{"id":160,"date":"2008-11-18T11:33:30","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T11:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/11\/benedict-xvi-church-can-make-b.html"},"modified":"2008-11-18T11:33:30","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T11:33:30","slug":"benedict-xvi-church-can-make-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/11\/benedict-xvi-church-can-make-b.html","title":{"rendered":"Benedict XVI: Church can make better politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s the pontiff’s message, delivered last weekend to a meeting of the Vatican’s department on the laity. Via CNS<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“In a special way, I reaffirm the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics involved in politics, that they would be coherent with their professed faith,” morally upright, professional and passionate about serving the common good, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the other hand, many in the United States would point out that church leaders haven’t done such a great job of “formation” lately, in part because they can’t get on the same page themselves. There was the South Carolina pastor, Father Jay Scott Newman<\/a>, whose open letter on Obama voters needing to confess their mortal sin before receiving communion has sparked more divisions, with conservatives acting like, well “dissenters,” shall we say. The cafeteria line is long. (Update: Father Newman confesses his own sin of writing the letter “in haste.”<\/a>)
\nThen there was of course Cardinal Stafford’s blast <\/a>at Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic”–that coming on the heels of the pope’s congratulatory chat<\/a> with the President-elect. Then again, a Vatican official tells TIME’s Jeff Israely<\/a> there’s “more fear here than wrath” but if the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) passes and Obama signs it–the act has become a favorite bogey man for the pro-life right–“it would be the equivalent of a war.”
\nFew believe Obama would want a “war of choice,” so to speak, especially if he is to meet the pope next July in Rome, as seems likely. (And the Vatican is happy about most other aspects of the change from a Republican to an anti-Iraw War, pro-social justice Democrat in the White House.)
\nIn fact, Obama could probably teach church leaders a few things about politics. And they may want to listen, especially if the war within the GOP<\/a> takes a turn toward moderation rather than the Palinista base. If that happens, the hierarchy could be left without a political sponsor, or a political base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the pontiff’s message, delivered last weekend to a meeting of the Vatican’s department on the laity. Via CNS: “In a special way, I reaffirm the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics involved in politics, that they would be coherent with their professed faith,” morally…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nBenedict XVI: Church can make better politicians - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/11\/benedict-xvi-church-can-make-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Benedict XVI: Church can make better politicians - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That’s the pontiff’s message, delivered last weekend to a meeting of the Vatican’s department on the laity. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}