Andrew Bolt
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 09:30am
Spengler on the unusually warm meeting between the Pope and President George Bush:
It is not only faith, but the temerity to act upon faith, that the pope and the president have in common. In the past I have characterized Benedict’s stance as, “I have a mustard seed, and
I’m not afraid to use it.” ... Despite his failings, Bush is a kindred spirit. That is what horrifies their respective critics within the Catholic Church and the American government, who portray the president and the pope as destroyers of civilizational peace. The charge is spurious because there was no civilization peace to destroy…Never before did a pope descend to the Vatican gardens to greet a national leader as Benedict did for Bush, returning the unprecedented deference that the president showed in meeting the pope’s plane at Andrews Air Force Base in April. More than mutual courtesy is at work here; the two men evince a natural affinity and mutual sympathy…
Benedict XVI, like his predecessor John Paul II, disagrees with American policy in Iraq, but not the way that the European or American left would like. “There was not a word from the papal throne about the possibility of an attack on Iran during the coming months, the catastrophic results of which terrify all the bishops of the Middle East,” Marco Politi fulminated in La Repubblica June 14…
Despite his position on Iraq, Benedict’s critics within the church regard him as a civilizational warrior as dangerous as the US president.
Of course, there’s also that other rumor to explain the friendship:
The Pope has already had that other veteran of Iraq, Tony Blair, come over to his side. Bush’s brother Jeb, too.