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You Know Who’d Make a Great Pope? Barack Obama, that’s Who!

Jimmie | July 12, 2009 | Comments (0)

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is known, mainly, for two things. First, she spent a few years as a mostly-invisible Lieutenant Governor of Maryland who was added to the ticket so her running mate Paris Glendening, could tap into the vast Kennedy moneybins. Second, she’s a member of the Kennedy clan, the closest thing to a royal family our country has ever had.

I suppose it was that sense of royalty (her mother was a Marquiesse, after all) that led her to the pages of Newsweek to decree that Barack Obama would make a far better Pope than the man who holds the title now.

I can’t quite wrap my head around that concept. Not only is Barack Obama not a Catholic, but he only joined his last church because of political convenience. He’s been in Washington over six months and he’s not bothered to find a new church family. I can’t think of a recent President less religious than Obama, yet Townsend thinks he would make a fantastic Pope. Ed Morrissey eviscerates Townsend’s pile of ignorance and overweening hubris in fine fashion, but I wanted to add a couple quick thoughts as well.

Townsend isn’t saying anything new, though she does say it in a breathtakingly stupid way. Her entire article boils down to the very same infantile cry man has been hurling at God since Adam and Eve chomped down on a piece of forbidden fruit: I wanna do it my way! The Catholic Church doesn’t exist to enable our own flawed human decisions nor mediate our petty squabbles. That’s not to say the church doesn’t care about its members, or those of us who aren’t. It should be obvious from the dozens of relief organizations the Church sponsors and the millions of Catholics who spend countless hours helping the poor, sick, and afflicted that the church and her members care very much. But temporal matters are not among the church’s first priority, nor should they be.

I’ve long maintained that the modern church has two priorities: 1) making more Christians (i.e. leading more people to Jesus), and 2) helping Christians to become stronger and more mature in their faith. Everything a church does should work directly toward one of those two things. Anything else is a waste of precious time and money. What Townsend wants is a church that spends much less time on those priorities and most of its time catering to the whims of its members. That not only runs counter to the very reason the Catholic church exists but the reason any Biblically-based church exists.

I’ll let Ed close this one out.

Townsend wants a church that bends to the will of the mob, which isn’t a church at all but a social club or a political party. Let Obama remain the head of his political party, and perhaps Catholics like Townsend should pay more attention to the church’s teachings — or find a social club to join instead.

UPDATE: Look, a poll!