NYT editorial: "The Pope's Words"

[DeepModem Mom]

Editorial
The Pope’s Words

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”

In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “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 by the sword the faith he preached.”...(T)his is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.

In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.”

A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.

The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/opinion/16sat2.html?ex=1158552000&en=525a31e05f0c9f5c&ei=5087%0A

[aquart]

1. Well, good luck with that.

The Vatican has their very own George.

[Wetzelbill]

2. I wish I could disagree

but Pope Benedict has some baggage, like the editorial said, as a doctrinal conservative. I don't want to say it automatically makes him intolerant, but it isn't the best viewpoint if you want to be a "uniter and not a divider."

[Gman]

3. If you read Benedict's entire talk

The part about quoting the Byzantine Christian emperor ended up being really superfluous to the central message of the talk. The whole message could have been delivered without that part and it would have lost nothing.

[struggle4progress]

5. Yeah, but that's Ratzinger's style -- add some insensitivity to the messag

[saltpoint]

4. I respect the scope of a lot of the TIMES' editorials, and agree with many

but not all.

On this one, I think they're sucking doorknobs.

Here is an excerpt of Benedict's speech:

_ _ _ _

"In the Western world, it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."
_ _ _ _

The TIMES editorial failed to address the thesis of Benedict's speech.

On NPR this afternoon, an interviewee said it was a case of German intellectualism versus a soundbite culture.

I wish the TIMES hadn't tilted toward the soundbite.

[hlthe2b]

6. Sorry... Given Ratzingers' moves since being named 'Pope'

I strongly believe he meant to deliver this message. He certainly didn't anticipate the reaction, surely, but I think he is not a tolerant man. No wonder he allies so readily with the American RW...


I'm glad I no longer feel bound to consider him Pope and all that entails. Benedict or Ratzinger or whatever he wishes to be called, wil never be Pope to me. He's done nothing to embody the word and deed of Christ that I can tell--unless, of course, Christ wore Prada...:eyes:

[saltpoint]

7. Well, we'll have to disagree.

I believe the response to a quotation of an ancient text by radical Muslims is disproportionate to the degree of controversy in the text, a trait I associate with late middle schoolers who like to play at being hotheads.

Genuinely peaceful Muslims are not the ones attacking churches in Palestine.

[aquart]

8. No. But they are being attacked by a Pope

who sows division even among Christians. That you have to spin and interpret his message says volumes. Either he can't get his message out for trying, or he is getting it out to the people he wants to hear it. And the rest of you shut your ears and say that can't be what he means.

That happens so much with George and the Republicans, you should recognize it by now.

[saltpoint]

9. The Pope did not "attack" anyone. He quoted from an old text

passages in his speech, the speech itself disseminated on the web, and cool-browed analysts have offered their views.

The NYTimes called for the Pope to apologize; the British and other European editorials felt the Pope was on solid ground.

That's not spin. That's honest interpretation.

[aquart]

12. He let the dead do his dirty work.

Plausible deniability ain't just for presidents.

Ratzinger didn't make Pope by being naive about the power of words.

[saltpoint]

13. The dead are pretty well out of it as far as current spokesmen go.

If Palestinian radical Muslims firebomb non-Catholic Christian churches over the words of a 14th-century Byzantine emporer, I'd say those radical Muslims were way the hell out of line.

Their behavior was explosively foolhardy and ill-considered.

Run for your lives! It's a dead 14th-century emporer!

[Common Sense Party]

10. "The world listens carefully to the words of any pope." But the NY Times

won't.

Good gravy, what a bunch of tempest-in-a-teapot ninnies they are over there!

If they would actually listen to and understand the Pope's *entire* speech--rather than, as you say, only focusing on the potentially divisive soundbite taken out of context--they would see the Pope was NOT attacking Islam.

He was attacking the theory and practice of spreading "God's word" at the point of a sword, or gun, or car bomb.

The Times has done a disservice to its readers and to rational discourse.

[saltpoint]

11. Agreed. Three people's letters to the editor were more to the point

than the TIMES' editorial itself.

Often the readers form a better context on an issue than the editorial writers.

[vssmith]

14. If the Pope was saying Muslims are too violent,

their subsequent reaction may have proven his point.

[bloom]

15. I think Juan Cole had a reasonable assesment of the Pope's talk.

Some Western observers think that this episode was the Pope's play for moral authority at a time of a clash between Islam and the West.

I think that is right. Benedict was trying to stake out a position that Western godless atheism is actually unreasonable, and that hard line coercive religion that disregards reason is wrong (he incorrectly identified this position as that of Muhammad and the Quran). Thus, the Catholic Church, with its reasoned faith, becomes the ideal, avoiding the errors of the two extremes (Western secularism and Islam). To accomplish this positioning, Benedict XVI had to reduce to cardboard figures all three traditions-- Western rationalism, Roman Catholicism, and Islam.

Christianity hasn't always stood for sweet reasonableness and the harmony of faith and science and the primacy of the individual conscience. One of the reasons we know so little about Mayan history is that Catholic authorities had Mayan papyrus rolls, which contained extensive hieroglyphic records, burned as works of the devil. It wasn't as if the Mayans were given a choice about remaining pagan or converting to Christianity. And there was the forcible conversion to Christianity of large numbers of Muslims and Jews in Spain after the Reconquista from 1492....

The problem with the Pope's Regensburg lecture is that it laid out three intellectual traditions as unchanging, undifferentiated essences and then contrasted them with one another, to the edification of his own position. There aren't any essences. It is always better to put forward the virtues of your tradition on their own, without attempting invidious comparisons with, and put-downs, of others.....

http://www.juancole.com/ from 9/18