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Canonize Bush (Oct. 21, 2003)

Mother Teresa has just been beatified, to the acclaim of liberals across the planet. Yet this heroine of do-gooders everywhere did nothing more than provide poor people a place to die. The time has come to honor someone who stands not for the passive self-sacrifice of "old Europe", but the proactive "tough love" described by Nietzsche: "The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And they shall even be given every possible assistance." Who better to embody this attitude than the compassionate conservative who is leading the new crusade against the heathen infidels and bleeding-heart big spenders? Let's begin now the process to beatify, then canonize, a new American Saint George -- George W. Bush.

Those who object that Bush is not eligible for sainthood are thinking like the appeasers of the United [sic] Nations, paralyzed by archaic rules, like "no preemptory wars". You say he's not Catholic? Many of the early saints had never even heard of the Catholic Church, in Latin or any other language. Bush has made clear at every opportunity his total devotion to his "favorite philosopher", Jesus Christ; the rest is a minor quibble over Papal succession. This will be a step forward for ecumenical cooperation.

You say Bush is not dead yet? Well, A) we should get started right now because the process takes years (even when railroaded, like it was for the bed-pan carrier of Calcutta), and B) the need for prior death is now obsolete. The original idea was to pray to a holy person above who could intercede for us here below. Today, only astronauts (many of them ex-commy Russians) are regularly higher than our soon-to-be Saint George, sailing over the clouds in Air Force One on his way to save the world. Furthermore, he has told us how often he talks to God, apparently with favorable results for his prayers. Surely it would be easy for him to pass on our requests in his daily conversations, which is the whole purpose of sainthood.

Lt. General William Boykin, whose new appointment is driving liberals to sputtering wrath because he said that Muslims worship an "idol," not a "real God," and showed slides from Somalia which include an actual photo of Satan, is only the latest to realize the divine plan in Bush's presence in the White House, telling audiences "The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? ... Because God put him there for a time such as this." Bush agrees. During the 2000 campaign he told TV sermonizer James Robison "I feel like God wants me to run for President." (1.) In Augustine's words, "Hoc credo, absurdum est!" ["This I believe, because it is absurd."] God told Bush so, he believes it, and the least he deserves from us is a feast day in his honor.

Bush's elevation to his office in the face of voter opposition is itself one of the necessary miracles which must be pointed to as proof of his saintliness. The court decision making this possible was absolutely opposed to all the precedents and decisions made before by the majority, and was specifically set aside as never again to be repeated -- the very essence of the miraculous. And it was brought about by two of the most devout Catholics in the federal judiciary, Tony Scalia of Opus Dei, and Clarence Thomas, his converted marionette. [A most appropriate word, of French origin, "prob. orig. a small image of the Virgin Mary."]

There is also a precedent for considering military victory as another miracle for this purpose. The Pope can dispense with one of the required miracles if the person founded a religious order. When Joan of Arc was finally canonized, almost five centuries after her martyrdom, this dispensation was granted instead because she had saved France, a Catholic country. (2.) (The fact that England was also a Catholic country in 1431, fifty years before the birth of Luther or Henry VIII, was irrelevant. The Vatican takes a long range view of these things.) Bush's great victory in Gulf War II saved all of Christendom from Weapons of Mass Destruction, or at least Rodents of Unusual Size. Surely that feat, even greater than Joan's, deserves counting as several miracles?

Bush should have little difficulty, since the hurdles for reaching sainthood have been greatly lowered by the current papacy. John Paul II has been beatifying with both hands, and has canonized at least 280 people, "more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century." (3.) He has also greased the wheels of the process, by measures such as abolishing the ancient office of "devil's advocate", which investigates any extraordinary claims and argues against the candidate for sainthood. Now only perfunctory questions are asked, and the bar for evidence is set very low. The key miracle for this case was the healing of an Indian woman's cancer tumor by a beam of light from a picture of Teresa. In fact, her doctors have testified that she didn't have cancer, but a tubercular cyst which was cured by a standard course of prescription medicine. (4.) The Vatican declined to interview the doctor or check with the hospital.

Of course, many saints were canonized with even more counterintuitive tales than this. Like many of them, she has relics. "Hundreds of Roman Catholic pilgrims filed past the reliquary of [Mother Teresa's] blood - preserved on a piece of cotton and held within a flame-shaped gold case mounted on a wooden frame - in the basilica of St John Lateran. Pilgrims queued up to kiss both the perspex case holding the relic and a signature blue and white sari of the type worn by the nun ... "For me she is already a saint," said one Albanian pilgrim, after filing past the Church's latest icon and pressing her rosary against the see-through case containing the relic, under the watchful gaze of a picture of the nun." (5.) Of course, this doesn't equal an English church which once had not only a piece of the True Cross, but "a stone which Christ refused to turn into bread". What relics will Saint George leave? Perhaps a pretzel which God prevented him from choking upon.

