POPE TRIES ONCE AGAIN TO APPEASE THE UNAPPEASABLE
By Rick Moran Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Pope Benedict tried again today to quiet the storm of controversy that erupted over his remarks about Islam and violence given during a lecture to scientists and theologians last week.
Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion.
"These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought," Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.
The pope sparked the controversy when, in a speech to German university professors Tuesday, he cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam's founder, as "evil and inhuman."
"At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," the pope said Sunday.
The remarks follow a similar statement released yesterday by the Vatican in which the Pope expressed "regret" for remarks made during the lecture and that "some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers."
Note here that all the Pope did was substitute the word "sorry" for "regret." He is still speaking of the reaction to the speech while not apologizing directly for the content. He clarified that the words which gave offense were not his own but rather the statements of a 15th century Byzantine ruler.
Will this appease the church burners and potential papal assassins who are currently being allowed to run wild in the streets of the Middle East? If their "outrage" was indeed due to the Pope's remarks, then it should have a salutary affect on their hurt feelings.
But of course, the violence is not about "outrage" over anything. It is simple blood lust directed against people of another faith. The Imams and other religious leaders who have ratcheted up this violent response to the Pope's words find it a most convenient device to control their flocks of ignorant, 7th century peasants while extremists with a political agenda seek to use the violence for their own nefarious purposes.
Most disturbing is that once again, so called "moderate" Muslims have jumped aboard the extremist bandwagon and piggybacked their own causes and concerns on top of the those of the mob in order to horn in on the publicity and victimhood occasioned by the Pope's statement:
In Turkey, however, where the Pope is due to visit in November, the deputy leader of the ruling party said Benedict had "a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the middle ages". Salih Kapusuz added: "He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."
Representatives of the two million Turks in Germany, where the comments were made, also expressed deep annoyance. The head of the Turkish community, Kenan Kolat, said they were "very dangerous" and liable to misunderstanding.
The next step is for these "moderate" Muslims to solemnly condemn the violence (churches were firebombed all over the West Bank) while piously calling for "dialogue" and "understanding." And sure enough, the guilt tripping west will meekly obey, taking part in high profile meetings with local Muslim leaders who will chide the west for their "ignorance" and demand special considerations for the Muslim community. The fact that these "considerations" are designed to further isolate Muslims from the rest of western society thus increasing the power and influence of the Muslim leadership is the ultimate goal of these "moderates."
It's nothing less than a con game and we should be on to these grifters by now. Unfortunately, the "moderates" know exactly which buttons to push in order to increase their status as victims in the eyes of guilt ridden western liberals while feeding their anti-religious bias against the Pope. Comparing Benedict to Mussolini and Hitler is about as absurd as it gets and yet, the charge resonates with many on the European left who see the conservative Pontiff and the papacy in general as holdovers from a time when religious wars racked the continent. Certainty about right and wrong behavior or who is good and who is evil as expressed by the Pope and the Catholic church smacks of anti-modernism where it is preferred that relativism be substituted for the moral certitudes found emanating from the Vatican.
All of this is irrelevant to the mobs who have obediently turned out to protest words and ideas that are far beyond their comprehension. The subtlety found in the Pope's lecture regarding reason and violence - with God being pure reason and hence violence being incompatible with his existence - could have been embraced by people of all faiths if they bothered to look at the Pontiff's words in their totality. But as we have become all too aware recently, trying to explain the violence by positing a cause and effect scenario is useless. It is not any particular causal happenstance that drives the fanatics into the streets and urges them on to burn churches or kill Christians. It is a disease. It is for the sake of violence alone that the mobs act as they do, the rationale being no rationale is necessary.
I can see why the Pope has issued this second, personal statement trying to explain that he meant no offense in his words. I fear however, that he and most other well meaning western leaders fail to grasp the true nature of the extremists who lurk behind the mobs, goading them on in order to achieve ends that have little to do with religion and everything to do with power and influence.
Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation of some 10 million mainly moderate Muslims, has been wracked by instability for the past 16 years but has recently seen the rise of fundamentalist Islamists who seized the capital in June.
Thank God they are moderates in Somolia. Can you imagine the carnage in that country if they were extremists?
Imagine if that Nun had been killed in the United States. The news would be going crazy with reports and experts all commenting on ...
possible backlash. Yes, all we would hear all day is pleas for recognition of it as an isolated incident and admonitions not to retaliate against the innocent muslims who make up the vast majority etc. etc. etc.
Now imagine if an Imam were killed after the nun. What would the news be on about?
You know the answer.
I wonder what the media and the left will have to say about the nun who actually was killed? Very little, I imagine.
Amazing.
absentee
Once upon a time... in China... some believe around the year... one double aught-three, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down a road... contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei's infinite powers would contemplate - which is another way of saying, "Who knows?" - when a Shaolin monk appeared on the road, traveling in the opposite direction.
As the monk and the priest crossed paths. Pai Mei... in a practically unfathomable display of generosity, gave the monk the slightest of nods.
The nod... was not returned.
Now, was it the intention of the Shaolin monk to insult Pai Mei?
