The President and the Pope

Benedict XVI will be aware of this ominous development and will understand that what is afoot here is a deft attempt by the administration to solidify its hold on Catholic voters by driving wedges between the Catholic bishops of the U.S. and the Catholic people of the U.S. Thus the president should not be surprised if the pope raises some rather urgent questions about how Obama's playing referee in an internal Catholic scrum squares with the institutional separation of church and state—an American accomplishment that Professor Ratzinger has frequently saluted, and that Pope Benedict has been urging the worlds of Islam to emulate.

There is a rich menu of international issues the president and the pope could explore: the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran; the perilous condition of Christian communities in the Middle East, including the new Iraq; AIDS relief and prevention in Africa; environmental degradation; the world economic meltdown and its effects on the poorest of the poor; the legal definition of marriage. Yet it's more likely that these specific issues—which come into play at the United Nations and other venues where the U.S. government and the Holy See interact diplomatically—will be discussed in meetings between senior Vatican diplomats and their American counterparts.

Summitry puts a premium on the big questions. The life issues as civil-rights issues, and the right of the Catholic Church to define its own character without interference or counsel from the president of the United States, are two such big questions. The odds are that those will be the focus of attention when the president meets the pope—no matter what the postmeeting communiques from the White House and the Vatican say.

George Weigel, a NEWSWEEK contributor, is Distinguished Senior Fellow at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center.

© 2009