Comments on: Did Benedict Snub Rice?

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:56:53 +0000

Mr. McClary, you obviously don’t understand how foreign offices or diplomatic bureaus work. I strongly recommend that you read the segments of Proust’s Search for Lost Time. in which Monsieur de Norpois explains to the Narrator the subtle signals used by diplomats to indicate nuances of policy or shifts in national interest to each other. The Vatican’s diplomats, as I’ve said here before, are some of the shrewdest, most skilled and best informed on earth, and, as Monsieur de Norpois explains, among such diplomats NOTHING is done by “accident,” or for so paltry a reason as a “need for a vacation.” The slight to Rice was meant to be noticed by the Amerikan State Department, but it was also not meant to indicate any profound shift in opposition, just displeasure, and, as soon as it was noticed by the media–which it was never meant to be, the audience for it being intended to have been strictly limited to other practicioners of statecraft–of course it was swiftly retracted. That could easily have been anticipated. That doesn’t make it any less a sign of displeasure with recent Amerikan foreign policy than others writing here have indicated.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:23:52 +0000

Questions about our inability to experience solidarity with the suffering poor due to minds dulled by Amerikan Nationalist Propaganda notwithstanding (thanks for the laugh), it appears the whole flap about Rice and the Vatican was much ado about nothing:"The only reason she wasn't received was that she came during a period when the pope doesn't receive anyone. It was a purely technical question of protocol," an informed Vatican source told Catholic News Service Sept. 20. The source said it was "absolutely not" the Vatican's intention to rebuff Rice or signal disagreement with U.S. policy on the Middle East. Rice was about to travel to the Middle East for diplomatic talks in early August when the request for a papal meeting was made. The pope was vacationing at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome. Even as it declined the request, the source said, the Vatican made it clear that top officials of the Vatican's Secretariat of State would be happy to meet with Rice at any time.

By: Donald R. McClarey

Donald R. McClarey — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:06:46 +0000

To be called a neo-fascist by a kook is no insult. Get help digbydolben, you really need it.

By: Secretary Rice and Catholic bishops…a cold relationship? « Vox Nova

Secretary Rice and Catholic bishops…a cold relationship? « Vox Nova — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:14:19 +0000

[...] Rice and Catholic bishops…a cold relationship? First there were the rumors that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was snubbed by the Vatican on account of her swift [...]

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:05:05 +0000

You know, DarwinCatholic, I feel sorry for you: with a mind so dulled by Amerikan nationalist propoganda and obviously having never challenged yourself to experience any experiential solidarity with the suffering poor of the world being CRUCIFIED by globalist capitalism (about whose depredations I could recount to you MANY more stories from my own experience beside the one above), you are absolutely incapable of feeling any empathy with those poor–and devoutly Catholic–fisherfolk I describe above.

And as far as your observation that I’ve become “unbalanced” by the degree of empathy I came to feel for them and others, I’m as proud of that impassioned “un-balance” as I am of Mr. McClarey’s designation of me as a “kook.”

By: DarwinCatholic

DarwinCatholic — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:10:40 +0000

Dibgy,

Your extended story falls prey to a basic fallacy: Even if the construction of the radiostation was misguided in its placing, and thus caused great harm to the stilt fishers, that does not necessarily mean that the message being broadcast via that station was wrong, or that the Marxists who were (at least back in the day) the primary target of the broadcasts were right.

If you want to talk about a mechanized and inhuman society, look at the communist regimes under which Voice of America and the BBC World Service were come of the only real news that people could get.

Now, the fact that communism is bad doesn’t mean that everything about the modern US is good — but still, deciding that everything about American and its efforts to provide news and hope to the oppressed was EVIL (I’m trying to speak caps, but it’s not my native language) based on the location of one radio station seems a bit… unbalanced.

By: Michael Iafrate

Michael Iafrate — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:51:34 +0000

Because then it would be entirely justified. ;-)

You have proven my point.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:18:05 +0000

If a story came out that Benedict “snubbed” some pro-choice “leftie,” rest assured many of you would spin that story similarly.

Because then it would be entirely justified. ;-)

By: Michael Iafrate

Michael Iafrate — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:04:38 +0000

I think it’s entirely probable that Benedict would rank Condi pretty low on his list of priorities.

If a story came out that Benedict “snubbed” some pro-choice “leftie,” rest assured many of you would spin that story similarly.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:31:37 +0000

I'll refrain from rendering a verdict on Thomas Peter's conservative credentials, but I'm more in agreement with this commentator at Catholic World News: "It is true that during August the Holy Father did not hold private audiences with political leaders at his summer residence on Castel Gandolfo." Is it ever possible to leave it at that and not speculate on various sundry motives and unstated concerns that the Holy Father might harbor? One can only hope.

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:27:38 +0000

Also, it looks to me that the commenters at “Americanpapist,” which is a site that is at least as right wing as the right-wing commenters here, have a slightly different take on the “papal snub” than do the usual Amerika-apologists here:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/americanpapist/7778886355626385741/

But maybe not–maybe the “americanpapist” and his following are REAL “conservatives”–you know, the libertarian kind, with BURKEAN perspectives, whose ultra-nationalism, unlike Mr. McClarey’s, is tempered by genuinely Christian “first principles.”

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:22:29 +0000

I like Kafka. Ever see Brazil? -- Great film.