Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Jeb on his brother’s faith–and faith in politics.

This.

You can say what you want about George W. Bush, but he was an unabashed defender of life, especially the most vulnerable forms of it. While the former president has been misunderstood on many issues, ESCR (embryonic stem cell research) may be one of the largest areas of all.

In his August 2001 address, the president did NOT ban ESCR research. He simply confined it to research lines already in existence. After meeting with a council of ethicists, theologians, and others, he decided that ESCR was not a moral thing to do, and it would not be expanded under his presidency.

While he was president, great promise was shown with adult stem cell research. If you are going to do therapeutic research, and not cloning, them ASCR seems to be the way to go. Not only has it already shown results, but any moral questions are side-stepped.

I have always said that, if you are going to quibble on when life begins, you should decide in favor of something being alive, as opposed to the opposite. Today’s decision by the president continues the Democratic Party’s tradition of disrespect for the tiniest, most vulnerable members of society. The decision also stands in stark contrast to Church teachings on this issue.

President and pontiff

Web Posted: 06/07/2008 12:57 AM CDT

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY — When President Bush pays a visit to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican next Friday, it will be his sixth meeting with a pope, and his third meeting with Benedict in just over a year.

Never in U.S. history has a president consulted so often with the leader of the Catholic Church. Carl Anderson, a former Reagan aide who now heads the Knights of Columbus, calls it “remarkable.”

“Less than 50 years ago,” he said, “it was a question as to whether a Catholic should even be able to run for president.”

Bush has emphasized his admiration for the papacy, and in particular for Benedict, whom he has called a “very smart, loving man.” When Benedict arrived in Washington in April, Bush met him on the tarmac, the only time he has so honored any dignitary.

Less obvious is how the pope views the president. It is not only Benedict’s relatively shy personality that prevents him from being so demonstrative, but the customary reserve that his office imposes on its occupants.

“These are the kinds of cards that popes don’t show,” said Father Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center and author of “Inside the Vatican.”

Yet according to informed observers, there is reason to believe that Benedict, despite some important policy differences with the president (most notably over Iraq), feels a genuine affinity with Bush as both a man and a leader.

For the pope, part of the attraction may lie in Bush’s life story.

“I’d imagine that he has respect for the president as a man who turned his life around, had a conversion experience, stopped drinking and started living a religious life,” Reese said.

Benedict, who has warned against the increasing secularization of Europe and praised the prominent role of religion in American public life, is likely to appreciate a head of state who is “not afraid to express his faith as a Christian,” said Father Joseph Fessio, a former student of the pope who now runs Ignatius Press, Benedict’s principal English-language publisher.

In the president, the pope finds a key supporter of the Catholic Church’s positions on such controversial questions as abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage. Bush’s arguments have frequently echoed Benedict’s appeals to “natural law” and even employ the terms of Catholic social doctrine (despite the fact that the president is a Methodist).

Nowhere has the congruence of their thinking been clearer than at April’s welcoming ceremony at the White House, when Bush cited Benedict’s denunciation of the “dictatorship of relativism,” and the pope noted the importance of American religiosity as inspiration for abolitionism and the civil rights movement.

To which Bush replied, “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.”

“They could pretty much have given each other’s speech,” said William McGurn, Bush’s former head speechwriter and a Catholic, who was present at the ceremony but did not write the president’s remarks.

Fessio agreed. “In terms of authentic, normative Catholic teaching, I don’t see any area in which the pope and President Bush disagree,” he said.

The most notable case of disharmony between the two leaders was over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed at least as ardently as Pope John Paul II.

“But Iraq is not a matter of Catholic social teaching,” Fessio said. “That was a prudential decision on whether or not the use of force was justified. The pope would be the first to tell you that good Catholics can disagree on that.”

Likewise, Benedict’s views on economics, taxation and government regulation — which are known to lie to the left of Bush’s — are merely his personal opinions, not doctrine that he holds as binding on the faithful, Fessio said.

In any case, it would be uncharacteristically undiplomatic of any pope to let past differences get in the way of constructive collaboration with a world superpower.

“The Vatican knows how to agree and disagree with heads of state and work with them anyway,” Reese said. “It’s got a big agenda.”

