Are Catholic Conservatives In a Panic Over Obama Meeting the Pope

I have often commented that many more liberal or progressive Catholics have a cartoon version of their conservative/ Republican United States brothers and sisters. I suppose this works in reverse too. The problem is that the more liberal voice is what is hear in the Catholic and secular media at times.

America magain via Michael Winters has struck again. Winters by the way is one of the writers there I can tolerate because at least at times he appears open. Still this is bizaree.

Pope Benedict XVI will receive President Barack Obama in audience at the Vatican on July 10. Let the gnashing of teeth begin.
Admit it, wasn’t your first impulse to call Dr. Mary Ann Glendon and ask, "If you were still the ambassador, would you show up or would you boycott?" The Cardinal Newman Society, which spent the better part of the spring telling the world that no Catholic could in good conscience share the stage with President Obama, perhaps now they will start issuing press releases entitled "Pope Creates Scandal" or "Outrage at the Vatican." The Catholic News Agency, which featured the headline "Vatican announces Pope’s vacation without confirmation of Obama visit" just a few weeks ago, has nary a mention of the visit on its website this morning. Cat got your tongue?

Obama’s Catholic critics need to re-calibrate their message and it is difficult to see how they will compete with the pictures of Obama in the frescoed halls of the Vatican, his beautiful wife and children in tow, shaking hands with the Holy Father. Actually, in addition to shaking hands, it is traditional that the Pope will present a gift to the President. Does that count as an "honor" of the kind forbidden by the bishops’ document "Catholics in Political Life"? Notre Dame, of course, has a tradition of conferring an honorary degree upon every new president that pre-dates presidential visits to the Holy See.

Now of course the only ones that thought there would be gnashing to teeth were silly people that think conservative and Republican Catholics have no brain. I might add sort of "snarky" op ed is coming from the same magazine that proclaimed the rhetoric was getting too hot among American Catholics

Catholics in the Public Square has a great response to this puzzling piece and another response to the response.

See
Obama to visit the Vatican; the triumphant vindication of Michael Sean Winters?

Tip of the Hat to Pro-Ecclesia and his post President Obama to Visit Vatican

Father Z has a great frisking of this nonsense too at Amerika Magazine gets it wrong again