3 Strikes at the Vatican by James Morrison, Washington Times.
The Vatican has quietly rejected at least three of President Obama’s candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See because they support abortion, and the White House might be running out of time to find an acceptable envoy before Mr. Obama travels to Rome in July, when he hopes to meet Pope Benedict XVI.
Italian journalist Massimo Franco, who broke the story about the White House attempts to find a suitable ambassador to the Vatican, said papal advisers told Mr. Obama’s aides privately that the candidates failed to meet the Vatican’s most basic qualification on the abortion issue.
“The informal dismissal of the first names whispered in the Obama inner circle is a signal,” Mr. Franco, a columnist with Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier), told Embassy Row in e-mail.
He said the Vatican recognized that a foreign nation is free to appoint the ambassador of its choice but that the pope is free to reject a proposed envoy if he believes the candidate would “fail to improve relations” with the Catholic city-state…
Since the United States established formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1984, the ambassadorial position has been held by political supporters and pro-life Catholics under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
…That the candidate who condoned abortion after birth can’t find any pro-life ambassadors to send to the Vatican?
I find it very telling that Obama would continue to put up candidates that are pro-abortion while knowing this is a non-negotiable issue to the Vatican. Does he believe he by sheer will can break down the Church’s historical sanctity of life or that he has such a low regard for life and their subsequent regard for it, that he is that cynical? I dont’ see how this can’t be an absolute affront to the Vatican.
Maybe the Vatican hasn’t heard. OBAMA WON.
One might suspect that this is a calculated insult, and the position will remain vacant.
Hey, BO declared the other day the USA is no longer a Christian Country. What else would you expect from him?
Yorkie, the USA never was a Christian country. Rather, it was, and is, just a country with a lot of Christians in it.
And the Pope’s being an idiot, too. Why does he think he has the right to make our political choices for us? I mean, if Hamid Karzai started turning away our ambassadors to Afghanistan, wouldn’t you be up in arms?
It would be President Karzai’s right to decline to accept a particular ambassador. While foreign countries have no right to appoint the ambassadors to them, they have every right to decline to accept a particular individual as an ambassador.
Would Israel have a right to decline to accept the credentials of a known anti-Semite as an ambassador? Certainly.
And the Democrats were perfectly willing to run the (supposedly) pro-life Bob Casey for the Senate in Pennsylvania in 2006; it’s not like they’ve been read out of the Democratic Party. (It’s just that their views have been marginalized.) There ought to be someone acceptable, if the Administration is interested in having an aceptable ambassador to the Vatican; I’m not persuaded that such is the President’s desire.
It gets even better. While the Vatican is rejecting Obama’s pro-abortion appointees, Obama is putting a pro-homosexual, anti-Catholic person on his Faith-Based Initiative. How’s that for supporting Christianity in a faith-based initiative? How’s that for cooperation, working together, keeping the government out of our Churches?
Ah, Ambassadors present their credentials to the host country. The host country can accept or reject.
Another candidate bites the dust – no surprise, a pro-abortionist…apparently the Kennedy’s can’t buy everything.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/5138135/Vatican-blocks-Caroline-Kennedy-appointment-as-US-ambassador.html
Why, on earth, do y’all need an ambassador to the Vatican, anyway? After all, there are more ways than one to skin a cat!
Why do you “need” an ambassador to any state?
That’s an interesting question to ponder.
There had better be an ‘Ambassador’ or something, to Iraq…AND a comprehensive strategy for national political reconciliation there, and fast, or that country is on course to political disintegration and complete fragmentation and everyone will have forgotten about how ‘successful’ the grande surge was!
Mark my words.
We don’t have to have an ambassador to the Vatican, and for a long time, we didn’t. We had personal representatives of the President for a while, and no one at all from 1944 to 1977. We established diplomatic relations with the Vatican on 10 Jaunary 1984, and have had a full-fledged ambassador there since later that year.
We can survive without an ambassador to the Holy See, but why insult the Pope and teh Church in this fashion. There are plenty of qualified, pro-life Democrats who could fill this position, who would still have no effect on America’s pro-abortion policy.
Elizabeth,
The surge will still have been considered a success regardless of what happens in Iraq now. It’s Obama’s to mess up.
As for having ambassadors, we don’t have to have ambassadors to any state. We choose to do so as a recognition of the importance (to us) of our relationship with that state. So far, Barack Obama has given no indication that he has anything but contempt for Christians in general and conservative Christians more specifically. For example, his authorization of ESCR funding, while cutting funding for ASCR. There are no promising developments from ESCR, while ASCR has had a number of breakthroughs. One can only assume that because ASCR does not destroy human life, Obama can’t support it.
I draw a similar conclusion about Obama’s inability to find a suitable envoy to the Vatican. There are pro-life Democrats, but Obama is not pro-life.
Sharon,
At the risk of beating a dead horse, and straying off topic, the surge in Iraq was not the success you imagine it to be.
First, the surge was only one factor in the reduction of violence. I wouldn’t say that it was the primary factor or even that it could have been seen as a tactical success without the so-called Sunni awakening in Anbar province, Muqtada al Sadr’s ceasefire, and/or the forced separation of Iraq’s ethnic groups in Baghdad and surrounding regions, many of which pre-dated the surge. One thing is for sure… without progress on national political reconciliation, Iraq will soon be on course toward political disintegration and complete fragmentation and everyone will have forgotten about how ‘‘successful’’ the grande surge was in stabilizing Iraq.
Unfortunately, though, the previous administration did not take advantage of the decrease in violence as they did NOTHING to promote a political solution in Iraq…NOTHING!!! That is what I find most incredible about the Bush administration…scratch that…what I find most incredible about the previous administration is that they actually sabotaged the only hope there was of moving toward national political reconciliation on their watch. I find that inexcusable and reprehensible, considering how many US lives have been lost as a result of that kind of incompetence.
But, you are right…this is the Obama/BIDEN show now and time will tell if they can do any better and help the Iraqis move toward a sustainable political settlement and power-sharing agreement that they can all live with.
In my view, Iraq is much more in need of an Ambassador than the Vatican but, of course, everything is relative.
One of the tricks liberals use to downplay the success of the surge is to constrict “surge” to mean only the increase in American troops. The fact is that everything you cited–the ceasefire, the Sunni awakening, etc.–were part of the surge process. But Democrats focused solely on troop levels (remember: Obama proudly declared that he NEVER supported raising troop levels and couldn’t bring himself to admit that the surge was successful).
I don’t buy your narrow definition of “surge,” Elizabeth. Not simply because I supported and continue to support our efforts in Iraq, but because I consider it to be grossly inaccurate and deceptive.
As you said, this is all off topic and you’ve yet to explain why Obama trying to force the Vatican to accept a pro-abortion ambassador is anything but churlish and rude.