But I’m back! Sometimes I run into dry spells on this blog. I don’t just want to randomly write things–I want them to have some heft, you know? This isn’t the blog where I just mindlessly spill about my day (although I don’t really do that at the Bucket, either..)…

Anyway, here are some links/thoughts…

This is a great piece from Fr. Z on one of my favorite Saints, St. Gianna Molla. If I was getting confirmed today I would pick her. For those unfamiliar with her story, she was an Italian doctor who was diagnosed with a uterine tumor while pregnant, but she would not have a surgery that would remove it, since it would endanger her child’s life. Instead, St. Gianna gave birth to a healthy baby girl, even though St. Gianna died shortly after. The daughter became a doctor, like her mother.

Also from Fr. Z, the Pope’s address to Young People at Yonkers. This was the only speech of his I was able to hear live while he was in the US (since I do not have cable at my apartment, sigh…I could only watch snippets whilst I was at my parents). This was truly a remarkable speech.

Side note re: music. I can’t believe someone complained about the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” being sung when the Pope was welcomed at the White House.
1) The Pope asked for it!
2) It is said to be one of the Virgin Mary’s favorite hymns (as told by the visionaries at Medjuorgje–it’s on the tape “Sounds of Medjuorgje”, which my dad played over and over in the car when I was a kid).
3) (I think it was) The Army Choir sounds AWESOME when they sing this! When it was sung (twice!) at Reagan’s funeral, I just loved it. They do a fantastic job. Why shouldn’t we sing one of the best songs we have?
4) It’s a true, honest-to-God Americanhymn. Let’s give him the good stuff!

And I have to say, I loved watching GW with the pope. He has had so many Catholics on his advisory boards, working in his administration, etc.–and we can’t forget the appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito!

Check it out.

From Amy Welborn: Papal Posts and Links.

He’ll be at the White House on his birthday. I wonder if he’ll find a piano at the WH and entertain W and Laura.

From the WashTimes…now that I can post things again (!):

Wuerl paves own path
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 17, 2007

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl.  J.M. EDDINS JR. (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
———————————————————— ——————–
Almost a year into his job as the spiritual leader of the Washington area’s 560,000 Catholics, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl has set a personal agenda and style that are worlds apart from those of his more flamboyant predecessor.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, now retired, was known for his extroverted persona, hobnobbing with politicians and worldwide travels. His successor prefers to stay closer to home.
“I am not making the politics of the country my focus,” Archbishop Wuerl said in an interview with The Washington Times. “My focus is pastoral and spiritual as bishop.”
However, he hasn’t ruled out political involvement. In April, the archbishop met with an unspecified number of Catholic House Democrats at the D.C. home of Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut for what she called “an opportunity to get to know one another.”
“He has a wonderful style and focus on teaching. He has a willingness to listen and a pastoral approach. He appears to be a consensus builder,” Mrs. DeLauro said.
Asked about the nature of the discussion, she said: “We talked about everything but not about specific issues. People wanted the opportunity to talk about why they are serving [in Congress] and who they are.”
Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said he has had several “conversations” with Archbishop Wuerl. The archbishop was a deacon at the wedding of his wife, Teresa, and her first husband, John Heinz, in February 1966.
“He’s a very thoughtful, very intelligent, strong representative of the church,” Mr. Kerry, also a Catholic, said this month. “He’s doing a terrific job. I’ve talked to him a couple of times [this year] and have had wonderful conversations with him.”
Archbishop Wuerl’s studious, precise and understated manner is a change of pace from Cardinal McCarrick’s frequent press conferences and de facto role as spokesman for American Catholic bishops. In January 2001, the cardinal had barely arrived at his Washington chancery from his previous post as archbishop of Newark, N.J., when he hosted two special dinner guests: the newly elected President Bush and his wife, Laura.
The cardinal left office a year ago, and Archbishop Wuerl was installed as the leader of Washington’s Catholics on June 22.
“I had no sooner gotten here than they invited me to the White House,” Archbishop Wuerl said.
“It was an extraordinary evening,” he said, adding that the meal in Mr. Bush’s private quarters was partly an occasion to bid farewell to Cardinal McCarrick and partly to greet him as the new archbishop and welcome Archbishop Pietro Sambi as the new papal nuncio to the United States.

