{"id":2644,"date":"2008-11-06T18:39:32","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T23:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2008\/11\/06\/paving-the-way\/"},"modified":"2008-11-06T18:39:32","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T23:39:32","slug":"paving-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2008\/11\/paving-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Paving the way"},"content":{"rendered":"

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic.<\/p>\n

…Archbishop Gregory said that the next time cardinals gathered to elect a Pope they could "in their wisdom" choose an African pontiff. "My own election as head of the US Bishops Conference was an important signal. In 2001 the American bishops elected someone they respected regardless of his race, and the same thing could happen with the election of a Pope." <\/p>\n

I agree with everything that American Papist had to say in reaction<\/a>. No doubt the article was written through a specific lens, but I still find some of the quotes to be problematic.<\/p>\n

For one thing is he saying that his election was really an important signal. That before that time I guess we had prejudiced Catholic bishops unwilling to elect a Bishop who happened to be black? It is the newspaper that implied that "The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope." Though if the Bishop actually implied such a thing it would be rather silly to suggest that Catholic Cardinals were prejudiced and somehow resistant to electing a black Pope even if they thought he was the right man for the times. That we have many saints who happened to be black, but we would draw the line at making one pope. Besides Cardinal Arinze was certainly one of the papabiles last time around and it certainly didn’t take an American election to guide them in such a consideration. The Catholic Church has long been on the forefront in fighting racism including excommunications of slave owners.<\/p>\n

Besides isn’t the Jesuit General known as the Black Pope? Or is that like Bill Clinton being the first black President?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}