Or did he just fail to see the generous social gesture?
The motives of the monk remain unknown.
What is known... were the consequences.
The next morning, Pai Mei appeared at the Shaolin temple... and demanded of the temple's head abbot that he offer Pai Mei his neck to repay the insult.
The abbot, at first, tried to console Pai Mei.
Only to find Pai Mei was... inconsolable.
So began... the Massacre of the Shaolin Temple,
and all sixty of the monks inside,at the fists of the White Lotus.
(imagined slights, self absorbed indignation, above board over-reactions, massacres.... sound familiar?)
"Took the nickname Troll long before BlogTrolls existed..."
where crazed masses were spellbound by the Little Red Book and went on rampages.
Different causes for different cultures. Same passions, same violence, same rampages, same old human nature.
- The subtlety found in the Pope's lecture regarding reason and violence - with God being pure reason and hence violence being incompatible with his existence - could have been embraced by people of all faiths if they bothered to look at the Pontiff's words in their totality.
I don't know how you conclude that. A major point that the Pope was trying to make is that this seeming truism — that God is Reason (and reasonable) — is not embraced by Islam. Islam would say that the Pope is placing a human restriction (that He be reasonable) on God. They would say that this is wrong and perhaps even blasphemous. By their lights, God could be a totally unreasonable, maliciously capricious, liar. It is simply not up to humans to decide or even to fathom.
There are apparently schools within Islam that would agree with the Pope on this matter, but as I understand it they do not represent mainstream Islamic teaching.
I interpreted, perhaps mistakenly, the Pope's decision to raise this issue in the context of Islam as a kind of warning to Europe (the Pope alludes specifically to Europe) that Islam is fundamentally a very alien thing that represents extreme danger to the foundations upon which Europe was built.. which he describes as a kind of fusion of Greek thought with Christianity.
Many in the press have termed this speech a call for dialog with Islam, but to the extent that the Pope believes that Islam dismisses the role of reason in human affairs, he will not find much point in dialog. Instead he would be doing what I think he is doing, which is planting the seeds of the thought that Islam will ultimately prove to be something that must be dealt with by means other than dialog.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I see you read Juan Cole's piece as well. I thought Cole was saying that there were several schools of thought that reflected the Pope's views including some Shia scholars. If I miss read it, then indeed that would exclude the bulk of Islam from the Pope's definition of a non-transcendent God.
However, the Pope also used the lecture to rail against violence in other contexts as well. His defense of reason was not limited to its relationship with faith but carried over into the secular realm as well. It really was an elegant piece of thinking, by the way, and there was much to ponder in the Pontiff's words.
I agree there was no call for "dialogue" with Islam and your analysis regarding the Pope's critique of Islam being incompatible with the west would be in keeping with his views expressed several times when he was Cardinal. However, his critique of Hellenic civilization had more to do with the Greek's views about the transcendence of deities and the capriciousness with which they ruled the affairs of men.
- His defense of reason was not limited to its relationship with faith but carried over into the secular realm as well.
I took that to be a form of marketing. The ruling elites of Europe do not want to hear from Popes (or 'Christians') about anything. They view religion as a form of mumbo-jumbo that was left behind long ago and which has nothing to say to us today.
The Pope therefore needs a 'secularized' entry point to get them to even listen. 'Reason' is just the ticket, for 'reason' is what the ruling elites would claim they are following. Christianity is not quite so threatening to such people when presented in terms they will accept, i.e. that "Christianity" most certainly played a huge role in how Europe developed socially and politically, and even if you secularize all the institutions, it is still legitimate to label the result "Christian." The Muslims certainly do.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I see that Stephen Bainbridge at Tech Central Station has gone even farther with this idea, saying "the speech implicitly recalls what may be the ultimate goal of Benedict's pontificate; namely, calling Europe back to Christ."
I see the same thing, but I see it coming from a very Earthly point of view... which is an unusual thing for a Pope. The 'sales pitch' seems to be less "I will save your soul" than "you need this to defeat the force that is coming your way, that will otherwise destroy everything you hold dear." It is almost as if he were setting himself up as the Steward of Europe, a kindly old gent who has no Earthly power, but who does remember the secret that everyone else has forgotten, that is needed to defeat something very bad.
This again points to the speech being less a call for "dialog with Islam" than a warning to Europe to prepare for war. That is so outside the bounds of what most people think a Pope is about that it does not surprise me that idiots at The New York Times would go looking for the olive branch in what may have been a growl from "God's Rottweiler." But in fact this is a role that Popes have played before, although not in a long time.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
Fascinating analysis. I speculated this morning that the Vatican knew full well what the reaction to that passage would be and welcomes the chance to be in conflict with radical Islam.
And if it's a wake up call he wanted to send to Europe, he seems to have accomplished that, no?
An Italian nun, working at a Somali hospital, was murdered after the pope's speech. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_re_af/somalia_nun_killed
Guess that's just another unrelated incident, like the Somali clerics that have joined in to call for the Pope's murder. http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/somali-cleric-calls-for-popes-death/...
The Danish cartoonists are still in hiding.