Beatifying Teresa has been wildly popular. Her story has even become a musical. "In the hit play that opened last week to sold-out performances, nuns sway to rousing pop-rock tunes, bare-chested men representing Calcutta "untouchables" writhe in jazzy dance numbers, and Mother Teresa does a sort of "deus ex machina," descending to stage from above. Never mind that this Mother Teresa is a blond 23-year-old Italian. She belts out songs with the best of them, telling audiences to love God and keep the faith. ... "Mother Teresa was a universal figure, loved by everyone," said Rita Tomassetti Galdieri, who stars in Mother Teresa, the Musical as a pregnant adulteress whom the nun saves from death by stoning. "Performing in a play about her inspires me," said Galdieri, 32, a dancer and singer with a diamond stud in her nose." (5A.)

Her elevation is helpful to the Church in another way. Boston's new Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, now leading the third diocese he has been asked to take over because of scandals of sexual abuse by priests, said the focus on her is an antidote to the bad news that has plagued the church for the last two years. (6.) Think how much more distracting the canonization of a new American saint would be, and how popular among U.S. Catholics -- or at least among Republican Catholics, the only ones who really matter.

But could Teresa's promotion mean the Vatican has decided to make a bunch of liberal altruists saints? Fear not. In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize (a dishonor she shared with Jimmy Carter), she dumfounded the hedonistic Scandinavian socialists by showing her true colors. "I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion ... Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. ... we are teaching our beggars, our leprosy patients, our slum dwellers, our people of the street, natural family planning. ... We teach them the temperature meter which is very beautiful, very simple, and our poor people understand. And you know what they have told me? Our family is healthy, our family is united, and we can have a baby whenever we want." (7.) In the midst of the overpopulation of Calcutta, she unswervingly stuck with traditional dogma. This made her popularity for her charitable works very useful for the church, and the Pope is rightly rewarding her posthumously.

If anyone had any worries that our oldest western religious organization might have gone fuzzy-brained and bleeding-hearted during the Pope's illness, they should have been dispelled by Sunday's celebration of the beatification. ""Brothers and sisters," the pope said in the homily ... The deepest meaning of service -- an act of love to the hungry, thirsty, to strangers, the naked, the sick, prisoners -- is done to Jesus himself." ... After the ceremony, the Vatican provided a chicken and pasta lunch for the poor who had been invited to the event. A group of uninvited homeless people tried to get in for the meal, but guards turned them away. "I am poor, too," cried a man who identified himself as Antonio." (8.)

To sensible people, that is, to conservatives, there seems to be a reassuring pattern among John Paul's choices. One Indian critic of Teresa's beatification writes, spewing obvious liberal bias, "Mother T with all her faults pales into insignificance before the sort of thugs, anti-Semites and fascist collaborators the Catholic church has recently beatified, such as Pius IX, Pius XII, Jos� Maria Escriva, Stepinac (Archbishop of Zagreb who oversaw the killings of thousands of Jews, gypsies and Communists), Cardinal Schuster of Milan, etc. ... [Pius XII] is favoured because like the current Pope he was ultra right-wing and viciously anti-Communist. ... In March 2001 the Pope also beatified in one stroke 233 collaborators of Franco, who fought (and died) to preserve Franco's fascist Catholic state against the Spanish republicans." (9.) Ignoring that author's petty prejudice against right-wingers, the dealings of George's grandfather with the Third Reich before and during World War II, which resulted in the shameful seizure of his banking firm by the profit-hating administration of FDR (10.), (11.), should be credentials enough to convince the Pope of Bush's good intentions.

The best reason to make Bush a saint is the incredible sacrifice he has made as President. I don't mean the millions he could have no doubt obtained from the Saudis in Arbusto-type oil deals, or from partnerships with them like his retired father's, or the vast capital gains from fronting for sports teams which taxpayers build huge new stadiums for. This transcends mere material losses.

When God gave Joan of Arc the mission of saving France, he did not promise her she would not be tried as a witch and burned at the stake. She went ahead and gave her life anyway. The fires that consumed her body burned out long ago, but her spirit was freed. Her heroism well deserved sainthood.

When God gave George W. Bush the mission of running Saddam out of Iraq, he didn't promise him dispensation for lies to the American people and the U.N. to persuade them to support the war. Yet George could clearly see that what the British are calling "sexed-up" claims about weapons, terrorism, and impending threats were the only way to stir us to action.

Here is precisely where Bush's bravery came in. As a born-again Texas protestant, he knew that lying meant he would have to burn in hell for all eternity. Yet he did not hesitate to openly mislead the public. He gave up his place in paradise just so that he could fulfill God's plan to bring western Christian culture and business expertise to the benighted fanatical Muslims and Baathist socialists of Iraq (and later, perhaps, Syria and Iran as well). Atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, unitarians, and even establishment church members may scoff at this, but George Bush truly believed that he freely cast himself into everlasting fire just to further God's cause on earth. He sacrificed more than just his life. His heroism deserves sainthood even more than other martyrs who only gave up their lives.

It will of course be ironic and even confusing, at first. Unlike the others whom we appeal to in heaven for their intercession, these pleas will begin "Saint George, who art in hell, pray for us." We may be sure that he will be justifiably proud, even as he is prodded with pitchforks among the sulfurous fumes. We all owe him a great debt of thanks, not just for saving our civilization, but for making it possible for us to profitably contemplate that image for the rest of our lives.

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