Update: [19/9] A shorter version of this article was published in today’s Crikey email.
The reaction – from all sides – to Pope Benedict’s remarks in Regensburg has been typical. And typically disappointing. Neither loud agreement nor violent disagreement with what the Pope is thought to be saying about Islam comes close to what the Pope actually said.
There are three keys to interpreting the Pope’s address. None will come as any surprise to long time observers of Benedict’s theology, nor to close watchers of the moves he’s made since becoming Pope to distance himself from what he saw as mistaken approaches by his predecessor.
The first is that the Pope is not a diplomat, and does not care much for diplomacy or politics. Though he’s “right wing” in theology, or perceived as such, it’s hard to find much commentary on overtly political issues in his huge corpus of work. It would be a mistaken assumption to believe that Benedict aligns himself with the adherents of the War on Terror, for instance. His priorities are simply elsewhere. He feels that the truth of the Christian message should be proclaimed without regard for secular niceties, and he sees his mission as doing just that.
By contrast to John Paul’s pontificate, Benedict has downgraded the importance of the Vatican’s diplomacy, and appointed the first non-diplomat as Secretary of State for centuries. In part, this emphasis on the proclamation of the word reflects his belief that the rise of Nazism in his native Germany was resisted more effectively by spiritual denunciation than by the Vatican’s careful diplomacy at the time.
Secondly, Benedict believes relativism to be the key crisis of our time. As such he has been uncompromising in proclaiming Christianity the true faith, having authored in 2000 the declaration Dominus Iesus which courted criticism by saying just that. He thought John Paul II was mushy on Islam, but then he thought that John Paul II was mushy on Buddhism and Hinduism as well.
Thirdly, Benedict is not only taking aim at secular relativism, but also at the religious relativism that he sees as corrupting Christianity from within. Thus the main point of his Regensburg lecture was to criticise creeping “dehellenisation” of the faith. Liberal Protestant theology, and what he sees as its flow on effects in secularising European culture, is much more in his sights than Islam in these remarks. As any reading of the full text will show.
It’s not that the Pope’s views on Islam don’t warrant a (civilised) discussion, just that that wasn’t what he was trying to do with his address at the University of Regensburg.
Those who are loudly denouncing or applauding both need to take a cold shower, and then do some serious reading in theology afterwards. Benedict’s position is interesting, but the reference to the Manuel II Paleologus “dialogue” on Islam has much more to do with his consistent worries about relativism and watering down of truths than world politics. It was simply a badly chosen example – and the true motto is that sacking and downgrading the Vatican politicos might be an ill judged move by the Pontiff. The other motto is that interpreters need to look beyond the soundbite and read the text. That would surely be a miracle.
Update: Kath Wilson in comments at Leftwrites links to this Waleed Aly op/ed:
Here, the vociferous protests came from people who, quite clearly, have not bothered to read Benedict’s speech. Worse, some (like al-Hilali and Ameer Ali) themselves regularly complain of being quoted incorrectly and out of context. Had such critics done their homework, they would have noted Benedict’s description of Manuel II’s “startling brusqueness”. Manuel’s point was that violent doctrine could not come from God because missionary violence is contrary to rationality. Benedict’s point was a subtle one: that Manuel draws a positive link between religious truth and reason. This was the central theme of the Pope’s address. He was silent on Manuel’s attitude to Islam because it was beside the point he was making. Clearly, Manuel II was not a fan of the prophet Muhammad. But that does not mean Benedict isn’t either.
The trouble with being the Pope is that you are simultaneously a theologian and a politician. Theological discourse is regularly nuanced and esoteric. Political discourse is not.
While I can accept that he doesn’t care much for diplomacy, (that’s apparent, I cannot accept that he cares little about politics. Please, how did he get the job??
I once knew a really insightful person called Colin Collins a former Jesuit priest from South Africa, a friend of Steve Biko, a black consciousness creator, U of Q Lecturer etc, who would piss himself laughing about your apolitical assertions.
Some comments about his attitudes to ‘Liberation Theology’ might be in order.
But I suppose it all hangs on the definition of ‘political’.
Yes, it does.
What I mean is that he doesn’t care much for partisan or interstate politics. He tends to see things both on a broader and a smaller canvas.
His 1980s critique of liberation theology fits both in a way – he saw the liberation theologians as involving the church in partisan politics and he saw their theology as being “relativistic” – which has been his chief concern since the 70s.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that he’s “apolitical”. Nor that he’s not a very good church politician.
Mind you, if you’re interested, I can find you statements he’s made in praise of democratic socialism and against the Gulf War without too much difficulty. I read them just before when I was going over some of his Ratzinger era works before writing this post.
He chose an example at a particular stage of his text, Mark, and I think it beggars belief that he just clumsily chose a generic example in a broader, generic disquisition on relativism. German theology professors – especially ones schooled in the importance of minutiae and arcana in the anal-retentive environs of the Holy Office – simply don’t do that.
