PEOPLE AROUND THE POPE

I've been kicking this 'stone' out of the way since I first came upon it yesterday because it sort of sickens to me to have Giovanni Maria Vian himself confirm his blindly rose-colored view (excuse the mixed metaphor) of Barack Obama. The most charitable thing one can say about him is that he is being willfully naive, trying hard to fit the square peg of facts about Obama into the round hole of Vian's idealized vision of an Obama who will agree that abortion is killing!

I don't care so much about Vian's wholesale espousal of Obama's economic policies, for instance [even if those could prove far more disastrous for the planet than anything else!] as as his blatant rationalization of Obama's never-hidden and unabashedly pro-abortion legislative record that he promptly confirmed as soon as he became President by overturning the Bush-era policy against US funding for international abortion programs.

And how will Vian rationalize Obama's statement earlier this week that he will do his best to have the Defense of Marriage Act repealed?

Vian is being just as deluded as Obama himself when he maintains that if the Vatican newspaper is supportive of Obama, he can be influenced about abortion! He's just as deluded as Obama thinking that because he tells North Korea and Iran, "Hey, I want to be friends with you", that will make them stop their nuclear-arms program!

What planet are they living on that they believe sheer wishdful thinking will change human nature? If that were so, the world perhaps does not even need religion at all!



'Osservatore' editor says Obama
is not pro-abortion
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country



The editor-in-chief of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has drawn fire from some conservative Roman Catholics in the United States for allegedly going too soft on President Obama.

"Obama is not a pro-abortion president," the editor, Gian Maria Vian, said in a recent interview. Of course, many conservative U.S. Catholics say Obama is exactly that.

In a new interview with the National Review Online, Vian explains his bullishness on Obama as part of a plan to influence the President on issues like abortion by giving him the benefit of the doubt. [What doubt???? There has never been any doubt where Obama stands on abortion. Vian is living in a state of denial to accommodate his ideological delusions!]

The conciliatory posture represents another challenge to the many conservative American Catholics taking a confrontational tack toward the White House.

Highlights from the interview:

You were quoted as saying, "It is my clear conviction: Obama is not a pro-abortion president." On what basis do you hold this conviction?
I made that statement in an interview to an Italian journalist of Il Riformista who called me on the day the president was at Notre Dame for the controversial ceremony of the conferring of the law degree honoris causa.

I was in Barcelona; I gave the interview over the phone and based my observation primarily on the speech President Obama gave on that occasion — a speech which demonstrated openness. In this sense, I said that he didn't seem a pro-abortion president.


What do you mean?
He considered abortion, at least in his speech at Notre Dame, as something to prevent and, above all, he said, we must proceed in the attempt to widen the consensus as much as possible because he realizes that it is a very delicate issue.

Of course, Senator Obama made decisions that certainly cannot be defined as pro-life, to use the American term. He was, rather, pro-choice. Yet I believe that the senator's activity prior to his presidential election is one thing, and the political line he is following as President of the United States is another.

[EXCUSE ME??? Why is Vian ignoring that Obama promptly overturned the Mexico City ban against funding itnernational abortion programs on Day 2 of his presidency? Why is he ignoring all the active pro-abortionists Obama has been appointing to high-level positions including a Health Secretary who flaunted her support of the late George Tiller who performed about 60,000 abortions of babies nearing term delivery - and from whom she took campaign contributions and other funding? I do fault the interviewer in this case - ex-CNN correspondent Delia Gallagher for not making the obvious follow-up questions!]

We have noticed that his entire program prior to his election was more radical than it is revealing itself to be now that he is president. So this is what I meant when I said he didn't sound like a pro-abortion president. Besides, he stated that the Freedom of Choice Act is no longer a top priority of the administration.

[Oh yeah! And you believe a statement made out political expediency??? Dear Lord, if one catalogued all the statements Obama said during the canpaign and reversed once he became President, or even statements he made as President adn then reversed a few days later, the man would be exposed to the bare bone - no farther, to the very marrow - as the very model of a facile lying for poliical expediency!]

Naturally, it is also a sort of wishful thinking. Let's hope that my conviction is confirmed by the political actions of the administration. This is basically the same attitude of watching, waiting, and hope of the Catholic bishops of the United States.


Did you hear from the Pope or the Secretary of State about your comment that Obama is not a pro-abortion president?
No. It was an interview on the fly. As usual, I didn't ask permission from either the secretariat of state or the Pope. It was an impression that I communicated based on the speech he had just given. President Obama said we should try to confront this question without too much division, that it is a tragedy, a frightening drama, let's look for common ground—I think his words should be appreciated.


Some would say they are only words and it is his voting record and actions which speak more loudly.
I admit that it is legitimate to be diffident in the face of the words of a president who previously has demonstrated a pro-choice line, but I hope that he changes. I hope that he understands that a politics of pro-life is good politics, not because it is religious, not because it is Catholic, but because it is human.

[But no self-respecting journalist should wield editorial judgment on the basis of what one would like to be - one has to confront what is!]

This is what the Church repeatedly says, and in particular Pope Benedict XVI. The appeal to natural law is important because it is not based on religious principles, it is based on human principles which can be agreed on by all.


So you were fully aware of the record of the senator, the criticisms of the U.S. bishops, and the political situation in the U.S.?
When we published the infamous article on the first 100 days, we wrote that the moderation that President Obama had so far demonstrated compared to what was expected in no way eliminated the reasons for criticism that the U.S. Bishops Conference expressed many times. . . . [Oops, early revisionism here! The statement about the US bishops only came way after the Notre Dame speech, and therefore, way after the '100 days' puff piece.]


Should a reader interpret the editorial line of the newspaper to be also that of the Pope and the secretariat of state?
Well, we need to distinguish something here. The paper is not official: It is not the expression, in every single part, of the point of view of the Vatican, that is, of the secretariat of state.

But it is obvious that it is an authoritative point of view of the Holy See, because ours is the only newspaper of the Holy See and has a century and a half of history. We were started during the American Civil War. We were started in 1861. It's a paper with a very long history and it has always been rightly interpreted as the expression of the thought of the Holy See, without a doubt, but that is not to say that every word that comes out in the paper is exactly the thought of the Pope or the secretary of state.


But the average reader would assume that he will find in the Vatican's newspaper an editorial line that is in agreement with the Pope.
Let's say that L'Osservatore Romano expresses a line generally in agreement with the Holy See. This is obvious because the paper is owned by the Holy See. My editor, in the Italian sense of the owner of the paper, is the Pope, via the secretariat of state. I could not possibly create a paper in disagreement with the owner, just as no newspaper director could create a paper in dissension with the owner. If I ran the newspaper like that, I would have already been fired.

[I don't know. Very likely, the Pope, who believes in freedom of speech, thinks that as long as an article or editorial commentary in the OR is bylined, it means that the opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of the newspaper. Which doesn't meanthat the editor should see it as license to publish articles that directly contradict what the Pope is teaching - without clearly labelling it as an opposing view!

There was that questionable article by Mons. Fisichella in which the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life seemd to be saying that abortion was justified for the Brazilian girl.

And only this week, on the eve of the start of the Year of the Priest, Vian published an article by a priest who described "The post-conciliar priest" who is everything but Pope Benedict's idea and personal example of priesthood! But that too is another 'stone' Vian has plunked out there that makes me gag!]


Gilgoff gives the link to the full interview.
article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWJhM2U5ODdhZDk3NTc0MTE3YjM4MGUyNGE3NTg5YzA...