Finally

The Vatican stops fussing about when, exactly, life begins, and starts to focus on the welfare of people already here --

Pope Benedict said on Tuesday states had to set ethical limits to what can be done to protect their people from terrorism and that some countries have flouted international humanitarian law in recent wars. .... In the message, which is traditionally sent to governments and international organizations, he also repeated his often stated belief that war in God's name is never justified...

"...the new shape of conflicts, especially since the terrorist threat unleashed completely new forms of violence, demands that the international community reaffirm international humanitarian law, and apply it to all present-day situations of armed conflict, including those not currently provided for by international law," .. he called for a review of what states could ethically do to protect their citizens while still trying to respect international humanitarian law, "which has not been consistently implemented in certain recent situations of war." "

...the scourge of terrorism demands a profound reflection on the ethical limits restricting the use of modern methods of guaranteeing internal security," he wrote.

The message will pose obvious problems for the White House and those pundits who have sought to interpret Catholicism as an obligation to vote Republican. And lest anyone doubt the target, consider this Bush statement, a formulation that he has used hundreds of times --

I based a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty, and secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free

UPDATE 19 DECEMBER: It's very rare that the media take notice of the implications of Bush's bizarre freedom philosophy but Orlando Patterson does in today's New York Times (subs. req'd), albeit not the theological implications.