An enterprising reader has showcased his design skills by giving the Vatican website a facelift based on the new Obamafied White House website.
As he said: It's easy to bring the Obama marketing look to the Vatican website -- but if only the Vatican's morals could somehow be brought to the Obama administration.
Thursday Random
11 hours ago
6 comments:
I'm impressed by the cleverness of the satire.
But I am more impressed to find someone actually using the word 'apocolocyntosis'.
"if only the Vatican's morals could somehow be brought to the Obama administration."
I've noted before that many Catholics seem completely unaware of how the Vatican actually looks to most non-Catholics. Most of us, reading your statement above, would be horrified. Is President Obama going to be aiding and abetting the molestation of children? Is he going to hire a Holocaust denier in his adminstration?
Permit me to suggest that a man who has been married to the same woman for his whole adult life, and has never been accused of any personal immorality more serious than smoking, really doesn't need to take moral lessons from the Vatican.
Joel
Most of us, reading your statement above, would be horrified. Is President Obama going to be aiding and abetting the molestation of children? Is he going to hire a Holocaust denier in his adminstration?
Permit me to suggest that a man who has been married to the same woman for his whole adult life, and has never been accused of any personal immorality more serious than smoking, really doesn't need to take moral lessons from the Vatican.
Well, it wasn't really a statement made with non-Catholic readers in mind. To my knowledge the majority of our readership is Catholic, and it was a toss of humor post, not an intellectual discussion intended to be carefully written.
However, taking the above at face value, I think you're perhaps allowing surface perception to run away with you a bit.
First off, it seems to me that you must be working with a rather minimalistic definition of "personal immorality". I suspect that many people who have been married to the same person for a number of years have done things more immoral than smoking (is smoking a sin?) -- and indeed Obama describes himself as using drugs in high school and college, so I suppose even he has accused himself of more than smoking. No greed? No sloth? No lust? No lack of caring for others? No making a big point of refusing to ban infanticide? Can Obama really be such a saintly person as not to need _any_ guidance from the oldest continually existing moral and religious institution in the world?
I suppose one can make a big point about the Vatican and how much connection it may or may not have to pedophile priests -- but then we know well that Federal employees commit crimes ranging the entire gammut, and if no one makes a deal about it it's because it's far less shocking for an IRS agent to have wicked proclivities than for a priest to do so.
As nations go: the Vatican has no poverty, hasn't fought a war in 150 years, and provides large amounts of charitable aide around the world while doing nothing to hurt, control or oppress any other country -- which no matter where one sits on the ideological spectrum is more than the US can claim.
Heck, when it comes to hiring people with bad press, Obama can't seem to resist nominating people who cheat on their taxes, support the Tianamen Square massacre, or are in the pay of the Saudis -- though I suppose he hasn't managed to find anyone quite as batty as Williamson, who incidentally is not even fully in union with the Church yet and thus was hardly "hired" by the pope.
In fact really, your complaint fails to work at basically every level.
"I suppose one can make a big point about the Vatican and how much connection it may or may not have to pedophile priests - "
Yes, one can. Cardinal Bernard Law had the privilege of casting a ballot at the last papal enclave.
Clearly, we are not going to agree on this, but I stand by my original point: many, many Catholics have no clue at all how the Vatican looks to non-Catholics. Your blithe assumption that we would all regard the Vatican as being morally superior to the White House, or to any other prominent human institution, is fraught with danger. Just be aware, that's all I'm saying.
Clearly, we are not going to agree on this, but I stand by my original point: many, many Catholics have no clue at all how the Vatican looks to non-Catholics. Your blithe assumption that we would all regard the Vatican as being morally superior to the White House, or to any other prominent human institution, is fraught with danger. Just be aware, that's all I'm saying.
Well, it's not a surprise to me that non-Catholics would not necessarily agree with my assessment.
I would, however, like to draw out one potentially helpful distinction that I doubtless didn't make very clear: I don't necessarily claim that the people in the Vatican are particularly moral, but I do think that they moral principles which they teach are of great value to humanity -- not merely to Catholics.
In this sense, the difference between the Vatican and the White House is that while the White House is a policy making and executing organ, the Vatican seeks to preserve a set of moral and theological teachings. And I think the people in the White House (just like everyone else) would do well to listen to those teachings and give them some serious thought.
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