Archbishop Wuerl has since been back to the White House to talk about urban Catholic schools, but the rest of his first year here has been spent comparatively under wraps, traveling the 2,104 square miles that comprise the Archdiocese of Washington.
So far, he has visited half of the archdiocese’s 140 parishes. His duties have ranged from dedicating a new Catholic high school in Olney and celebrating the Vietnamese New Year at Our Lady of Vietnam in Silver Spring to ordaining five priests last month at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
“We’ve been trying to get to know this local church, which means getting around to it,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “That’s been a joy. It’s also been a challenge. It’s a big archdiocese territorially.”
David Gibson, an observer of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and author of several books — including “The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle With the Modern World,” released last year — said the archbishop was fortunate to have a year of adjustment before the 2008 presidential election.
“He is not a headline-grabber and he hasn’t been through a presidential campaign,” Mr. Gibson said. “Now he will be. As much as he’d like to keep a low profile and be a pastor, all those things are going to press in on him.”
Lawmakers and Communion
Archbishop Wuerl’s primary focus has been to establish himself as a teacher — much like his boss, Pope Benedict XVI, now into his third year of what religious observers and journalists have called a “teaching pontificate.”
The archbishop said he goes to Capitol Hill occasionally to meet with “a number of people on both sides of the aisle” for “conversations” to help people “form a conscience.” Just recently, he added, someone called to ask him about conscientious objection.
“The whole idea was, ‘Bishop, can you help me understand what the church’s take on this is?’ ” Archbishop Wuerl said of the dialogue with the lawmaker, whose name he did not disclose.
“I think that is one of the things a bishop can do that helps his flock: to try to help people understand the distinction between political actions and the moral import of those actions,” he said.
The archbishop’s relationships with lawmakers have generated some controversy, particularly on Jan. 3, when House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi attended Mass at Trinity University in the District. Her presence set off protests from Catholics who believe that canon law plainly bars pro-choice Catholic lawmakers from receiving Communion. A week later, the archbishop told a reporter in San Diego that he had no plans to bar Mrs. Pelosi from receiving Communion in his diocese.
“He created great scandal in the archdiocese for choosing not to deny Nancy Pelosi Holy Communion,” said Judie Brown, president of the American Life League. “She persistently draws attention to her Catholic identity and her public support for abortion. He had a tremendous opportunity to set the record straight while publicly instructing her. What kind of teacher is that?”
In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — wrote a letter to U.S. Catholic bishops saying they must try to convince pro-choice Catholic legislators that their stance is wrong. If the lawmakers did not change their minds, the letter said, they should be barred from receiving Communion.
Archbishop Wuerl declined to say whether he would ever take such a step.
“My primary responsibility is to teach and therefore to help every Catholic inform their conscience,” he said. “When people do things contrary to church teaching, my responsibility is to help them understand that is wrong. Sometimes that takes a lot of conversation. Sometimes you’re not successful at it.
“The next step — after lots and lots of conversation — is that if a person is acting out in a way that contravenes their faith, you ask them, ‘Do you think you should be receiving Communion?’ and even to say to them, ‘If you really do need to examine your conscience and if you can’t bring yourself to what the church calls a coherent position, don’t you think you should refrain from Communion?’
“I think that’s what the pope is talking about,” Archbishop Wuerl said.
Is there a time when teaching stops and discipline starts?
“I think there will always be a time you say, ‘For the good of the church, you are now presenting a public scandal,’ but you have to remember this person has a bishop and he has to be involved in this discussion as well. I think discipline is always the last step,” he said.
But isn’t it his right to say who receives Communion within the archdiocese?
“I don’t think it is uniquely any one bishop’s job to oversee all the politicians in the United States,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “Every Catholic member of government has a pastor and a bishop and they need to be in dialogue with them. The idea that the archbishop of Washington is somehow bishop for the nation is not acceptable.”
Inside the Wuerl pool
Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo says the archdiocese’s Hyattsville chancery has been nicknamed the “Wuerl machine” for the archbishop’s meticulous and driven work ethic.
