The Pope and CNN

[Zero]

Originally posted by Sava
Ming... Both you and MtG were WAY too generous. 1.0 * 10^-1000 out of ten is probably the best rating I can give. Put that in your pope and smoke it.

Why cant people just give a 0/10 and get it over with?

[JohnT]

"Could he have done this because he feared reprisals against Christians by Arab dictators and/or Moslems not only in Iraq, but arcross the world of Islam?.."

No, he did it because he is the Pope and his churchs standard position is that war is bad.

Trust me, this man and his institution will not be afraid to ask Catholics to suffer for their faith if and when the times demand it... but as of now they currently don't.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

What JohnT said. And there's no contrast with his famous anti-Soviet stance; the Pope never advocated war with the USSR. No abortion,no death penalty, no unprovoked war -- the Church is very,very consistant on matters of life and death.

[Shi Huangdi]

Well they are similar in that they both don't run the most moral of institutions...

[Ned]

Does anyone know what the Pope said on Easter Sunday. He was supposed to say something about Iraq. I searched, but could find no reports.

[cinch]

From HiPakistan!:

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LONDON: The Pope delivered a coded rebuke to Washington on Easter Sunday when he urged Iraqis to take charge of the rebuilding of their country while working closely with the international community.

In the Vatican's diplomatic lexicon, the phrase "international community" normally refers to the UN. Before the conflict started, Pope John Paul vigorously opposed the US-led assault and advocated resolution of the crisis in the forum of the UN general assembly.

"With the support of the international community," he declared in his traditional Easter sermon "may the Iraqi people become the protagonists of their collective rebuilding of their country."

The 82-year-old pontiff, who has difficulty walking because of arthritis, moved around St Peter's Basilica, in Rome, on a mobile throne.

His speech appeared aimed at putting pressure on the US and Britain to involve the UN more closely in political reconstruction of Iraq and to speed up the handover to civilian rule.

In his 25th Easter message, Pope John Paul wished the world a happy and peaceful holiday in 62 different languages. "Peace in Iraq!" he said in a hoarse tone, but the crowd roared with approval and applauded, prompting him to project his voice more energetically and repeat several phrases with emphasis.

In the months preceding the fighting, the Pope conducted a series of high-profile diplomatic initiatives, sending envoys to President George Bush and Saddam Hussein and holding talks at the Vatican with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, and with Prime Minister Tony Blair. More recently, the Vatican has offered to help coordinate humanitarian aid through its embassy and dioceses.

The pontiff's message again addressed "the peril of a tragic clash between cultures and religions" in the Middle East.

He also called for "peace in other parts of the world, where forgotten wars and protracted hostilities are causing deaths and injuries amid silence and neglect on the part of considerable sectors of public opinion."
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http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en23193&F_catID=&f_type=source

[Ned]

Cinch, thanks. Still no mention of the brutality of the Saddam regime and the new found liberty of the people of Iraq. Amazing.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Ned
Ming, I think the Pope was concerned about reprisals against Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the world of Islam if he took a stand against Saddam.

That is but one of his positions, but the more important principle is that the Pope genuinely believes that more bad will come out of this war than good.

Here is a quote from Religions and Ethics Newsweekly:

Joining us now from Rome is John Allen, Vatican correspondent for the independent weekly newspaper, the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER. John, welcome.

Why is John Paul so opposed to using force, if necessary, to disarm Iraq?

JOHN ALLEN JR. (Vatican Correspondent, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER): Fundamentally because he does not think this would be a just war. Both because the relationship between the good to be achieved and the harm that would be done just is not there, and also because the imminence of the threat posed by Iraq is not at present convincing.

The Vatican is concerned about several things here. One is the fate of Christian minorities in the Islamic world. Another is the broader Christian-Islamic relationship in all the places around the world, the conflict zones if you will, where there is tension there. The third is that the strength of international law, international institutions, above all the United Nations, and I think that their calculus is that on all three of those issues this war would have a disastrous impact.

[Ned]

Clearly, the Pope does not view a war of liberation as justified.

I wonder how he felt about Kosovo.

[JohnT]

What you are really asking is the Pope's position on international law, and who the authority is. Here is a statement made by a Cardinal of the Holy See:

With profound sorrow, we must record that the war deaths in the 20th century were much greater in number than all the war deaths in previous centuries from the first century A.D. More than 110 million people were killed in this century's wars. Nor has the killing diminished in the last decade of the century, the so-called post-Cold War period. East Timor, Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq, Bosnia, North Ireland, Haiti, The Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka: these are just some of the affected areas from nearly all the regions of the world whose hopes for growth and prosperity were stifled by chronic conflicts.

