Peggy Noonan on Pope Benedict and Her Slight Slam on Bush

The Anchoress has a link as well as her thoughts to the Noonan piece here at Noonan on Popes JPII & B16. I think Noonan hits it right on the nail when she says:

John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. It is more pleasurable to weep, but at the moment, perhaps it is more important to think.
A Vatican reporter last week said John Paul was the perfect pope for the television age, “a man of images.” …
Benedict, the reporter noted, is the perfect pope for the Internet age. He is a man of the word. You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it.

Now John Paul the II works were not fluff. However they were often very deep. Benedict has the ability of a good University Prof that can make the complex understandable and makes you year for more.

Sadly as the Anchoress notes she just not stop with Benedict but has to slam Bush The Anchoress states:
To me the only burr in today’s otherwise excellent article was her rather gratuitous-seeming snark at the expense of President Bush, which seemed both uncharitable and out of place, like a pothole (on an otherwise smooth road) that needn’t have been hit.

The trip begins in Washington, and the White House has announced that the pope and the president will “continue their dialogue on the interplay of faith and reason.” (This prompted a long-suffering Bush supporter to say, “I’m seeing the collision of matter and antimatter.”)

It is so easy to go for a cheap laugh at Bush’s expense that I felt the gag was beneath Noonan, and was sorry to see it. For all that Bush has clearly disappointed Noonan and many conservatives, the sincerity of his faith and his obvious respect for Catholicism and for two popes should have been enough to have led her not into that temptation.

Amen to that. I should note that Noonan at times has disappointed this conservative. For some reason Mrs Noonan has never liked Bush very much. I am not a big fan of Noonan as others are because I notice she has a habit of putting in these barbs against people that she has a bee in her bonnet about. In some ways I have found Bush to be our most "Catholic" of Presidents. His reaching out and consultation with Catholics have been stellar. He has perhaps appointed one of the best Catholic American minds as Envoy to the Vatican.

Last year despite major rumblings from the State Department and opposition to make sure it did not happen, Bush bucked them all and met with Cardinal Zen to learn the plight of Catholics in China. Though there were disagreements as to Iraq the United States has been on the same page as the Vatican as to mnay issues in the international arena. Bush deserves better as to his record and relations with the Holy See especially from a "major" conservative voice

Still it is a good piece.

Updated- I have given more related thoughts here at Bush- The Most "Catholic" President in American History?