Pope's criticism of Islam

I came across this quote yesterday : "the fleeting inattention of the soundbite" in a different context. To me it pretty much sums up where a lot of this came from. The article as has already been pointed out is long and closely argued. In the context of a university debate it would not have caused any alarm but exposed to teh ouytide world only one obvious piece jumps out. It also emphasises the difficulty with quoting someone else. As an intellectual the Pope would have seen the force of his argument in the text including all the supporting references and quotes. What was missing was someone to look at the possible real world effect of those quotes. Sometimes what is on paper is impossible to express appropriately in words.

Wicknight wrote:

Do you even see a way that the Pope could claim that another Pope was not in fact God's representative on Earth, and was in fact a man of great evil who started or called for unjust and evil wars? That would nillfiy the very basics of the Catholic religion. He couldn't say that, even if he believed it, which I doubt he does.

Forgive my lack of knowledge of Catholic theology but I suppose that in order to do that the Church would have to figure out some way to declare them as false Popes or something?

I don't think the last Pope got specific about particular Popes or anyone else in that general apology for the past sins of Catholics in the name of the Church which you mentioned.

Wicknight wrote:

I think you have hit the nail on the head there Fly as to why so many in the Muslim world are angry about what the Pope has said.

I had a feeling you would say that.
I just don't think the Pope is that massive a hypocrite and does believe the violence by Catholics in the name of the faith was evil and "contrary to the nature of God" also.
And I hope you are wrong that "many" are "angry".

Wicknight wrote:

Otherwise why include it and then use it as the entire basis of your argument. The Pope is going to mention the thoughts of the emperor about Islam because he doesn't actually agree with any of them? Don't be ridiculous.

It didn't read like that to me. It read as the launch-point for the following discussion of Islam and rationality.
The fact he obviously agrees with one of those thoughts in the offensive quote (holy warfare to spread the faith is wrong) doesn't mean he is full agreement with all of it (Mohammed's new religious ideas were all "evil and inhuman").

Is Holy Warfare the sum-total of Islam or Mohammed's ideas? I doubt it somehow.

Anyway, do you think the apology he has issued where he says - "These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought" - is a bald-faced lie then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5353774.stm

Wicknght wrote:

I think other religions that have an equally violent history should not single out Islam as an example of how violence is against the wishes of God. The phrase "pot, kettle" springs to mind, and I fail to see how anyone could not take this an a hypocritical insult towards Islam.

Islam has a big problem with violence by people purporting to act in its name right now.
Maybe the Pope is not the best person to mention it given history but Christians and their places of worship have been targets of that violence.

Wicknght wrote:

The Pope could have picked any one of the thousand evil things the previous Popes did to high light the evil in violence and religion. He didn't, he used a completely different religion as the basis of his argument.

The talk seemed to also be about how are we to negotiate our way out of this whole nasty "clash of civilisations" thing with Islam and the West which seems to be getting worse.

IMO, he was arguing that Islam as a religion is more irrational than Christianity (dunno given certain irrationalities about Catholicism you mention and my lack of knowledge about Islam to compare) while the ultrarational + scientific-method-obsessed West now considers religion itself beyond the pale of reason (ironically it seems more of its citizens than ever now believe in hocus-pocus!) so how can any dialogue actually take place?

Referring to Islam:

"...there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself."

Referring to "the West":

"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."

Wicknght wrote:

The Islamic world already believes it is under siege from the Western world which does not understand or wish to understand Islam. To claim that this was not exactly the point the Pope wanted to make about Islam is ridiculous. I find it impossible to believe that the Pope did not know exactly what he was doing.

I obviously don't know if he knew exactly what he was doing. He criticised Islam. He used a quote that when deliberately taken out of context makes him look extremely bad. Muslims could be insulted by the jist of what he said anyway - but angered?, deeply offended even?

Maybe the Pope underestimated how bad things are right now between "Islam" and "the West", how primed some muslims are to fly off the handle under the instigation of those who want to further a clash of civilisations? That he could say what he said and stir debate not outrage and anger.
I really don't believe the Pope wants to deliberately further enmity between "the West" and Islam.
Do you? That seems to be what you are saying if you think he knew exactly what the upshot would be and agreed in toto with that old quote about Mohammed.

Good Lord! What a lot of heat and so little light!

