POTUS & the Pope

[rug]

by Michael Sean Winters | Mar. 24, 2014

This Thursday, President Obama will visit Pope Francis. The pictures alone will set certain conservative hearts on edge and make liberal Catholics swoon. But, will the visit yield more than a photo-op for a president struggling with low poll numbers? Can we expect anything of substance to emerge from the meeting, or at least for some seeds to be planted that might yield a harvest later on?

The visit can be looked at from a variety of angles. The first thing to note is that both men will be fully briefed and, therefore, fully aware that the American bishops who are most aggressively hostile to Obama are also the American bishops who have been most resistant to Pope Francis. Archbishop Chaput famously accused the University of Notre Dame of prostituting its Catholic identity by inviting Obama to give a graduation speech in 2009 and it was also Archbishop Chaput who felt the urge to republish emails complaining about Pope Francis last summer, accompanied by a tepid defense of the new pope. Bishop Morlino of Madison did everything but wear a “Romney/Ryan” button on his miter in 2012, and he recently gave an interview about Pope Francis that was equal parts grudging and condescending towards the pope. And, Bishop Tobin of Providence complained about Obama in very harsh terms before complaining he was “disappointed” that Pope Francis did not spend more time talking about abortion. Both Obama and Francis are Christians, and we Christians are encouraged to view no man as an enemy, yet the phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” does leap to mind.

The two men have vastly different personalities. This visit will see a role reversal from when President George W. Bush met with Pope Benedict. Bush was an earthy evangelical and Benedict the austere, somewhat aloof, intellectual. In this case, it is the president who is known for his aloofness and intellectual rigor and Francis, while no slouch intellectually, who possesses the common, earthy touch. Will there be a meeting of the minds between these two very different personalities?

This question leads to another, and deeper, difference between the two men. Obama is a thoroughly modern man, a quintessential Cartesian. He is famous for saying that “good policy is good politics,” and he still seems to really believe that, despite his sinking poll numbers which counsel otherwise. Obama looks at the world through a technocratic lens and only in campaign season does he allow his person to embody his causes. As the New York Times relayed yesterday, Obama may have community organizing roots in the Catholic churches of Chicago, but there is nothing of the Catholic worldview or culture in the man.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/potus-pope

[goldent]

1. I don't expect anything at all to come out of it.

It just seems like a required meeting, that probably neither party is much interested in.