James Dunn For Vatican Ambassador.
That’s the recommendation that Rob Boston of Americans United makes in a recent blog post.
Here’s Rob Boston:
One of my heroes in the church-state world is a feisty Southern Baptist minister named James Dunn.
James ran the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty here in Washington for many years. He is firmly grounded in the historic Baptist view that separation of church and state is good for both institutions. Woe to anyone who suggested that James was operating out of hostility toward religion. A man of deep faith, James would quickly set you straight on that.
I recall hearing James speak once on the issue of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and the United States. He said he was uncomfortable with the idea and noted that every U.S. ambassador to the Vatican had been Roman Catholic. It might not be a bad idea, he opined, to send a Baptist over there for a change.
Boston explains that the Holy See has rejected, according to The Washington Times, at least three candidates put forward by President Obama to be the United States Ambassador to the Vatican. He writes that “the prospects were apparently blackballed because they hold pro-choice views on abortion.”
Read more about that here.
And more from Boston:
When U.S.-Vatican ties were proposed during the Reagan administration, Americans United vigorously opposed the move and warned that there would be problems down the line. It just wasn’t right, AU argued, for the U.S. government to have formal diplomatic relations with a church. (Our ambassador goes not to the Vatican City State, an alleged country of about 110 acres within the city of Rome, but to the Holy See – the international headquarters of the church.)
Americans United tried to raise some of these issues in court, challenging the diplomatic exchange on church-state grounds. Unfortunately, a federal appeals court refused to deal with the issue and dismissed the lawsuit on a technicality, saying AU did not even have the right to even bring the case.
So now it appears that not only must the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican be Catholic, they must oppose legal abortion as well. I wonder what other qualifications a potential ambassador must meet? Must he or she oppose same-sex marriage as well? Can he or she be divorced? Will someone check up on the candidate to make certain he or she attends mass every week?
Imposing such qualifications on ambassadors would seem to violate the clear provisions of Article VI of the Constitution, which bans religious tests for federal office.
Here’s an idea: Obama should name one more ambassador candidate and send his or her name to the Vatican with no vetting where that candidate stands on abortion or any other doctrinal issue. (Caroline Kennedy’s name has been floated, but I’d still like to see James Dunn get it.) If the Vatican says no to that person, leave the spot vacant. After all, it should never have been created in the first place.
I wholeheartedly agree with Rob Boston.
And I also wholeheartedly agree with James Dunn who declared back in 1984 that “The very idea that we would enter in this relationship announcing in advance that we intend to attempt to shape the political positions of the Roman Catholic Church is contrary to everything we mean by separation of church and state.”
I devoted several pages of my M.A. Thesis (Baylor University, Church-State Studies) to James Dunn’s views on the United States’ diplomatic relations with the Vatican. See primarily pages 98-99 (of 158) of James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom: A Paradigm For Baptist Political Engagement In The Public Arena.
Tomorrow (Friday), I will be presenting a paper on the separationist views of four Baptists including James Dunn, Charles Evans Hughes, E.Y. Mullins and G.W. Truett at the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Social Science Association in Denver. I’m on a panel with a Union University graduate who is presenting on Baptists and Prohibition and a Truett Seminary grad/Baylor Religion doctoral student who is presenting on Baptists and Missionary Involvement in Argentina. I will try to post a copy of my paper later.
If the Vatican rejects our ambassador, so be it. No country, who wishes diplomatic relations with the US, should dictate the appointment.
Would love to see Pope Benedict tell Pope (sic) Dunn how the cathecism cookie crumbles and then see Pope (sic) Dunn point that bony finger in Pope Benedict’s face, with all due respect, of course, and tell him how the concept of separation of chuch and state works.
Would be fun for both sides. Of course what would be MOST fun would be to be a fly on the wall when just the two of them got at it in private and off the record.
ssad
I have never believed in the ambassador to the Vatican. JFK kept his campaign promise not to appoint one. Instead, Ronnie-I-Never-Go-to-Church-But-Fundamentalists-Love-Me-Reagan got this atrocity started. Obama should take these refusals as a sign and refuse to appoint anyone else. We don’t need diplomatic ties with a church.
The Vatican doesn’t “vet” the views of other ambassadors from other countries. But, since Reagan, they’ve been used to setting the agenda for the U.S.–something Protestants were (wrongly) worried about with JFK. Funny, how our only Catholic president was stronger on church-state separation than any president since the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency! (Sadly, yes, that includes the Baptist Bill Clinton who gave us the horrible “charitable choice” lowering of the wall of separation.)
If Obama sends an ambassador to the Vatican, he should also send one to the Southern Baptist Convention — and his/her credentials should be approved by a vote of the messengers.
I don’t know whether you’ll want to publish this entirely-off-topic comment, but I thought you’d get a kick out of this. A student writing a paper on John Leland for me has cited an article from your blog in 2007. So, of the many academic sources that you will doubtless author someday, your post on Obama and Leland back in 2007 will be among the early ones.
Ha, that’s pretty awesome!