COMMENTARY: The president’s airplane reading

(UNDATED) The Obamas went to Rome the other day. And while Mom and the girls spent quality time admiring Vatican art, Dad had a half-hour sit-down with Pope Benedict XVI. Rome’s openness to Obama raises eyebrows (and blood pressure) among conservative Catholics who wish the pope would take Obama to the proverbial woodshed. The president, […]

(UNDATED) The Obamas went to Rome the other day. And while Mom and the girls spent quality time admiring Vatican art, Dad had a half-hour sit-down with Pope Benedict XVI.

Rome’s openness to Obama raises eyebrows (and blood pressure) among conservative Catholics who wish the pope would take Obama to the proverbial woodshed. The president, a freshly minted honorary degree recipient from Notre Dame, brought a relic of St. John Neumann, the 19th-century Philadelphia bishop who got U.S. Catholic education started, as a present for the pope.

What did they talk about? A White House aide said they spoke about interfaith dialogue, peace in the Middle East, outreach to Muslims, immigration reform in the U.S. and, oh yes, bioethics and abortion.


We don’t know if Benedict connected the dots between social teaching and bioethics, but his most significant souvenirs for Obama certainly did. Along with a mosaic of St. Peter’s square and a commemorative medal, Benedict gave the president a signed copy of his latest encyclical, along with a surprise gift: a document on bioethics released last year by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Diplomacy is diplomacy, and heads of state aren’t supposed to surprise each other, but the successor to St. Peter can get away with a few things. Now, Obama can learn for himself what constitutes official Catholic teaching, unfettered and unfiltered by groups like “Catholics for Choice” and “Catholic Democrats,” who tend to spin in the prevailing political wind.

Benedict’s 28,000-word encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), summarizes Catholic social teaching amidst a discourse on the nature of the human person in relation to society and, specifically, to technology. Bottom line: the human is not a cog in the wheel of technological progress, but rather a specific reflection of the glory of God. Obama would hardly disagree.

The bioethics paper, “An Instruction on Certain Bioethical Questions” is the kind of document at the other end of Roman officialdom from a papal encyclical. It restates Catholic teaching on bioethics and, at just 36 pages, is a relatively quick read, almost an executive summary of Catholic teaching on life issues. The take-away quote from the CDF paper: “The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person.”

If the president got that message live and in person from the pope himself, that’s when Obama’s chair must have begun to scrape.

After all, Obama’s National Institutes of Health and National Academy of Sciences have just issued guidelines on embryonic stem cell research that fly in the face of Catholic teaching. No matter how you slice and dice the rhetoric, embryonic stem cell experimentation is a ghoulish activity in the eyes of Rome.


The two documents — which the president promised to read on Air Force One — present the nuts and bolts of Catholic teaching. The encyclical argues that all persons have the right to dignity; the paper argues that all persons have the right to life. Together, the two are a complete fold-out menu of Catholic doctrine.

Sadly, the nuances of Catholic teaching do not translate well through digital media, and “official” teachers don’t get much airtime anyway. Moreover, the living saints who understand how Catholic social teaching and Catholic bioethics are intertwined — those who work in urban slums, for example — don’t have a bully pulpit.

Benedict’s message, unheard as it is even by his own flock, is clear. The one shoe — social teaching — desperately needs the other — bioethics — so we can all walk upright into a dignified future.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!