A ‘teachable moment’: Controversy offers chance to understand U.S.-Holy See relations

What does it mean to be the head of the Holy See? Or the head of the Vatican City State?

That question has been driving a good deal of discourse over the past two weeks, ever since U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch gave an interview to the New York Times, but the question has remained largely unstated as a driver of the controversy.

The episode presents what folks in education call a “teachable moment,” an opportunity to shed some light and – hopefully – take down the temperature just a little.

That’s eventually going to require a bit of breezy history – but first, the details of the dust-up.

The July 9 NYT article by Elizabeth Dias and Motoko Rich said Burch argued that when the pope spoke out against the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, he was not doing so as the leader of the Catholic Church, but only as the sovereign political leader of the Vatican City State.

To be perfectly frank, it is hard to analyze what Burch said about pope’s statement against the Iran War, because the article didn’t give the exact quote, but only indirectly reported his remark.

The July 9 story