“The hard-charging administrative style — schedule divvied up into 10-minute blocks, detailed command of figures large and small, lots of homework for aides and [bishop] — both inspire confidence and credibility,” Mr. Palmo wrote in November on his Web site, whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com.
Within three days of the papal announcement on May 16, 2006, that Archbishop Wuerl was named to the Washington see, his senior staff members were asked to come up with job descriptions and lists of their accomplishments and goals.
The archbishop’s schedule’s been so packed since coming here, he has had to forgo his habit of swimming laps, except for an occasional foray into the Catholic University pool.
“He’s a hard worker 24/7,” said the Very Rev. David O’Connell, president of Catholic University and a 20-year friend of the archbishop. “On Saturday, I was working in the garden and I got a phone call from the archbishop. I was wearing a T-shirt,” but the archbishop, he noted, was at his office. The two men talked about business for an hour on a day that most clergy take off.
“He’s not a micromanager, in my experience of him,” Father O’Connell added. “He’s got carefully honed administrative skills. He’s had those positions all his life, so he’s had a long time to develop those skills. He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s a bishop’s bishop, he really is.”
The education archbishop
According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 50 percent of the 475 men who will be ordained as priests this year in the United States attended a Catholic elementary school.
This is one reason why Archbishop Wuerl has spent much of his first year trying to overhaul the archdiocese’s inner-city school system. Soon after he arrived in Washington, the archbishop called in his catechists and said he wanted to hold a workshop for the archdiocese’s religious educators. On Oct. 5, 2,300 people attended the archdiocese’s first catechetical convocation to set a vision for religious education.
“We had to get everyone on the page with the same information,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “Here are the number of students we have, here’s what it costs, here is where the deficits are, here is where our potential for addressing some of those deficits lie. And … how to guarantee Catholic education in the future for the diocese and how can we guarantee we won’t outprice it.”
One of his concerns is that the Center City Consortium, a corporation created to fund eight inner-city schools, has run out of money.
“In the past 10 years, we have spent nearly $60 million,” the archbishop said, “but the number of schools has gone from eight to 14. That has overtaxed the sources. The board is working to see how we can keep as much Catholic education in the [inner-city] as possible while also being able to pay for it.”
It’s not that the archbishop is lax on fundraising.
His annual archbishop’s appeal is far ahead on donations, having raised $11.3 million in pledges, about $3 million more than it had at the same time last year. This year’s goal was $11.1 million.
Monsignor Ronald Jameson, rector of St. Matthew’s Cathedral downtown, said his parish pledged 114 percent of its goal for the appeal.
“I am very impressed with him,” Monsignor Jameson said of the archbishop. “He is so organized. He spends a lot of time in preparation for ceremonies [at the cathedral] to make sure everyone is on the same page.”
In the confessional
Perhaps the archbishop’s biggest success was his first pastoral letter on the sacrament of confession, released near the beginning of Lent.
Called “The Light is on for You,” it evolved into a press campaign with 100,000 brochures in English and Spanish, a Web site (www.thelightison.org), ads on the Metro system, one billboard in Prince George’s County and radio ads.
“It was an extremely successful effort,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “A large number of priests have said to me, ‘Some of the confessions I heard in one day made the whole thing worth it.’ “
Other pastors reported having to reorder brochures and hearing confessions of Catholics who had not taken part in the sacrament for several decades.
The Catholic Church requires its members to go to confession at least once a year, but a 1980 University of Notre Dame survey — the most recent one available — showed that one out of four Catholics never go. The archdiocese received inquiries from several other dioceses and press requests from overseas about the pastoral letter.
The success of the penance campaign raised questions at the chancery about what else can be done to reach the region’s many Catholics.
“We’ve had some meetings on how to get my voice out as pastor,” Archbishop Wuerl said. “We found out those ‘Light is on for You’ radio pieces got responses from thousands of people. I’d like to get into that whole world of popular communications.”
So when does he intend to begin a blog? The 66-year-old archbishop acknowledged that this technology is beyond him.
“Down the road I’d like to,” he said. “But you have to use sound bites and be brief and repetitious. Many of us were trained and formed in literature, philosophy, theology — the very disciplines that don’t train you to release everything into sound bites. So you have to reprogram your way of speaking.”

