LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE

Oh, perfect -- one movement-conservative institution hires a top aide from another movement-conservative organization:

The Vatican has brought in [a] Fox News correspondent in Rome to help improve its communications strategy....

Greg Burke, 52, will leave Fox to become a senior communications adviser in the Vatican's secretariat of state, the Vatican and Burke told the AP....

Burke, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement. Pope John Paul II's longtime spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, was also a member of Opus Dei....

Burke was rumored to be in line for this job as far back as May 2006. You can see why: a few months later, Pope Benedict made some inflammatory remarks about Islam...

He began his speech, which ran over half an hour, by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in a conversation with a "learned Persian" on Christianity and Islam -- "and the truth of both."

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword by the faith he preached," the pope quoted the emperor....

...and Burke responded with a quite sympathetic report on Fox:

Burke went on, "While the Vatican has worked hard at clarifying church teachings on Islam, some Catholics say Pope Benedict has nothing to apologize for."

Burke strongly suggested that Benedict's main error had been to misunderstand that he was not speaking in an academic setting. (I can't embed the clip of Burke's report, but you can watch it here.)
In a generation, perhaps, we'll recognize that the Catholic Church is part of the crazy right; for now, I think too many people look at the church and still see smiling, Capra-esque New Deal white ethnics and Bing Crosby in Going My Way. We'll learn.