c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) On social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, the conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the conservative President Bush find much common ground.
But next month, when Benedict makes his first visit to the U.S., his meeting with Bush is likely to underscore an issue where there remains a deep divide between the Vatican and the White House _ the war in Iraq.
From the start of the five-year-old war, the pontiff and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, have spoken out against it. “Nothing positive comes from Iraq,” Benedict said during his Easter message last year.
Benedict will be greeted by Bush when his plane lands April 15. The pair will meet the next day to kick off the pope’s six-day U.S. visit that includes two stadium Masses and a speech at the United Nations. Observers expect the Iraq war will come up during the White House visit.
“If it doesn’t, I’d be disappointed in the pope,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. “If it does, however, I would expect Benedict XVI to be a bit softer in his approach than John Paul II. But the effect will be the same, namely, the war will continue through the remainder of the president’s second term.”
Meetings between popes and sitting U.S. presidents have become fairly common over the past four decades. During that same period, popes also have become more likely to speak out against war, experts say.
Shortly after the end of World War I, during a tour of Europe, Woodrow Wilson became the first U.S. president to meet with a pope while in office when he had an audience with Pope Benedict XV.
The next papal audience for a sitting U.S. president wouldn’t come for another 40 years, when Dwight Eisenhower met in Rome with Pope John XXIII.
Since then, every U.S. president has met with the pope. Ronald Reagan met seven times and Bill Clinton four with Pope John Paul II. The upcoming papal meeting will be the fifth for Bush.
“What is most important here is how Catholic teaching on war has been changing in the post-World War II era, especially since John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical, `Pacem in Terris,”’ said Una Cadegan, a professor of history and director of the American studies program at the University of Dayton.
“The unique destructiveness of modern warfare makes it almost indefensible even within the tradition of Christian just war theory, and popes have been speaking out increasingly strongly about non-violent means of resolving conflict, the importance of diplomacy and the need to seek justice as a way of cultivating lasting peace.”
Benedict’s public statements against the war date to the time before he became pope.
When he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he dismissed the idea that a preventive strike against Iraq could be considered a just war.
“The concept of a `preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” he said in interviews in the months leading up to the war.
This will be the second meeting between Benedict and Bush.
The Iraq war was a topic of conversation at the first, which took place last summer at the Vatican. The pope told Bush he was concerned about the “worrying situation in Iraq.”
“We didn’t talk about `just war,”’ Bush told reporters after meeting with Benedict. “He did express deep concerns about the Christians inside Iraq, that he was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion.”
Chester L. Gillis, a professor of Catholic studies at Georgetown University, said he doesn’t expect next month’s meeting between Bush and Benedict to be terribly contentious.
“I think in general they agree on more things than they disagree on,” he said. “I think the pope is probably pleased with a lot of the positions the president has taken on moral issues.”
He said he expects the pope to discuss Iraq and possibly even to caution Bush against American aggression against Iran.
“The reality is we have a lame-duck president,” Gillis said. “Benedict’s bringing up his opposition to the war in Iraq does not mean there’s going to be a change in American policy.”
(Tom Feeney writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)
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Eds: see related sidebar, RNS-POPE-SCHEDULE, for details on the pope’s itinerary in New York and Washington.
