How did the Church get to be run by anti-American idiots and moral morons who are more concerned with condoms than with terrorism?

Daniel,

Just read its history for the last 2 millenia. This is precisely in line with its pattern. Anyone who expects the Catholic Church to back democratic states and free peoples against totalitarian thugs hasn't been following world history.

Daniel/Bart - The Vatican is a mix of devout Christians and secular Europeans. The former are reluctant to publicly endorse any war, no matter how just; and the latter are adamant in their anti-Americanism. It's unfortunate, but given this split the Vatican therefore won't be a leader in promoting freedom.

Lajolo is far from the worst offender at the Vatican and chooses his words carefully, but unfortunately with an eye to representing the views of all Vatican parties, including the secular left. His statement that the war on terror is "necessary" is an improvement over the way anti-Americans like Archbishop Renato Martino discussed the war prior to March 2003.

Peter, can you delete the legal brief?

Pj:

No idea how. Do you? We'll have to wait for Dear Leader to notice.

First, online law schools should not be allowed.

Second, Peter, if you scroll to the bottom of the edit screen for this post in your MT control panel, you will be able to delete or edit that (and any other) comment.

"The Vatican is a mix of devout Christians and secular Europeans"

Secular in what sense? How can anyone in the Vatican hierarchy be considered secular?

David:

Thanks. Harry had better be careful what he says about me from now on. :-)

My understanding is that the Vatican is a mixture of feudalists who hate America because of July 4, 1776 and socialists who hate America because we are the home of capitalism and we defeated European fascist-corporatism and Communism. Another factor which unifies all Vatican factions in their America-hatred is our belief in democracy and free inquiry.

I think it's obvious: the Vatican hates America and what it stands for.

Came across the following in an article of the Spectator entitled "Rome vs. Washington" (this and other links are too old to access):

Despite Islam's fierce hostility to Catholicism, the societies it controls exhibit many values whose abandonment by the materialist Western world is deplored by the Pope. ... Close-knit family life, in which women's role � although unacceptably circumscribed � is closer to the Marian model of womanhood than to the extreme feminism of urban America; daily life revolving around regular prayer and, in season, fasting; even the misplaced fanaticism of Muslim fundamentalists, reflecting a certainty and a spirit of martyrdom long departed from his own Church � much of this, with heavy qualification, must strike a sympathetic chord with the pontiff. Nor can he have any illusions about the kind of society that America would like to substitute. McDonald's burger bars, rap music, sexual license, individualism demolishing family life and consumerism banishing all sense of religion: those forces have conquered Catholicism in the West � should the Pope take comfort from a similar overthrow of Islam? ... These likely reservations reflect a deeper tension between Catholicism and American culture. Historically, the American identity was strongly antipathetic to Rome, deriving as it did from the British Whig tradition. The descendants of Puritan settlers devised the Declaration of Independence, a document in conflict with Catholic doctrine, which was also the inspiration for the French Revolution. The high-water mark of hostility came in 1899 when Pope Leo XIII, in the Apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae, formally condemned Americanism � the socially progressive errors espoused by such prominent American Catholics as Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, who had gone native in the pluralist atmosphere of the United States. This miniature controversy subsided immediately; but Americanism came back with a vengeance at the Second Vatican Council, as the New World chapter of resurgent Modernism.

And from a related article at MSNBC:

Still, for the past three decades Catholic leaders have found a convenient scapegoat in the "moral decay" of Western society to justify the drastic decline in church attendance and new priests. Though forward-thinking Catholics see this as a cop-out on the church's part, the older generation will privately tell you that they are fighting a losing battle for souls in the West because it's much too easy for young people to go to bed with each other. ... How are the Catholic elders to keep young seminarians focused on the mysteries of the Gospel when a short walk through the streets of any modern city exposes them to constant temptations of the flesh? ... Which is why this pope was so troubled and hurt when he saw his beloved countrymen fall prey to Western-style sexual temptation after the fall of communism in Poland. Much of the religious devotion that sustained the power of the Catholic role model during the Soviet oppression went out the window when MTV brought a new moral model of tight jeans, nightclubs and throbbing musical rhythms. ... Off-the-record prelates will utter phrases like: "Oh, it's the Americans again. They're never happy, and it's always about sex. Women priests, married priests, birth control, abortion, divorce, active gays � they always want something. Why can't their bishops control these people! It's not the church that has to change, it's them!" The openness of American society is often perceived as a threat by an old-fashioned institution that is used to obedience, secrecy and dealing with its problems in private.

And the following from the Nation Catholic Reporter entitled "The Pope's Too Liberal":

... five reasons why Christianity should be resistant to the ideology of human rights: Duties to God and neighbor come before one's own rights...Pronouncements of a hierarchically structured church grounded in divine revelation take precedence over individual conscience...Original sin implies distrust of weak and fallible human beings...The common good must come before individuals...Charity and sacrificial love are higher goods than the potentially selfish assertion of rights.

Apparently if there aren't too many libertarians in the Vatican. And as for America being the source of moral decay, I suggest that the Church look to the plank in its own eye. The scandals at the Austrian seminary showed that the rot of perversion has spread throughout the Church.

The purpose of the above quotes was to illustrate the often profound differences in world views between the Vatican and America, differences that have always been there if only below the surface. What is apparent in retrospect is that the American-Vatican alliance forged by William Casey during the Reagan presidency was an alliance of convenience. The Pope saw the Soviet Union as the greater immediate threat to the Church. Now that the USSR has ended up on the dust heap of history we we have set the stage for an uber-culture clash, no mere clash of civilizations but a conflict of mentalities.

Daniel:

Thanks. But, to be fair, we can't let a disdain for the Vatican's Eurocentrism cause us to be defensively dismissive of their social and cultural criticisms. There are big problems in North America on many of those issues, on some worse than in Europe.

Peter:

It never pays to be dismissive of criticism.

However, to pick just one area, the Church's admonitions on how to organize an economy indicate they have incompletely learned communism's lessons.

The Church's fundamental problem was Gutenberg. As soon as Bible's became widely available and literacy common, people increasingly concluded they didn't need bureaucratic intercession between them and The Book.

Which is precisely why the Catholic Church has always done a lousy job at literacy for the masses wherever it has been in the ascendancy.

peter, it's not about social and cultural criticisms. It's about the Vatican's opposition to everything America stands for (unless of course you consider gender equality, freedom, etc. to be "problems").

Like OJ, the Church in it's heart of hearts hates the modern era and would rather we return to the Middle Ages.

Daniel:

Agreed that there are some fundamental conflicts between Catholic and American perspectives on politics and government. Whether they can be reconciled depends on the answer to more general questions on the extent of the formal role of religion in public life. But are you not being a little sweeping here? Was JP 11's struggle for Polish freedom inconsistent with American ideals?

What religion can you name that is completely at ease with modern times? Of course material freedoms and gender equality are problems, in the sense that they come with a price. What is wrong with believing that?

Peter:

Catholicism's problem is that it has yet to understand people are no longer inclined to take things like the Index as God's word, and can't explain why they should.

It should also be noted that gender inequality comes with a price.