The Catholic Position and George W. Bush Jr. REDUX

**Note: In my original unedited version of this post, I received some comments stating I was being too judgmental and arrogant in my language. After much thought and second opinions, I believe this resulted from the fact that I mixed my own opinions with the facts I was trying to state. I saw no problem with this before because I write my blogs unedited and uncensored as I think of them, in much the same way a person keeps a diary or journal. However, in the spirit of Catholic apologetics, I must be charitable to those who disagree with my views while at the same time not being afraid to voice my opinions. Therefore, in the future, I will make a concerted effort to post my opinions in separate blog entries from entries with more apologetic, factual material. This way, I hope to achieve both my goals of debunking factual errors stated about the Catholic Church (and other subjects I'm passionate about) and of voicing my uncensored opinion on all kinds of subject matter.

I recently received a comment on my post "Dance with the Devil." I had to reject the comment because the person tried to bring up the subject of George W. Bush Jr. and how he wasn't really pro-life, abortion went up during his presidency, he approved torture, Pope John Paul II condemned the Iraqi war, etc., etc. Even though my post had nothing to do with Bush, this person couldn't help but take the opportunity to condemn the Bush administration.

However, I would still like to post a reply to his comments because he listed sound bytes as if they were facts. It's easy to take sound bytes as facts if they're listed very quickly in succession and no research is done to check them. So I'd like to respond to each criticism with the facts:

He approved torture
I take it this is a reference to waterboarding. Unfortunately, the definition of torture has been expanded to include "extended interrogation techniques." True torture leaves permanent damage, mentally and physically, on the victim. Waterboarding does neither. It's an interrogation technique practiced by the military on themselves to interrogate prisoners for information. Islamic militant terrorists perform true torture when they cut off limbs of American soldiers.

He started a war Pope John Paul II condemned
Pope John Paul II never directly condemned the war in Iraq. What Pope John Paul II DID say was that military action and terrorism never solves anything. The Catholic Church's just war doctrine states that war can be necessary in only certain criteria. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan may or may not meet the criteria depending on who you talk to. Even Pope Benedict XVI stated this when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. For a list of commentary on this subject, see this website:

He did not speak out against genocide nor do anything for the environment which Pope Benedict XVI spoke out for
George W. Bush has made a statement about the Armenian Genocide. Here's a press release:
And when it comes to the environment, the Bush administration didn't see it as a priority. The war in Iraq and the economy were their main concerns. It wasn't until Gore and Obama made the environment a political issue that it became a major issue. The earth has been heating up since well before the industrial revolution. In fact, it's been heating up since the last ice age ended. It's very hard to prove without a doubt that the temperature of the earth is rising because of CO2 and it's a scientific fact that water vapor affects the earths weather much more dramatically. Any scientist who tries to model weather changes to prove the greenhouse affect can't recreate the affect of CO2 that apparently most scientist see. If you've studied chaos theory, then you can never be sure of any causal affect to a nonlinear system like weather. And there's no possibility of studying a closed weather system without CO2 for a control sample.
As for Pope Benedict XVI, his stance on genocide are obvious. When it comes to global warming, he too calls for true evidence and facts rather than the political ideology so many environmentalists are pushing. Please see this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-501316/The-Pope-condemns-climate-change-prophets-doom.html

These are all the points about George W. Bush Jr. which the commenter had made and I hope I have answered each point thoroughly from the Catholic point of view. The commenter had purported to be writing from the Catholic point of view himself. If he had done a bit more research on all his points, he might have reconsidered the points he was trying to make.

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