Pope's Envoy Scolds America

I’m going to try to put this delicately, as I run the risk of being seen as anti-Catholic, anti-Pope or anti-Religion, because I am none of the above. But the following article engenders but one reaction…Shut Up or Go Away!

Pope's Katrina envoy: 'Shameful' poverty in U.S.

Pope Benedict XVI's envoy to the United States to bring aid for Hurricane Katrina's victims said Saturday that many of them have been struck by "shameful" poverty in "rich America."

There is, of course, only one answer to that. German style socialism right?!

The German-born Archbishop Paul Cordes…

I knew it.

"Many were struck by ... poverty, at times shameful, in rich America," Cordes told Vatican Radio.

Yep, poverty is bad. But that is a political statement, not a sympathetic statement.

"I do not want to hide my personal fear -- that the superpower isolates itself and remains isolated even in dealing with the disaster," Cordes said. "In this dramatic emergency, the United States must not be abandoned."

Abandon away. Other than lip service and a platoon of Mexican Army cooks who took time off from running drugs across the border, what has the world done for New Orleans? Nada! But many foreign leaders, much like the DNC, have used the occasion to slander the US. I am somewhat saddened (as Tom Daschle would say) to see Vatican City joining in. So, if the Vatican wants to call us ‘shameful’, go for it. But why don’t we hear that sort of rhetoric aimed at Cuba or the Philippines? US poverty pales in comparison to those mostly Catholic countries.

If you want to help out, fine. If you want to use the occasion to make a political statement at America’s expense, take it elsewhere. There are other parts of the world that could use some charity more than the United States.

"Thus, for me, in the bad part of this event there is also the hope, for many citizens, of seeing that the world is greater than the United States."

What utter nonsense. The hope is that America gets knocked down a notch? How petty.

Speaking of Germany: Schroeder hits a new low.

Schroeder's party exploits U.S. war dead

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party has put up campaign posters featuring images of dead American soldiers in flag-draped coffins, reviving the anti-Iraq war message that helped the party stay in power three years ago.

"It's totally tasteless," said CDU Secretary-General Volker Kauder. "There are limits even in an election campaign. You don't use the dead to win votes."

A Western diplomat in Berlin said yesterday that the new posters, which show five coffins wrapped in American flags being loaded on a military aircraft, were "absolutely tasteless and outrageous."

I wonder what Archbishop Paul Cordes would think of that. I don't see too much difference. American tragedy makes good politics all over the world.

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