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.
