Roaming Empire The American delegation, consisting of President Bush, the wife, his dad, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former president Bill Clinton, has departed for Italy. The occasion, as everyone knows, is quite somber. They will be attending on Friday the funeral of Pope John Paul II. "It will be my honor to represent our country in a ceremony marking a remarkable life, a person who stood for freedom and human dignity," Mr. Bush said in comments to his Cabinet (along with, "what a great man"). He becomes the first sitting U.S. president to attend a papal funeral. Former president Jimmy Carter will not be along for the trip even though he was the only president to host a pope (this one, John Paul II) at the White House. Instead, Rice - one of Bush's war architects, no small affront to a man of peace - got the ticket. That's being fiscally neo-conservative; two slaps in the face for the price of one. This president, never lacking for words on any subject, has kept his drawling to a minimum as of late. After his heartfelt, made-for-TV intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, one would have expected Bush to leap atop a stump, proclaiming his and John Paul's mutual stance on the unmitigated value of life. Such would be good chum in trolling for pro-life votes. The only problem is that those same voters are often at odds with their own unctuous sanctimony, as they steadfastly support war and the death penalty. It doesn't help their cause when it turns out Bush signed a bill that ends life while he was governor of Texas, or that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay pulled the plug on his own father. If the right wing is expecting some rhetorical red meat from Bush, reporting live from the Vatican, they may wind up going hungry. For all the Christian oupouring of grief right now, non-Catholics were shockingly cruel in their taunts and jabs at the Church and at the pope during a spate of altar-boy sex scandals. They burned up the wires on talk shows and web sites, spitting out the words "pedophile priests" like machine-gun rounds. As they publicly squeeze out their tears now, they'd like you to forget about all of that, just as they'd like you to ignore the fact that Bush has changed religious denominations thrice in his lifetime. When he banned federal funding for stem-cell research, Bush went to the Vatican and leaned on the Church like a crutch. He used the pope to get what he wanted back at home - support for his actions, which were wholly designed to excite his political base (see any patterns here?). Other than that, there's not much about the president for the pope to have admired; while Jimmy Carter hammers nails for the poor, Bush and the GOP slash government spending on behalf of our least fortunate citizens. It may not be so unfair to say that Dubya probably horrified Pope John Paul II, even as he bestowed upon the pontiff our Medal of Freedom. While the pope no doubt appreciated the president's call for the spread of democracy in the Middle East, it was no secret that he opposed American methodology in Iraq. He deemed Bush's war "a defeat for humanity", something that Catholics who voted Republican should think about now and then. If only we could have learned more from Pope John Paul II when it came to war, and empire-making, it would have made for one more fine blessing. To understand the fallout from our government's decisions, of which he (as God's spokesman on Earth) openly disapproved, note that the president will not be taking any extra time off to enjoy Italy, or any other place in Europe, after the funeral. He'll be flying straight home to his Texas ranch for the weekend. That suits him better than any Holy place anyway. Paul Heller 04/08/05 << back to the archives
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