The Pope and the War Criminal

In Search of . . . I'm still looking for someone among my Catholic friends in Morehead who's interested in the Pope's visit. Maybe he's not that inspirational of a leader.

Meeting with the War Criminal in Chief. It seems that Pope Benedict XVI met today with President Bush.

The festive White House visit was the highlight of the first full day of Benedict's first trip to the United States as leader of the world's Roman Catholics. A South Lawn arrival ceremony — which also turned into a celebration for Benedict's 81st birthday, complete with energetic singing and a several-tiered cake prepared by the White House pastry chef — was followed by 45 minutes of private talks between Bush and Benedict, alone in the Oval Office.

After the revelations about the approval of torture practices during "Principles Meetings" among Bush's top officials at the White House, Bush has about as much moral standing as Francisco Franco or Jefferson Davis. One can say that Benedict is endorsing Bush's war crimes by meeting with him. Unfortunately, one can also say that the whole country endorsed Bush's war crimes by re-electing him president in 2004.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft, and their principle assistants should all be prosecuted for their role in the post-9-11 war crimes of the American government.

But all of us as Americans should all be ashamed that these people were elected to the highest office in our country. That includes people who opposed the war, opposed Guantanamo, and opposed the torture. We also should have done better.

There's a great deal of reason to criticize the Catholic Church hierarchy for their hostility to the aspirations of women Catholics, their hatred of gay people, and their execrable involvement in the pedophilia scandal.

But American government hierarchy has done far worse.