Interesting article, though the way I read the speech, the Pope's animosity is toward's violence and war, especially that which originates from religion. The Pope has a pretty basic message: Their is no such thing as "a just war."

yrs-

Evan!

Muslims all over the world, from London to the Middle East, from South Asia to East Africa, have launched their typical violent, irrational response to any criticism whatsoever - and it is the *Catholic Church* that is struggling to adapt to the modern world?

Of course, the Catholic church is an easy target. It is politically incorrect and everone likes to pile on. More importantly, its critics know that their right to weigh in against all the failings of Catholicism, real and imaginary, will be defended to the holt against no real attacks. Compare that to the brave souls who try to speak the truth about Islam, like Theo van Gogh.

A little mild anti-Catholicism might be amusing but suggesting that *Catholics* need to modernize is mind-boggling given what is really happening in the world.

The arrogance displayed by Pope Benedict is no worse than that of other religious leaders. They are all at it. They are all nuts.

Take Pat Robertson, roughly the American equivalent of the Pope in that he is a politically connnected divine with media access, calling for the assassination of a foreigh leader, or his linking of Hurricane Katrina with legal abortion.

The Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the general separation of Church and State in the US and western democracies has been the true salvation of those societies, where, with notable exceptions, most people, even if they don't always love their neighbors, at least can live nea them without actually killing them, much as they, in their darker moments, might like to.

The Christian values of feeding the hungry, tending the sick, and educating the young have largely been taken over by the state, by insurance plans, and by various charities (some of which are "faith-based"), but they can all be done without a faith basis. Individuals can make the ultimate Christian sacrifice of living and dying on behalf of others without any help from the church.

The Pope's speech, as I understand it--and I have read the original text--made the point that forced religious conversion is not a good thing, and that, given the choice between two evils (my words--not those of His Holiness), Christianity is less evil than Islam, because it allows a measure of rationality. In other words, according to the Pope, in Islam God is always good, even when he is bad, whereas in Christianity, God is good, but only when he is good.

Now, we can see that when Archbishop of TV, the Rev. Robertson links Katrina with abortion, he is closer to what the Pope sees as the Muslim position. It looks bad for God, standing in the dock accused of mass murder and destruction of property, but actually he was provoked by our badness, and so was acting on his god given rights t inflict punishment. Sodom and Gomorrah all over again, in fact.

So that is where Robertson stands, right along with Islam. Now, where do the more rational branches of Christianity stand on this matter? I think the Pope would say that the Lord above created bad weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, famine, pestilence, and the like, but also gave human beings the intelligence to work around these obstacles to the pursuit of unbridled happiness. If pushed on the question, the Pope would probably say that building a city below sea level in a hurricane zone was a poor application of the faculty of reason (i.e. stupid), and that we should be more careful in future, except in the area of sex, where we should abstain, and if we can't abstain, we should at least avoid using condoms, so that God has a chance to nail us with AIDS for our wickedness.)

You have now earned 1 hour of CEU credit in theology.

I was stunned by the Pope's choice of quotation for that speech, but now that I've seen some of the reaction -- from both Muslims and Christians -- I wonder if he had a different, deliberate purpose in quoting it.

My impression is that his largest concern is not with other religions, but with increasing "secularization" in the West. Given the context of the quote in a lecture on faith and reason at a university, is it possible that his purpose was to provoke another Danish cartoon-style reaction in order to force Europeans to choose sides between Christianity and Islam? Instead of what they are doing now, which is to choose sides between Christianity and "secularism" -- we can all see how that's working out for the Catholic Church. If you look at the speech as a whole, he's aligning Christianity with reason and Islam with "unreason" -- and salting the speech with a seemingly extraneous quotation that is practically guaranteed to provoke an unreasonable response from Muslims.

With the number of secular voices that have spoken in support of the Pope (Hilary Clinton, for goodness sake...) since the controversy, if I'm right about his goals, he's been at least partially successful.

I think what the Pope said was extrememly ill concieved, given the state of current affairs and shows why he is NOT his predecessor.

With that said, I do think we need to hold off on being such apologists for everything all the time. People are willing to kill people and burn churches over what the leader of another religion said? Just because it was insulting? I'm sorry, but at some point we have to say, Look - we believe in free speech and its important for us to say what we want even if it might be hurtful. THAT is what we beleive in and we wont' stop allowing people to speak freely just because it might offend you (or me). Isn't that the basis of western liberal democracy? Why apologize for it? OF course Ratzinger should apologize on a personal level, but why is the whole of western civilization banging the drums of the mea culpa?

I don't even see any distinction because he is a religious leader. Churches, like countries (ours) sometimes have crappy leaders who say stupid things that have unitended consequences. It is embarassing and often insulting, but we should be mindful that we, as a set of societies built upon similar ideals, have standards that we should also defend (peacefully). Free speech should be one of those.

I just found this article that much more articulately says what I wish I had the capacity to say:

http://www.slate.com/id/2149885/