If you ever find yourself in Ronald Reagan’s bathroom, you
may notice something peculiar about it. There’s nothing all that
unusual about the facilities themselves. It’s a plain old bathroom.
But one decoration stands out.
Hanging on the wall above a towel rack is an icon of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child. I suppose a bathroom wall
isn’t a typical place to hang such an icon, but it is rather
curious that it would be hanging in a so-called Protestant bathroom
(not that I have any clue what a “Protestant bathroom” ought to
look like).
The icon was a gift from the Reagans’ longtime friends
William and Betty Wilson. Bill, himself a convert to Roman
Catholicism, presented the icon to President Reagan while serving
as the country’s first Ambassador to the Holy See. On this week’s
28th anniversary of his nomination to the post, it might be
suitable to commemorate the late Ambassador’s enduring relationship
with our 40th President.
Ronald met his friend Bill through Nancy, who was a close
friend of Bill’s wife, Betty. From dinner parties to buying houses,
the couples did nearly everything together. The latter activity
helped change the world.
Edmund Morris, Reagan’s official, controversial biographer
had this to say about his subject in Dutch: “Go to the
Ranch. That’s where you’ll find his soul.”
Rancho del Cielo, as Reagan would never hesitate to say,
was found by Bill Wilson. The Wilsons had lived on an avocado ranch
just down the mountainside north of Santa Barbara, California, and
knew that Ronald would fall in love with the property.
Indeed he did. Reagan would often refer to it as his “open
Cathedral.” It was where he retreated from the Washington gridlock
and where he gathered his strength. It represented his vision of
America: its vastness, fertility, potential, and life.
Wilson was Reagan’s ranch sidekick. They both found solace
in riding the boundless horse trails. It was a deeply personal and
spiritual activity the two men did together. One that seemed to
steel their backbones in the war against the Evil Empire. Without
the Ranch, Reagan’s son Michael once said, “the [Berlin] Wall still
stands.”
And without Bill Wilson, the United States would still be
stuck in 1867, the year Congress repealed funds for diplomatic
relations with the Vatican. That didn’t stop Reagan from appointing
his friend Bill as a Personal Representative of the President to
the Holy See in February of 1981. He even complained in his diary
that the State Department was too slow in processing the
appointment and suggested that someone ought to “get off his ass”
and get this done.
Reagan then maneuvered his way through a Democratic
Congress to establish full diplomatic relations with the Holy See
and elevated Wilson to Ambassador.
Reagan was anxious to meet the newly elected Pope John
Paul II and wanted Wilson to help develop a historical
relationship. In June of 1982, Reagan and the Pope sat alone in the
Vatican Library for almost an hour discussing their “divine
mission.” Reagan said to the Pope of their surviving assassination
attempts: “Look how the evil forces were put in our way and how
Providence intervened.”
As Paul Kengor explains in his spiritual biography God
and Ronald Reagan, “Reagan and the Pope translated their
divine mission into a practical mission to maintain Solidarity.” A
close Cardinal to the Pope admitted that “the Holy Father and the
President committed themselves and the institutions of the church
and America to such a goal.” Reagan and Wilson sought, and
received, the Vatican’s invaluable participation in assigning the
Soviet Union to the ash heap of history.
Even though Wilson resigned from his post in 1986 amid
some controversy, he remained close to his old friend. As compiled
in Reagan: A Life in Letters, Wilson wrote Reagan in
February of 1987 to tell of a troubling meeting he had with William
Cardinal Baum. The Cardinal expressed concern that Europe is
“beginning to experience a spiritual fatigue leading to a moral
fatigue.”
Reagan wrote back agreeing that secularism “is so
prevalent today,” especially in public education. He concluded by
reminding his friend that churches that “stick closely to the Bible
are showing an increase in followers. Maybe there is a clue there
for all of us” — Catholic and Protestant alike.
