Pope Benedict and the First Reader

By Ralph Alter

Undoubtedly impressed by Barack Obama's repeated allusions to his penchant for deep reading, Pope Benedict slipped a pamphlet to the fledging POTUS outlining the Vatican's moral position on birth control and embryonic stem-cell research. With the Stimulus Kid already claiming a background in the Urdu poets and Pushkin, why wouldn't the Pope expect that Obama would appreciate a little primer on bioethics?

"Dignitas Personae" (dignity of a person) condemns artificial fertilization and other techniques used by many couples and also says human cloning, "designer babies" and embryonic stem-cell research are immoral.

The document defends life from conception to natural death and a Vatican statement issued after the meeting said the topics discussed included "the defense and promotion of life and the right to abide by one's conscience."

No word was available on whether the pamphlet provided was in the original Latin.

Don't forget it was Hugo Chavez who started the World Leader's Foreign Language Tutorial for the neophyte American leader back at the Summit of the Americas in April.

Despite President Poseur's attempt to demonstrate his worldliness and thoughtfulness by simply naming classics of world literature and claiming to have read them, the fact that he is completely out of his depth in world affairs is readily apparent to other world leaders. Perhaps if he were to release his college transcripts we could ascertain the nature and depth of Obama's literary background . Don't hold your breath waiting.

Now if we can get someone on the White House staff to print this literature on a teleprompter screen, we might even get our presidential abecedarian to read it.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target