The American Spectator

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(Page 5 of 8)

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My one-line response to Mr. Neumayr's fine piece was going to be: "George Neumayr for Ambassador to the Holy See!"

But Mr. Chiarello beat me to the punch with his tale of direct experience in Rome.

I'll be interested in hearing Cardinal Martino's thoughts on the complicity of the nominally Catholic Tariq Aziz in Hussein's regime of terror -- not.

p>What a buffoon. br> -- Mark Stoffel br> Arlington, Virginia /p>

Mr. Neumayr correctly takes Cardinal Martino to task over his comments. However, generalization to the Catholic Church as a whole is too extreme. Cardinal Martino was not speaking for John Paul II, who knows a thing or two about fighting tyranny. He was not promulgating any policy or theology. It was his stupid, ill-informed opinion. The Church is a big tent. When Mother Teresa took Bill and Hillary to the woodshed over abortion (in a politically incorrect, public speech), I don't think TAS readers were howling with disgust. Nobody except the left thought she should have shut up. You get the agreeable and disagreeable from the same source. Notably better than the Democrats, who are always disagreeable.

A common misconception is that the Roman Catholic Church is some kind of corporation where everything is vetted through the PR department. This is just plain wrong. Freedom of (a well-informed) conscience is not optional, but required.

The problem with having a biblically inspired social policy (e.g., just war) is that there are always ad hoc positions that are good for maybe a decade or two -- not a good way to manage over 2,000 years.

p>As for the raving leftists in the Vatican -- Christ said to love all of them. br> --

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