Praying is fine, but Bush should make up his own mind

I keep returning to thoughts of Bush's face and voice during that extraordinary press conference. He said he was convinced he was doing the right thing, but I sensed no enthusiasm for the task. He was not trying to persuade us, excite us, convert us or lead us. He was simply telling us what he had to do.

The pope sent a cardinal from the Vatican to have an hour's discussion with Bush--not about politics, but about theology. The cardinal told the president that the pope disagrees that God supports an invasion of Iraq. "God does not intervene in the affairs of man," the papal emissary said.

This is sound Catholic theology--going back to Aquinas, according to a friend of mine who is informed on such things. It proceeds from the belief that God granted man free will, so that man could choose for himself between good and evil, heaven and hell. If God were to intervene, that would deprive man of the freedom to choose for himself, and thus take back from man the opportunity of deserving grace and attaining heaven.

Bush did not precisely tell the Vatican envoy that the pope was wrong. But he did think the pope was wrong, because Bush's theology depends upon partnership with a God who is directly involved in the affairs of man--a God who lets us know His will, who speaks to us, who takes sides. Bush has not an atom of doubt, I believe, that he knows God's will, that God wants regime change in Iraq, and that God approves of Bush's decision to bring that about, by war if necessary.

Now it may be that invading Iraq is the right thing to do. Saddam Hussein is an evil man. Iraqis have suffered under Saddam, hate him, and will not grieve if he is fatally regime-changed. If there is to be a war, I hope it is short and swift, does not claim many lives, and leads to a free and democratic Iraq. I hope it does not lead to a tragic toll of American and Iraqi dead, Middle East chaos, disaster for Israel and a quagmire for the American occupation.

This is also what Bush hopes for. But the world might feel better about his certitude if it had been arrived at without the application of his theology. The duty of the president (in the pope's view) is to use his intelligence and experience, and the wisdom of learned advisers, to try to decide for himself what the right choice is. By making his decision in partnership with God, Bush is limiting his options.

That brings me back to the press conference. There was something eerie about the president's performance, and commentators have been tiptoeing around it ever since. The conservative columnist Mark Steyn felt he was like "a punchy old prizefighter mumbling the same old lines." The liberal Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales said, "Bush kept seeming to lose interest in his own remarks," and speculated that "the president may have been ever so slightly medicated."

There may have been something going on beneath the radar. Bush may have been suppressing the urge to simply say, "Look. All of these questions are irrelevant because I am sure I am right, and I believe God is with me on this."

There are of course many theologies in the world, but the two involved here have different theories of prayer. Bush prays in the tradition of a dialogue with God, in which God hears Bush and Bush hears God. This is the tradition preached by the Rev. Billy Graham, who helped inspire Bush to become born again after Bush turned to him for help with alcoholism.

The pope prays in a tradition where he asks God for the grace to make the right decision for himself, based on his own values and best effort. In this tradition, the pope has free will and the responsibility that comes with it. Free will must be absolute or it is not free. God is not a coach who allows the quarterback to make most of the decisions, but sometimes sends in a play from the sidelines.

These notions may help explain Bush's tone at the press conference. The questions and answers were beside the point, because Bush knows he is doing the right thing. "The choice is Saddam's," he said more than once. Whether that is true or not, the choice is no longer Bush's. The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.