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專欄作家Maureen Dowd偏向自由派 文字蠻辛辣的 :P
Uncle Dick and Papa
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 23, 2005
It was a move so smooth and bold, accomplished with such
backstage bureaucratic finesse, that it was worthy of Dick
Cheney himself.
The eminence grise who had long whispered in the ear of
power and who had helped oversee the selection process
ended up selecting himself. In Cheneyesque fashion, he
searched far and wide for a pope by looking around the
room and swiftly deciding he was the best man for the job.
Just like Mr. Cheney, once the quintessentially
deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name
"Back Seat," the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
has clambered over the back seat to seize the wheel (or
Commonweal). Mr. Cheney played the tough cop to W.'s
boyish, genial pol, just as Cardinal Ratzinger played the
tough cop to John Paul's gentle soul.
And just like the vice president, the new pope is a
Jurassic archconservative who disdains the "if it feels
good do it" culture and the revolutionary trends toward
diversity and cultural openness since the 60's.
The two leaders are a match - absolutists who view the
world in stark terms of good and evil, eager to prolong a
patriarchal society that prohibits gay marriage and slices
up pro-choice U.S. Democratic candidates.
The two, from rural, conservative parts of their
countries, want to turn back the clock and exorcise New
Age silliness. Mr. Cheney wants to dismantle the New Deal
and go back to 1937. Pope Benedict XVI wants to dismantle
Vatican II and go back to 1397. As a scholar, his
specialty was "patristics," the study of the key thinkers
in the first eight centuries of the church.
They are both old hands at operating in secrecy and using
the levers of power for ideological advantage. They want
to enlist Catholics in the conservative cause, turning
confession boxes into ballot boxes with the threat that a
vote for a liberal Democrat could lead to eternal
damnation.
Unlike Ronald Reagan and John Paul II, the vice president
and the new pope do not have large-scale charisma or sunny
faces to soften their harsh "my way or the highway"
policies. Their gloomy world outlooks and bullying roles
earned them the nicknames Dr. No and Cardinal No. One is
called Washington's Darth Vader, the other the Vatican's
Darth Vader.
W.'s Doberman and John Paul's "God's Rottweiler," as the
new pope was called, are both global enforcers with cult
followings. Just as the vice president acted to solidify
the view of America as a hyperpower, so the new pope views
the Roman Catholic Church as the one true religion. He
once branded other faiths as deficient.
Both like to blame the media. Cardinal Ratzinger once
accused the U.S. press of overplaying the sex abuse
scandal to hurt the church and keep the story on the front
pages.
Dr. No and Cardinal No parted ways on the war - though
Cardinal Ratzinger did criticize the U.N. But they agree
that stem cell research and cloning must be curtailed.
Cardinal Ratzinger once called cloning "more dangerous
than weapons of mass destruction."
As fundamentalism marches on - even Bill Gates seems to
have caved to a preacher on gay rights legislation because
of fear of a boycott - U.S. conservatives are thrilled
about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger, hoping for an
unholy alliance. They hope this pope - who seems to want a
smaller, purer church - encourages a militant role for
Catholic bishops and priests in the political process.
Cardinal Ratzinger did not shrink from advising American
bishops in the last presidential election on bringing
Catholic elected officials to heel. He warned that
Catholics who deliberately voted for a candidate because
of a pro-choice position were guilty of cooperating in
evil, and unworthy to receive communion. Vote Democratic
and lose your soul. "Panzerkardinal," as he was known,
definitely isn't a man who could read Mario Cuomo's Notre
Dame speech urging that pro-choice politicians be allowed
in the tent and say, "He's got a point."
The Republicans can build their majority by bringing
strict Catholics and evangelicals - once at odds -
together on what they call "culture of life" issues.
But there's a risk, as with Tom DeLay, Dr. Bill Frist and
other Republicans, that if the new pope is too heavy-
handed and too fundamentalist, his approach may backfire.
Moral absolutism is relative, after all. As Bruce
Landesman, a philosophy professor at the University of
Utah, pointed out in a letter to The Times: "Those who
hold 'liberal' views are not relativists. They simply
disagree with the conservatives about what is right and
wrong."
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