Bush Without the Oxy
George W. Bush did a big disfavor to the pope during his recent visit to the White House. Bush lifted a thought from a speech the pope gave before he became pope, a speech that had been unknown to just about all but Catholic Church insiders.
In exposing that speech to the world, Bush showed the pope to be just about as disconnected from the reality of the world as Bush has been. He also exposed further and gave a name to one of the huge chinks in his own armor.
Now, nobody is going to contend Bush came up with a phrase that probably is still beyond his grasp, but he chose to read it aloud and associate himself with it.
While merely the Cardinal Ratzinger, the pope had said, "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."
The part of the Bush speech associating himself with that sen- tence was: "In a world where some no longer believe that we can distin- guish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this 'dictatorship of relativism,' and embrace a culture of justice and truth."
Pundits are still gagging over Bush's audacity to speak the final clause. But the error the two central characters made was to denounce relativism.
Simply put, relativism is the belief that what constitute morals and ethics change over time relative to the situations at hand and the time in which man finds himself in evolution. The pope and his church believe, as has been taught since Christianity became a formal religion, i.e., Cath- olicism, that what is considered right or wrong, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, is absolute and never changes, a theory that plays well into a religion based on strict top-down authority. That is the theory, of course, that is at the root of the movement away from the church.
The pope is the head of that church, so one can understand how he would attempt to retain the absolute authority vested in him by cen- turies of church doctrine, even to the point of terming him "infallible."
To be generous to Bush, we know he did not and does not really understand what he said or what it meant beyond its usefulness as a catch phrase and an attempt to associate himself with a man much more popular and intellectual than he.
Relativism stands at the very foundation of the United States of America. The nation was created to throw off the shackles of those would attempt to rule over us with a claim of absolute authority.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution illus- trate that sort of tyranny in their own shortcomings. Neither document sought to cast off what were assumed to be absolute truths at the time, but the genius of the documents is the flexibility they provide for being interpreted in the light of the times. They may not know it, but that flexi- bility is what is behind the right-wing's "constructionist interpretations" of the Constitution and diatribes against "activist" judges and justices.
One absolute truth at the time of the American revolution, one that held on until the past half century, held that caucasians were naturally superior to black people and other "savages." "All men are created equal" not only was never intended to include them, it was not intended to apply to women. And look who the Democratic party's would-be nomi- nees are today.
The list of changes that interpretations of the Constitution by "act- ivists justices" have wrought are endless. Much of what we now consider moral and ethical is much different than what was considered moral and ethical more than 200 years ago. Is there anyone who would take us back to what was considered moral and ethical at the dawn of Christ- ianity?
A "strict constructionist" interpretation of the Constitution also would have us believe the president is not commander-in-chief of the U.S. Air Force, because the Constitution lists only the Army, Navy and state militias, i.e., the National Guards in times of national service. And that part of the Constitution has never been amended.
The pope's reference picked up by Bush's speechwriter was to the "dictatorship of relativism." That is an oxymoron, akin to "compassionate conservative." It is the claim there is only one truth and that it never changes that is the stuff of dictatorships, not democracies.
