Bush will attend funeral; it’s not about the Pope

[Iterate]

It appears President Bush will indeed go beyond hubris and impropriety when he attends the Pope's funeral - he is about to take his use of religion as a political tool to new levels.

Let’s be clear from the onset: Bush is no Catholic. It’s a large and diverse church that contains within its teachings philosophical support for a wide range of political views from conservative to radical left activism. There are a limited number of issues which church leaders and the President agree, but the heart of the church is the parish and the Beatitudes that are practiced there daily. I don’t believe that even Bush’s supporters would argue that this describes his personal or political philosophy. This is not a man who will join the Catholic Worker Movement when he leaves office.

Indeed, as we learned during the South Carolina primary in 2000, when it suited his political aims Bush was perfectly willing to use anti-Catholic bigotry by courting votes through Bob Jones University, whose founder Bob Jones III called Pope John Paul II the ''Antichrist'' and characterized the Catholic Church as a ''satanic cult.'' Later, Bush skillfully distanced himself from those statements, but never criticized the radical fundamentalist clerics who uttered or supported those statements.

So what’s changed in five years? Has Bush suddenly come to understand Catholicism? Has he come to accept the Pope’s criticisms and repent his war or use of capital punishment? Current pundit- think is that he’s courting Catholic conservatives and shoring up sagging approval ratings. Consider this from the Los Angeles Times:

“Bush Hasn't Won All of Pope's Flock”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-politics4apr04,1,4340686.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true

“For decades, Catholics voted reliably for Democrats. But starting in 1972, although remaining predominantly Democratic in registration, many backed Republicans in presidential races. In recent presidential elections, Catholics split roughly in half. In 1996, Bill Clinton took 60% of the vote, but in the 2000 election Al Gore won just 50%. By contrast, Bush won 47% of the Catholic vote in 2000, then 52% in November.”

Catholic support has slipped since the election, small wonder, but this seems to suggest that only a marginal increase in support is recoverable. Presumably, Bush is not running for office again, and this doesn’t seem like the kind of base that will be unthinkingly loyal to the next Republican presidential candidate. At the same time Bush’s play of the “Catholic Card” runs the risk of again agitating the radical Christian clerics, plus the xenophobic supporters of that other Catholic, Pat Buchanan.

Does Bush expect conservative Catholic support in the mid-term elections to make a critical difference? Those in DU who are familiar with each race will have to answer that in detail, but statistically it seems improbable. Why would he risk so much for such marginal gain?

What I’m suggesting is that Bush is looking for support for his candidates in other elections, in Europe: German voters, Spanish voters, Italian voters. Standing next to the church in Venezuela wouldn't hurt either. In other words, it’s not about Boston Catholics, it’s about Bavarian Catholics.

Bush met with CDU Chair Angela Merkel in Mainz in February; his plan for a more public viewing of the Gutenberg Bible and tour of the Catholic Dom of St. Martin were derailed when public outrage threatened to spoil the illusion of a harmonious visit. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger met with CSU’s Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber in March in California. Clearly the Bush administration would like nothing better that an alliance with a friendly government in Berlin that would not stand in the way of its agenda.

Bush is still despised by Europeans, but if he can identify himself with a mainstream church he can remove some of the stigma, perhaps just enough to give the closely allied conservative CDU/CSU coalition the margin they need for next year’s federal elections in Germany. It also prepares a longer term Republican/CDU/CSU coalition, in the heart of the EU, and sets up a socially conservative government with an agenda quite familiar to those with a memory of the Reagan years: higher deficits, concentrated media, lowered taxes for the wealthy, reduced regulation of business, reduction of social benefits, and in general, even more compliant to the wishes and goals of the American neocons and their corporate friends. We all know where that story goes.

This is hardly the first time religion has been used for the manipulation of a political outcome in Europe, and Europeans are hardly naïve about such things. Ironically, it was Pope John Paul II who pushed the Polish communists past the tipping point in their downfall. But never before has an American President risked being called a “Papist”, or so cynically used religion to further his aims in foreign elections.

[DebinTx]

1. The Pope's attitude on Bush

Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult
Concerns Raised by the Vatican
by WAYNE MADSEN

George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.

One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.

Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.

A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.

Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.

Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.

Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.

The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.

Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.

Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.

Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.

According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.

The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world.

[solinvictus]

5. The Anti-Christ....

I believe it's likely Bush is the Anti-Christ.

[indepat]

16. Even if all this were proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, credit must

be given for all the good works not at issue here. Afterall, we should look at the overall record rather than being picky on a few minor issues. :sarcasm:

[AuntiBush]

2. A LOT of people are Ticked about it, too.

Plenty of Catholics & Repuks are not happy w/this, and are still angry about the crap that went on down in Fl last week.

They are ticked!

[Iterate]

23. There's nothing that will irritate a Catholic like

someone grandstading at a funeral. They never forget that one. Wear a fur at a paupers funeral and the story will be retold, in private, over and over.

