My wife and I lived for a time in a neighborhood with a cursed house. It was a bit larger than most of the other houses in the neighborhood, and the original owners had chopped it up into way too many rooms.
It attracted large, messy, confused owners over the years, with no one quite able to tame the inside or adjust to living on a tranquil, bland, suburban street.
At one point the place was rented out to a few “exotic dancers,” who were a big hit when they were mowing the lawn in shorts and T-shirts, but otherwise, were an awkward presence among the soccer moms and buttoned-down business types.
What should be the foreign policy objective for awkward neighbors? Are you dimly friendly, but standoffish? Are you overly friendly, in the hopes of convincing them to change their ways? Or, do you build a big fence between you and them, patrolled by a growling dog?
In this particular case, the girls were nice enough, with their perky breasts and personalities. But the unwritten rules of the suburban road suggested that maybe you didn’t invite them over for tea.
If you want a less personal example, consider the relationship between the United States and the Vatican. After a long colonial heritage of aversion to all things Catholic, and a long tradition of “separation of church and state,” what was America to do about the Pope’s own little country of sorts?
Pretend it wasn’t there? Wave hello, but never invite it over for lunch? Or, do you establish full diplomatic relations and treat it just like it was France or Spain or New Hampshire?
The issue has prompted all manner of awkward, uncomfortable, amusing debate over the decades – and has now come up again, with the rumor that, like, well, you know, Caroline Kennedy may be line for, like, you know, the Vatican ambassadorship.
She didn’t get that, you know, U.S. Senate appointment in New York – and every rich girl needs a hobby. But, this is the Vatican we’re talking about. It comes with weird strings attached.
Smoke Signals
About 15 seconds after the rumor broke, Boston’s very own former Mayor Ray Flynn, himself a certified Catholic and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, trashed the notion of Caroline in the job, because of her “pro-choice” vibes on abortion.
In some circles, this would be considered “progress” on the America-Vatican front. At least, Catholics are bickering with each other about who should get the Vatican gig – as opposed to the nation fighting over whether there should be such a job at all.
It was 1951 when poor Harry Truman took a break from a White House poker game to nominate a military guy as ambassador to the Vatican. What? That was the American reaction at the time. The National Council of Churches, the American Jewish Congress, and guys standing around on street corners all cranked up the protests and petitions and the like. The nomination went away.
As early as the 1770s, when the plans for the Big Dig in Boston were first introduced, John Adams wrote a polite note to the Continental Congress suggesting that the fledgling nation “never send a minister to his Holiness.”
In the 1860s, the U.S. appointed a “minister resident” to the Vatican, a 20-year experiment sort of akin to a corporation sending a $100 donation to an anti-business, left-wing social service group – not because you mean it, but just because it seems like the right thing to do. Sort of.
Times have changed. The nation has evolved into a kissy-face ecumenism that doesn’t have much time for such stuff as whether the Vatican merits a real, live ambassador. The sporadic court challenges over the years have determined that in matters of foreign affairs, the president doesn’t have much in the way of First Amendment impediments to being polite to the papal state.
The last, low-key debate remaining among foreign policy professionals about the Vatican stuff is whether a Catholic should always get the ambassadorship, or whether the wealth should be spread around to Jews, Wiccans, Presbyterians and Unitarians.
Like, you know, I think Caroline would be, like, perfect.
