Several years ago a friend asked me and a number of her other friends to write essays on what it means to be a woman. She was going to make a book out of it and give it to her daughter for her 21st birthday. I sat at the computer for hours and nothing came to me. Then, suddenly, I knew what to say. I bought a postcard with an alluring picture of a woman on it and I wrote simply, “Women have all the power.”

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Much has been made in the past week about the words of the Rev. Jeremiah A.Wright, Jr., Barack Obama’s former pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

Over the years the now retired Wright has made a number of incendiary comments. People have reacted most strongly to one he made five years ago. “The government, “said Wright”,” gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America. No, No, no. God damn America! That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.”

Obama repudiated the remarks, calling them “inflammatory and appalling”, and “vehemently” condemned them. “They in no way reflect and directly contradict my profound love for this country.” He also added that he did not “repudiate the man” who had married him and his wife and baptized his two daughters and “brought me to Christ.”

Both Obama detractors and supporters have been asking how he could not repudiate someone who could talk that way. Do we believe in guilt by association? Do we believe, as the bible says, to blame the sin but not the sinner.

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Thinking back on last week with the Pope it struck me that he was, like the words in the old Kris Kristofferson song, “a walking contraction,” beginning with his demeanor.

We had been expecting “the enforcer” and the "Rotweiller, “ not the good Shepherd but a
German Shepherd. Instead, we saw a man who was quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, self-effacing, a bit solemn and non-confrontational. His body language at the beginning of the week spoke of a man who was slightly uncomfortable with all of the attention and fanfare, someone who would much rather be in the background, reading theology.

By the end of the week he had loosened up considerably, he was clearly more at ease, smiling much more and seemed to be actually enjoying himself. Naturally, getting the unprecedented welcome from the president and a great press didn’t hurt. By the time he left New York, he was -- for this man -- practically euphoric, raising his arms in blessing with a confidence that belied the tentativeness of his first day.

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Here are a few areas of contradiction that struck me.

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