From USA Today: (and it quotes my cousin!!)

  Bush awarded Pope John Paul II the Medal of Freedom. The president will meet Pope Benedict XVI for the first time Saturday.

Benedict, Bush both benefit from meeting

USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL

How much attention should President Bush pay to Pope Benedict XVI’s ideas and pronouncements about policy?

Moderate amount: 46%

Not much: 21%

A great deal: 18%

None at all: 11%

No opinion: 4%

Source: USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken June 1-3 of 496 adults nationwide. Margin of error +/-5 percentage points.

By David Jackson, USA TODAY
ROSTOCK, Germany — When Al Smith lost the 1928 presidential race, he was attacked for being Roman Catholic and therefore too close to the pope.
Today, U.S. presidents and the leader of the Catholic Church enjoy a working relationship that has spanned decades.

President Bush had his fourth papal audience on Saturday and his first with Pope Benedict XVI. Bush will tie a meeting record set by presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who both met four times with Pope John Paul II.

Bush told a group of European journalists last week that he was looking forward to meeting with Benedict, calling him a “a good thinker and a smart man. I’ll be in a listening mode.

“Sometimes I’m not poetic enough to describe what it’s like to be in the presence of the Holy Father,” Bush said. “It is a moving experience.”

Americans generally like the idea of presidents conferring with popes. About seven in 10 say Bush should pay more attention or the same amount to Benedict as he does to other world leaders, according to a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. Only 27% say the pope should receive less attention.

While American political history includes a thread of anti-Catholicism, church observers and political analysts say the meetings between the president and the pontiff offer something for both.

The president represents “the one great superpower and all that signifies,” said Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. “The pope speaks from a worldwide perspective of faith, spirituality and conscience.”

Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said “a sense of approval from the Vatican” can only help a president on the international stage. Closer to home, he said, the White House “has seen good relations with the Vatican as part of (its) domestic effort to woo Catholic voters, particularly conservative Catholic voters.”

Bush won 52% of the Catholic vote in 2004, according to media exit polls, and beat Sen. John Kerry, who is Catholic.

Bush’s meeting with Benedict touched on the Iraq war, which the Vatican has long opposed. John Paul dispatched a cardinal to the White House in 2003 to plead against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and echoed his opposition to the war when he met with Bush in 2004. John Paul also opposed the Persian Gulf War.

The president’s other meetings with John Paul touched on politically sensitive issues such as embryonic stem cell research and charges of clergy sex abuse.

In his Easter message this year, Benedict bemoaned that “nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, D.C., said, “War and peace are always on the mind of the Holy Father.”

Benedict, who became pope in April 2005, has had his share of controversy. His suggestion of a link between violence and Islam in September 2006 sparked a protest throughout the Muslim world, though Benedict sought to clarify his remarks on a visit to Turkey a few months later.

And while traveling to Brazil earlier this year, Benedict said politicians risked excommunication if they supported abortion laws.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, said the meeting between Bush and the pontiff was a “photo op.” Still, he said, it “allows for an exchange of information and views” on a wide range of issues.

“The Vatican has been called one of the great listening posts of diplomacy,” Reese said. “Let’s hope the administration listens.”

Some historical facts about presidents and popes, according to the Rev. James Garneau, who lectured on the topic at Catholic University:

•Woodrow Wilson was the first president to meet with a pope, Benedict XV in 1919. A president did not have a papal audience again until 1959, when John XXIII received Dwight Eisenhower. That began a tradition that has included every president since.

•John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected to the White House, ignored anti-Catholic sentiment to visit Pope Paul VI in 1963. They discussed the civil rights movement.

•Reagan, who nodded off during his first meeting with John Paul II, formed an anti-communist pact with the pontiff whose native Poland was temporarily behind the Iron Curtain.

July 23, 2001 at Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat Stem cell research The pope asked Bush not to support federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells. The meeting occurred months before Bush approved limited federal support of such research using existing stem cell lines. Bush vowed Thursday he’ll veto a research bill passed by Congress because it would destroy human embryos. He vetoed the measure once before, in 2006.  “Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of conscience accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the womb.” —Pope John Paul II One example he cited: “Proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process.”

May 28, 2002 at the Vatican Clergy sexual abuse of children Bush was in Rome for a NATO conference. At the time, several priests in the USA were under investigation for molesting children. Church leaders were accused of covering up the problem. Bush and the pope met privately, and there were no statements afterward — the only time that happened in their encounters. “I will tell him that I am concerned about the Catholic Church in America. I am concerned about its standing, and I say that because the Catholic Church is an incredibly important institution in our country.” —President Bush, before the meeting

June 4, 2004 at the Vatican  The Iraq war  On his way to a 60th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings, Bush visited the pope to give him a U.S. Medal of Freedom. The pope and the Vatican were outspoken against the war in Iraq and violence in the Middle East. Later that year, Bush won a second term, even though the Iraq war brought down his approval ratings.  “Mr. President, your visit to Rome takes place at a moment of great concern for the continuing situation of grave unrest in the Middle East, both in Iraq and in the Holy Land. You are very familiar with the unequivocal position of the Holy See in this regard.” —Pope John Paul II