Bill Bennet blows off Pope

From reader Paul in Portland:

I'm an anti-war Catholic. I managed to score a question from Wolf Blitzer to Bill Bennett yesterday:

BENNETT: Sure. BLITZER: I want to get to some of the specific questions, but we've got a lot of e-mail and one of these is very much directed towards you.

Let me read it -- from Paul in Portland, Oregon --"The Pope has today reasserted his conclusion that a new Gulf War would be immoral, as was the first Gulf War. As a faithful Catholic, will you be instructing your students that current U.S. policies toward Iraq are immoral?"

BENNETT: No, I won't. The Pope is not here instructing excathedra (ph) and this is not a doctrinal teaching on faith and morals and we are not obligated as Catholics to follow it. One I have a disagreement with the Pope on this as I have with a couple of other things that are not matters of faith and morals.

Hmm. So when Bennet agrees with the Pope, it's a matter of faith and morals, but when he disagrees, it's not a matter of faith and morals? What about Capital Punishment? Jeez. If there's one common trait amongst all religious fundamentalists (and Bennet is one), is the ability to pick and choose those religious tenets that justify their own beliefs.

Then there are ridiculous stunts such as this one:

ROME - In an unusual effort to counter increasingly fierce criticism by the Vatican against a possible war in Iraq, the U.S. government was host to a conservative theologian here yesterday who argued that a military strike against Saddam Hussein would meet the definition of a "just war" in Catholic doctrine.

Posted February 12, 2003 10:09 AM | Comments (42)