{"id":15200,"date":"2008-04-13T12:30:26","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T16:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15200.html"},"modified":"2008-04-13T12:30:26","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T16:30:26","slug":"pope-to-president-dont-call-me-ill-call-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pope-to-president-dont-call-me-ill-call-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope to President: Don’t call me, I’ll call you"},"content":{"rendered":"

There may be an explanation for this<\/a> that doesn’t look like an obvious snub, but nothing comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Guess who’s not coming to dinner? Pope Benedict XVI.<\/p>\n

President Bush and his wife, Laura, will host a White House dinner in honor of the pontiff Wednesday evening. U.S. Catholic leaders from around the nation will attend. The menu will offer Bavarian-style food in recognition of the pope’s German heritage. It’s even the pope’s 81st birthday. But he won’t be there.<\/p>\n

“He’s on a very ambitious official schedule,” Anita McBride, Mrs. Bush’s chief of staff, said Friday. “He’ll be meeting with U.S. bishops that night” at a university in Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, it’s not that the Pope is avoiding Bush altogether. The President and First Lady will greet the Pope at Andrews Air Force Base, and there will be a formal welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

But the White House also scheduled a dinner in the Pope’s honor for that evening, and he’s apparently decided he has better things to do on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters slightly, Raw Story reported<\/a> that there are “no competing events listed on the pope’s schedule.”
\n
\nFaiz noted<\/a> this awkward discussion<\/a> during Friday’s White House press briefing, when spokesperson Scott Stanzel couldn’t explain why the Pope won’t attend his own dinner hosted by the president..<\/p>\n

Q: I’m sorry, the Pope doesn’t attend a dinner in his honor?<\/p>\n

MR. STANZEL: No.<\/p>\n

Q: How does that work?<\/p>\n

MR. STANZEL: He doesn’t come into the building.<\/p>\n

Q: But then it’s not a dinner for the Pope, is it?<\/p>\n

MR. STANZEL: It’s in honor of his visit. There will be leaders from the Catholic community from all over the country who are in town for that visit.<\/p>\n

Q: Is there a reason the Pope doesn’t attend the dinner?<\/p>\n

MR. STANZEL: I don’t know. I don’t have the full extent of his schedule.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Awkward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There may be an explanation for this that doesn’t look like an obvious snub, but nothing comes to mind. Guess who’s not coming to dinner? Pope Benedict XVI. President Bush and his wife, Laura, will host a White House dinner in honor of the pontiff Wednesday evening. U.S. Catholic leaders from around the nation will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}