Conservative Donnybrook

Lowry’s latest proves remarkably insightful despite its brevity.

As I mentioned previously, no matter what Benedict said in his addresss to the U.N. liberals were going to seize on the pontiff’s words and reappropriate them as a rebuke of Bush’s foreign policy.  Benedict gave them little fodder, if any.  In fact,

…Benedict blessed an interventionism farther reaching than anything Bush has ever defended. If nation states don’t protect their citizens from ‘grave and sustained violations of human rights,’ he said, ‘the international community must intervene.’ This view might seriously endanger national sovereignty – if the United Nations weren’t so comically ineffectual.

As expected, Benedict devoted much of his address to a dense philosophical explication of human rights.  While liberals had hoped Benedict would chide the U.S. specifically, His Holiness took a more universal approach, referencing “the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. ”  Lowry correctly notes that, with this universal theme of human dignity and rights,

Benedict sounded similar to Bush. There’s a reason that yesterday Bush declared with gusto at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington: ‘His Holiness believes that freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man, woman and child on Earth.’

Emphasizing the most blaspemously neglected storyline of Benedict’s visit, Lowry recognizes ‘the consonance of vision’ of Benedict and Bush:

When they stood together on the White House lawn in a majestic welcoming ceremony on Wednesday, it symbolized the growing rapprochement of American evangelical Protestantism and the Catholic Church.

It was West Texas meets Rome; plain-spoken man of faith meets intellectual of great depth; representative of America’s awesome secular power meets representative of the spiritual power of Christianity.  And more united than divided them.