article that mentioned the Pope always had this qualifier: The Pope, who has spoken out vociferously [or outspokenly or emphatically, etc.] against the U.S. invasion…
I thought it would be a “slam-dunk” to find any quote the Pontiff has so “vociferously” made, but the two I pasted here came closest.
Anyway, I thought I’d try for that free pint!