[ClintonTyree]

3. I'm not really sure what his angle is.............

but, like you, I don't see his attendance at the Pope's funeral as an act of kindness or mercy. He has some ulterior motive, whether it's the one you speak of or some other sinister purpose, he's going for a reason that has nothing to do with the Pope.

[Warpy]

6. He wants to be seen and to make points with Catholics

especially the homophobic, antiabortion Catholics who voted for him the last time, assuring them that despite the rhetoric at the fundy churches, his party still needs their votes to keep robbing the poor to fatten the rich.

[fishwax]

12. bingo

he thinks he can make catholics a gop voting bloc, as fdr made them a democratic voting bloc in the 30s/40s. I think/hope american catholics can see it for the cynical move that it is.

[alcuno]

17. Pilgrims are putting up tent cities in the streets of Rome.

* is just going to be the asterick he is - lost in the crowd.

[fishwax]

18. I hope you're right

but i fear how the mainstream media will present it ... I find it highly likely that they will focus on bush as much as they do on the pope (a man who, despite numerous flaws, didn't support bush on the defining issue of his first term).

But I do hope you're right.

[utahgirl]

7. yep

My guess is that it's an opportunity to speak face-to-face privately with a number of other world leaders. We sure know that he doesn't give a ratz ass about the death of the Pope.

utahgirl

[cidliz2004]

14. I think it is simple, he wants to be seen at the monumental event

Being a world leader, how else to show how "close" to God you are then by going to "another" religous (Christian) World leaders funeral. This Pope might go down as the greatest Pope in modern day and if the shrub isn't there to attend, well.... Besides has Bush ever met a photo op he hasn't liked?

My question: Will the Vatican or the Italians request that he doesn't attend?

They want dignity during this time and not another media circus along with all of the extra security that shrub's visit will bring.

[Twillig]

21. I think it's just pure simple-minded "Pro-Faith"

posturing. Faith, God, Jesus(yes, in that order.) Nevermind Catholicism which the loony rapturists(sic?) view with loathing.

Just an atheist's opinion.

[Theres-a]

4. I think he'll be a last minute no-show

However,I'll have plenty of just in case he does go.

[theboss]

8. How can he not go?

The Pope died...The President should be there. Any president should be there.

I really don't get some of the criticism here some time.

[rsmith6621]

11. Bush Is An Insult

He certianly wasnt willing to listen to the Pope before he started the Iraq mess. The Pope asked Bush to let arms inspectors to complete their jobs on several occasions. The Pope had publicly denounced the Iraq mess several times.

Bush has to be able to thumb his nose at every chance. Id just soon see him head off to Crawford for the weekend. Bushes attendance is equal to thumbing his nose again.

[cidliz2004]

15. Well for one thing, there is tension because of the incident in Iraq with

the Italian Journalist, for another: the amount of security would disrupt the dignity of the funeral, 3rd: why should the Anti Christ go to a Christian Leaders funeral?

[Iterate]

20. No President has ever attended

the funeral of a Pope. As the first Catholic candidate, JFK had to make explicit promises that he would be more loyal to his country than to Rome. Even then it was a very close race.

Once the stakes are raised by a few key leaders, then all heads of state must attend or risk being odd one out. I agree that perhaps attendance is different now because of the global acclaim this Pope has gotten, but that doesn't change my contention that his courtship of Catholic votes is more about Europe than it is the US.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

9. Just when I thought that Gee-Dubya couldn't get more stupid,

he does.

There is absolutely no reason for him or Pickles to attend the Pope's funeral. The White House can try and spin this all they want, but this is just another photo-op to take advantage of.

I hope someone in the Vatican contacts the White House and tells Georgie Boy to butt out and send someone else.

[fooj]

10. "Violence is evil. Violence is unacceptable."-Pope JPII

Shrub is a shameless hypocrite! Bet the Italians can't wait to "accomodate" Shrub's 3-ring security circus!

Peace!

[Nite Owl]

13. With all the security that

he always wants I find it difficult to see how he can go and not cause a disruption at a time like this. So many want to be there I hope that this doesn't mean that the truly faithful will end up getting 'screened out' of being there for this unholy emperor.

[Iterate]

19. kick

[Iterate]

22. Looking for the exception

OK, I'll look for the counter argument-
Does anyone know of one example, just one, where GWB engaged in a truly Christian act that clearly was not a political maneuver, not grandstanding?

We're talking Beatitudes here, works of charity or mercy. Has he ever disappeared for the weekend to say, help build houses for the poor, out of sight of the cameras? Or slipped a month's income into the account of an AIDS clinic? I've never heard of such a thing, not in the least. He had to have gotten his hands dirty for it to really count. One ladle of soup dished out during a campaign doesn't count, though come to think of it, I don't think he's done that either.