What would the Pope do ? -- Eight excerpts from an article by JOHN L. ALLEN Jr. which was published on June 3, 2004 in the NY Times. John L. Allen Jr. is the Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper (full article). These excerpts focus on the differences between between (a) President Bush's policies and actions and (b) the views of the Pope, the Vatican and the Catholic Church
1 "there is no denying that John Paul II is deeply troubled by what Mr. Bush is doing under the guise of the war on terrorism."
2 "the Vatican critique of American foreign policy has focused on several points."
3 "The Bush administration argues that when it has intelligence about imminent threats to the United States, it has the right to strike first. The Vatican insists that a single nation-state never has this right. Only the United Nations can authorize military action to disarm an aggressor, to ensure that disarmament is the real objective rather than a particular country's political or commercial interests."
4 "The Holy See has repeatedly complained about American unilateralism and called on Mr. Bush to work through the United Nations."
5 "But while the Vatican sees the United Nations as a sovereign entity, able to pursue policies and attain goals of its own, Mr. Bush sees it merely as an instrument of sovereign states, each of which retains liberty of action."
6 "The Bush administration has taken a selective approach to international law, arguing that the new threat posed by terrorism makes some old agreements irrelevant. (In contrast,) the Vatican insists on international law as the only way to ensure "the force of law rather than the law of force,"
7 "(The Vatican has) often criticized the United States for ignoring the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and called the Abu Ghraib prison scandal "a worse blow to the United States than Sept. 11."
8 "... many at the Vatican say American
foreign policy is stoking the conflict pitting the Western world against
Islam. "