I screwed the pooch. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
On Wednesday I linked to a CatholicVote piece decrying the Obama administration's decision to move the Vatican embassy to a location inside the Italian embassy.
This is likely in part payback for the strong stance taken by American Bishops against the HHS Mandate.
Dear Leader can't be opposed so vociferously.
There was no evidence of any of that, just my own very filtered conclusions drawn largely from my strong distrust of this administration. Thanks to pieces subsequently put up by folks I respect and my looking into this whole thing as a result of those pieces, I'm walking back my criticism.
Frank Weathers wrote one of those pieces:
Recently a firestorm of fake dudgeon was released into the Catholic blogosphere when news came that the U.S. Embassy to Vatican City was, horror of horrors, going to be moved to a space that was
available where the U.S. Embassy to Italy was located in Rome. The hue and cry from some quarters was loud and long.
Former ambassadors to the Holy See lined up to whine about the perceived slight they were enduring. Meanwhile, the current Ambassador to the Holy See was fine with the idea, and the Vatican was cool with it too. But that didn’t placate folks, and you know what? Neither will this blog post.
C’est la vie.
I said to folks what I’ll say to you right now: Call me when we cut diplomatic relations with the Holy See; then I’ll get interested.
Regardless of what sinister plots you see forming behind every single move of the government (they’re tunneling under your house!), this is not one of the things to be concerned about.
available where the U.S. Embassy to Italy was located in Rome. The hue and cry He goes on to lay out the case and though he links, to my chagrin, to the State Department's own blog (my distrust again needing to be controlled), the facts seem compelling and it's likely that I engaged in some knee jerking when reacting to the news.
I need to do better.
Carry on.
