ROME, April 7, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Former President Bill Clinton, one of recent history’s most ardent political advocates of abortion, placed himself on an equal footing with the Pope and critiqued the Pope’s legacy in comments to reporters while en route to Rome for the papal funeral.
Matt Drudge reports that Clinton told reporters, the Pope “centralized authority in the papacy again and enforced a very conservative theological doctrine. There will be debates about that. The number of Catholics increased by 250 million on his watch. But the numbers of priests didn’t. He’s like all of us – he may have a mixed legacy.”
Clinton’s comments have already spurred outrage from Catholic bloggers and Protestant ministers alike. Joseph Grant Swank Jr., pastor of New Hope Evangelical Church in Maine wrote an editorial in his local paper calling Clinton a religious hypocrite and a liar. Pastor Grant writes, “This rank sinner of the most alley cat genre plows into the Pope on the way to the Pope’s funeral! In moments after making his ‘confession,’ the former United States President then has the audacity to kneel in St. Peter’s Church, looking on adoringly at the Pope’s corpse.”
President Bush’s decision to include Clinton in the US delegation to the Pope’s funeral has already upset many Catholics. Clinton’s presidency was one of aggressive opposition to the Catholic moral universe which John Paul personified.
Clinton’s audacity in critiquing the Pope – who will likely be best remembered for his indefatigable championing of the sanctity of human life – will strike many as especially insulting from a president whose reign was a mud-spattered catalogue of moral and political scandals. Bill Clinton’s particular legacy among pro-lifers is to be remembered for his repeated vetoes of the partial birth abortion ban.
Clinton’s indifference to Catholic sensibilities was exemplified in 1998, when he and his wife received Holy Communion at a Catholic Mass while on a trip to South Africa. This act, understood by Catholics to be one of sacrilege, occurred while the Clintons led the world in their war against traditional Christian morality. The late John Cardinal O’Connor of New York declared the episode “legally and doctrinally wrong.”
Focus on the Family President Dr. James Dobson in February 2001 said, “No man has ever done more to debase the presidency or to undermine our Constitution – and particularly the moral and biblical principles upon which it is based – than has William Jefferson Clinton.” Dobson wrote, “Clinton’s hands are stained with the blood of countless innocent babies. By twice vetoing a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortion, he almost single-handedly preserved a barbaric procedure by which fully viable and un-anaesthetized infants, each fresh from the Creator’s hand and brimming with life, were murdered during the final moments of delivery.”