The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

In advance of Pres. Obama's meeting with the pope tomorrow, E.J. Dionne Jr., the Washington Post's resident Catholicism obfuscator, chimes in with a look at the encyclical released earlier this week, Caritas in Veritate. The column features too many half-truths, cherry-picked anecdotes, and misrepresentations to bother addressing them all, but there is one worthwhile takeaway. Dionne crows that "right-wing" Catholics will be surprised to find that the Vatican views Obama through a "broader prism" than just the abortion issue, and that in fact their meeting comes "just three days after the release of a papal encyclical on social justice that places the pope well to Obama's left on economics."

OK, it is good to know, straight from one of the most vocal liberal U.S. Catholics, that Benedict is more liberal than our president. I assume this means that in the future we won't hear complainst about Benedict's reactionary or unbending conservative extremism.