Despite the undoubted advance of civilization as a whole, acts of barbarism in our time have sunk to new depravities. Exterminations, genocide, mass killings, deportation, tortures in the extreme have scarred the memory of this century. Distinctions between military combatants and civilians have disappeared; human rights violations against women and children occur in unprecedented numbers. In the past decade, two million children have been killed in armed conflicts; four to five million more have been disabled and more than 12 million made homeless. Terror and violence, now so common, speak of deliberate victimization.

Such brutality must be stopped by international legal authority. The carnage occurring within States, as well as the conflict between States, must be addressed by competent legal authority operating under the mandate of the United Nations Security Council. We will not be able to build a path to peace in the 21st century unless there is universal recognition and acceptance that the Security Council is the pre-eminent authority in enforcing peace and security.

The Popes' moral and ethical decision would have been that Kosovo is wrong, that peace is always the better option. But the church's position is that in the temporal world of international politics, the United Nations Security Council is the ultimate authority. So his position likely would've been "We disagree with the war, all wars, on ethical considerations, but am glad to see that the international framework of the UN is working."

[Ned]

Once the popes recognized the authority of the Emperor, and generally endorsed their policies of war and peace. It looks as if the pope has now recognized the authority of the United Nations.

However, the UN is highly disfunctional, as we have recently seen. It's membership was deeply divided Rawanda, Kosovo and now Iraq. The pope clearly is condemns the genocide of both Rawanda and Kosovo, but does not apparently approve of the US/Nato decision to act independently of the UN in the case of Kosovo. Ditto Iraq. An yet the pope seems to be in favor of international action to quell abuses. By implication, he considers international action without a UN mandate "illegal" and therefor immoral even though it ends the very genocide or other abuses the pope condemns.

Methinks the pope has a blind spot about the UN. He cannot see or, better, cannot accept that the international community can come together to act when the UN cannot because of its internal divisions.

[GePap]

Ned:

Honestly, do you actually believe that anyone who does not share your moralistic outrage is evil? The pope, as a human being, lived through times and places as bad as those that any Iraqi lived through, in Poland in fact, worse. As a man he had done more to bring freedom thorughout the world than Bush has ever or would ever do. He is a trained theologian.. and yet somehow you have a superior moral judgement?

There are 25 million human beings in Iraq. There are 6 billion human beings. If someone is unsure how the act of "saving" .41% of humanity will affect the other 99.59% of humanity in the long term, are they morally wrong to question such an act? And if you honestly believe every single human life is so valuable that to risk it all is worth to save it, how could you ever justify war at all?

You are free to your opinions Ned, but you are not the fountain of moral clarity, nor do you have sole claim to "good".

[yago]

Once the popes recognized the authority of the Emperor, and generally endorsed their policies of war and peace. It looks as if the pope has now recognized the authority of the United Nations.

I think Bush has still a chance to redeem himself and to go to Canossa.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
Ned:

Honestly, do you actually believe that anyone who does not share your moralistic outrage is evil? The pope, as a human being, lived through times and places as bad as those that any Iraqi lived through, in Poland in fact, worse. As a man he had done more to bring freedom thorughout the world than Bush has ever or would ever do. He is a trained theologian.. and yet somehow you have a superior moral judgement?

There are 25 million human beings in Iraq. There are 6 billion human beings. If someone is unsure how the act of "saving" .41% of humanity will affect the other 99.59% of humanity in the long term, are they morally wrong to question such an act? And if you honestly believe every single human life is so valuable that to risk it all is worth to save it, how could you ever justify war at all?

You are free to your opinions Ned, but you are not the fountain of moral clarity, nor do you have sole claim to "good".

All of us here on Apolyton have superior moral judgments, not so? That's why we are here debating the issues of the day.

[Jac de Molay]

Ming, I think the Pope was concerned about reprisals against Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the world of Islam if he took a stand against Saddam.

.

I don't think saddam was exactly considered the paragon of Islamic virtue in the Islamic world, especially among fundies, and had few ardent supporters among Arab religious leaders for that matter.

He basically invoked or exploited Islam when it suited his personal fancy or there was something to gain , and left it alone the rest of the time.