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I absolutely agree with you this_ol_patriot. The Old Testament if FULL of wars, and even the Holy Bible says " there shall be WARS and RUMORS of wars". I am not Catholic, I am Evangelical Protestant, but even if one of the highest leaders in the world was Evangelical Protestant, I would protest against this, and I say that with all due respect to the Pope.

What I fear is misuse of the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility by those who would do us harm or don't understand our position with regards to Iraq. The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility is very complex and not easily understood and even today there is much discussion about it. It is sufficient to say that it deals in matters of faith and morals to be held by the whole Church. It does not deal with political or worldly events.

While the Pope may be a good holy person with nothing but the good of the whole world on his mind there is nothing to prevent him from being wrong. Many good holy people have misinterpreted events in the past and will do so in the future. In other words his opinion on this is just that, an opinion of a man and as such is subject to error as much as any other person. The problem as I see it that the Pope has such esteem worldwide that an error on his part carries more weight and harsher consequences than a normal person and to do this without all the facts at hand is especially dangerous.

An insidious outcome of this could be that the Pope does get enough support and somehow does stop President Bush from doing his duty. Then several months later Iraq launches on Israel with some horrible weapon. The possibility that the Church just started rather than prevented WWIII is highly probable. Now how would they work themselves out of that little hole?

This is why I believe that while the Catholic Church and the Pope have a right and possibly an obligation to issue an opinion on this they have gone over the line by inserting themselves into the political argument as a party to it.