Obama and Benedict

E.J. Dionne and other press outlets have noted that despite the recent brouhaha over his appearance at Notre Dame, the Vatican has mostly maintained a friendly face toward the Obama administration.

Of course, this is in no small part due to the fact that the values of Barack Obama and those of the Catholic Church do line up in some important ways, including areas where President Bush did not have overlap. Dionne notes this well in a discussion of "Charity in Truth", the Pope's latest encyclical:

Benedict’s encyclical may provide the best perspective for understanding why a pope seen as a conservative views Obama more favorably than do most Catholic conservatives in the United States.

While American conservatives, including most Catholics in their ranks, see capitalism in an almost entirely positive light, Benedict—following a long tradition of church teaching—is more skeptical of a system rooted in materialist values. In that sense, he is to the left of his American flock.

Benedict’s letter had some good things to say about the market system, but only if it is tempered by both “distributive justice and social justice.” He thus spoke approvingly of “the redistribution of wealth”—not a phrase currently on many American lips—and caused free-market conservatives to blanch with his call for a “world political authority” to oversee the global economy in the name of “the common good.”

This should come as no surprise to devout Catholics. If the media finds this noteworthy, that only comes from a confusion over the term "conservative" as applied to Catholicism. The more theologically conservative a Catholic is, the less regard they have for the accumulation and pursuit of wealth. After all, the less literally I take "Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24) the more I can tolerate wealth as easily compatible with a moral life.

Dionne's article also notes that Cardinal Georges Cottier, Theologian Emeritus of the Pontifical Household, went toward Obama on the biggest rift of all, praising his "humble realism" on abortion. That seemed suspect to me, so I went to check that out at the original article at 30 Days. As it turns out, that section was referring primarily to his foreign policy (where his anti-unnecessary war and pro-Palestinian state attitude lines up pretty well with Vatican policy), but indeed, the Cardinal takes a light hand to Obama's attitude:

In addition, Obama recognizes the tragic seriousness of the problem. That the decision to abort “is a heart-wrenching decison for any woman”. The common ground that he is proposing is that we all work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortion. He adds that any legal regulation of the matter must guarantee in absolute fashion conscientious objection for health workers who do not want to engage in the practice of abortion. His words go in the direction of diminishing the evil. The government and the State must make every effort to ensure that the number of abortions is minimized. It is, of course, only a minimum, but a precious minimum. It reminds me of the attitude of the early Christian legislators who did not repeal the Roman laws tolerating practices that did not comply with or even went counter to natural law, such as concubinage and slavery. The change was arrived at by slow degrees, often marked by setbacks, as the number of Christians in the population increased and with them the impact of the sense of the dignity of the person. At first, to obtain the consent of citizens and preserve social peace, the so-called “imperfect laws” were left in force, which prevented persecution for acts and behavior contrary to natural law. Even St Thomas, who had no doubt that the law must be moral, added that the State should not make laws too severe and “lofty” because they would be despised by those incapable of applying them.
The realism of the politician recognizes evil and calls it by its name. It recognizes that we must be humble and patient, fighting without the presumption of eradicating it from human history by means of legal coercion. It is the parable of the tares, which also applies at the political level. On the other hand, this does not become justification for cynicism and indifference to it. The effort to decrease evil as much as possible remains persistent. It is a duty.

I'm not sure how I feel about this line of argument. On one hand, the Cardinal correctly identifies Obama's focus on "abortion reduction" which so many pro-choice people take issue with (sample post from RH Reality Check). On the other hand, the analogy is weak. Barack Obama is not a great fighter for fetal rights who is simply working within constraints imposed on him by the public. Otherwise, he would have never come out for partial-birth abortion, against the born-alive bill back in Illinois, and would not have sought to federally fund abortion providers--all policies for which you can find a majority opposed. I've said it before, and I'll say it again--no one should have any hesitance saying they agree with President Obama when they honestly do, but there is a danger in listening to his nice words and simply pretending he shares your views.

Note: While writing this article, an update was posted by the AP noting that the Pope and the President did discuss abortion, with Obama promising more work on abortion reduction and the Pope handing President Obama the Vatican's recent document on bioethics, which includes a discussion of stem cells, abortion and the like. (Thus continuing the trend of world leaders giving our President free literature.) Still, the overall tone seemed less than aggressive, and the article also notes the positive words the Vatican newspaper has previously had to say about the President's term so far.