The Pope's speech is on the nature of reason, and its position vis-a-vis religion in the modern world. He makes the point that Christianity benefited in one major way from its origins in the Greek-cultured Middle East of the Roman Empire - Christianity inherited, or was given, the ideal of a rational God, and of a rational faith.

The Reformation started to break with this ideal (his first stage of dehellenisation), because it saw the Greek philosophical roots of it as just one part of mediaeval scholasticism (think Name of The Rose), which needed to be broken down as an excresence on faith, and an obstacle between man and God, but also simply because it was the old paradigm.

The outgrowth of this break - this new paradigm of sola scriptura - the Bible as sole authority - gave rise to the various Biblically literal movements that we know and love so much today. However, we are able to argue with them (in the reborn Creationsm thread) because they still subscribe to the notion of a rational God.

The second stage of dehellenisation gave us the "church of Jesus Christ the nice bloke", which many fuzzily-agnostic-lapsed-uncertain Christians now belong to, where Christ's divinity is subordinate to his moral message. This appears in various threads here as "I don't know whether I really believe in God, but Jesus was alright, eh?".

Meanwhile, reason has moved to a point where it is seen primarily, and often solely, as the handmaiden of science - so that what is true must be scientifically so, and only what is scientifically true is actually true. Again, this is a position that many posters here adopt. It is also the problem that bedevils the Creationist, in that he tries to force the principle of sola scriptura (which he explicitly acknowledges) into the form of scientific truth (which he also, implicitly, acknowledges) - he cannot abandon the former, because it is the foundational paradigm of his faith, and he cannot ignore the latter, because it is the modern paradigm.

By its very nature, however, science excludes the question of God - again, this has come up in countless posts. By so doing, it appears to make the question of God an irrational question - because we assume, incorrectly, that reason serves only science. Science may be the most productive use of reason, but it is by no means the only one.

Any attempt to fit the camel of religion through the eye of science strips religion of almost everything - but science does not deal with questions of destiny, or meaning, or ethics. Systems of ethics, attributions of meaning, based on evolution, or psychology, are unsatisfactory - they are mechanical and incomplete. This in turn leaves us free to pick and choose from the religion side of the menu to put together our "ethics" and "morals" according to our individual consciences - since, "according to science", no bit of it is more meaningful or rational than the next.

The third phase of dehellenisation, which the Pope regards as being in progress now, is making Christianity "multicultural" by losing the Graeco-Roman roots of it entirely - which in turn means losing the European aspects of Christianity, since Europe is largely a Graeco-Roman construct, overlain by German barbarism, and underlain by an ancient peasantry - neither of whom did much clear thinking. It is uncertain what will be left of Christianity after the completion of this latest dehellenisation - not much, really, I would think.

The Pope denies that he wishes to set the clock back, but rather move forward to a new synthesis of reason and religion (the 'third way', maybe!). One of the benefits of this, he claims, is that the rest of the world won't find the west so frighteningly atheistic.*

*(Just as I, for example, appear to a Creationist to be arrogantly entrenched in an atheistic devotion to a science that deliberately excludes God, so does all the West appear to the rest of the religious world. We are addicted to a soulless science, the fruits of which we use with reckless contempt to subordinate the rest of the world - and in which they can only share if they become like us - abandoning their religions as irrational obstacles in the path of progress. For 150 years, we in the West have both worshipped science, and dominated the planet - by our very existence we challenge all religions.)


Overall, it's an interesting speech. Benedict is very much an intellectual, and that's a very intellectual piece of writing - although it also shows he's a good public speaker. Like many intellectuals/academics, however, he has failed to note the likely effects of a piece of his speech taken out of context - which is unfortunate in a Pope.

In particular, the Pope uses the words of Manuel Paleologus simply as a start-up phrase that (a) wakes the audience up and (b) serves as a good starting point for his central thesis because it shows the Emperor's implicit acceptance that God is rational, and that faith is rational - because force cannot impose reason.

I'm fairly sure that Benedict thought it could stand because this was not supposed to be a speech widely circulated, and he assumed that most of his audience would have read, or know someone who had read, the dialogues in question. Also, I would imagine he was pleased to be back at his old University, which may have affected his judgement.

Anyway, very enjoyable little speech.

cordially,
Scofflaw