Benedict has already sponsored or facilitated historical colloquiums and statements on the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto which explicitly rejected the Muslim world’s grievance-driven view of history. He is making a multi-faceted argument, in my view.
Yes, he is turning away from Wojtyla’s charitable eirenicism – witness also his decision to take control of what the Franciscans do at Assisi – but his response to the signa temporum in the Regensburg address was two-pronged: he linked the Church’s struggle against relativism with Christianity’s civilisational struggle against Islam.
There were any number of ways he could have addressed the question of reason and knowing God vis-a-vis relativism. The Church’s natural law approach to bio-ethics would have been one example with immense application and academic value for that particular audience. He chose another entry into this general question and he did so purposefully.
I have no doubt he didn’t just pluck the example out of the air, C.L. – but I don’t think that either Islam was central to his argument on this occasion (the purpose of the quote really is to make a theological point about the consonance between the deity and rationality which is denied both by religions such as Islam with a transcendent deity – though not the qualification of whether this view is attributed to Islam generally or just one school – and also versions of Protestant theology).
Here’s a link to the clarification of the Pope’s position on Islam from Cardinal Bertone:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/card-bertone/2006/documents/rc_seg-st_20060916_dichiarazione_en.html
There is no doubt that the “long haired presbyterian” press has used his speech out of context in their black/white simplistic view of the world.
There is also no doubt that this is but the deliberate, and certainly not final, first shot across the bow of the one true faith war.
Well, in my view, FXH, he’s fighting a culture war, but this one is intended to be a shot across the bows of the liberal Protestants and secularists.
I really defy anyone to explain how the long disquisitions in the text of the talk about “dehellenisation” and the historical tour of liberal Protestant theology and what he sees as its consequences for the rise of a secular and relativist culture in Europe have anything to do with Islam. There’s a subsidiary theme about religion and violence, but it’s part of his celebration of “faith and reason” and what he sees as their intertwining in Catholic Christianity. See also the clarification.
There is no doubt, as I said, that he’s uncompromising on upholding the traditional claims of Christianity to truth. Interestingly, in books and articles he’s written on this topic, he spends much more space discussing Eastern religion than Islam – because he sees it as having invaded the turf of Christianity as it were.
So much trouble was caused when those pesky old Judean redacteurs decided to reinvent their religion with only one god.
See what happens when blokes take over the temple? Shit fights!
So I take it, Mark, that you don’t approve of secular relativism?
Not central, Mark, agreed. But not altogether happenstance either. (IMHO).
Whatever apologies he makes now are a bit of a moot point. He’s put the ideas into play, and we know he’s not recanting the ideas so all the polite-after-the-fact “I didn’t want to hurt anybodie’s feelings” don’t count for much.
I think he should be made to stick to his guns and see the debate out, especially in regard to his attacks on secularism. That way he can’t budge when his arguments are shown to be fallacious.
C.L. – yes.
silkworm – you shouldn’t take that at all – what I am doing is providing some commentary which attempts to throw some light on the context and motivations of Benedict’s address.
I don’t particularly want to get diverted into this, but I support secularity in the sense that I am a strong supporter of the separation of church and state. However, I am not a relativist.
Bruce, the fallacy in your comment is the selectivity of the media reporting of this. He’s quite right that he was taken out of context. Numerous papal addresses and texts get next to no reporting. What’s happened here is that the press have scanned the released text and run with a controversial quote which plays to current narratives but distorts his intention.
Benedict would have no hesitation whatever in seeing the debate about secularism out. As I’ve said, he’s been writing about it since the 1970s, and he’s been a most prolific writer and speaker – and also someone who’s been prepared to enter into public debate – literally – in joint colloquia and seminars with atheists for instance. Whether or not future interventions he makes on the topic of what he sees as the ills of secularism in the West (and I note that I don’t agree with him on all of that by a long stretch – but he’s an intelligent and careful thinker and his views deserve respect and engagement rather than dismissal) are played out in the media is perhaps very moot.
If you’re interested in his views, you can of course find them at the Vatican’s website.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/index.htm
And the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club, though obviously not without its own political and religious biases is an invaluable archive for everything Benedict/Ratzinger has written available online and lots of links to commentary (unfavourable as well as favourable):
http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/index.html
This post provides some more necessary context for the Regensburg address:
http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2006/09/pope-benedict-xvi-on-faith-reason-and_16.html
Potentially interesting thread. I personally notice the timing coincidence between Ratzinger’s latest comments and George Pell’s recent article on Islam discussed here some time ago.
Here’s hoping that Mark’s nuanced, contextualised post doesn’t get strawmanned followed by seemingly inevitable abusive ad hominem attacks.
The usual suspects know what I’m referring to.
But this is a day and an age when Danish newspaper cartoons lead to bombs being thrown 5000 miles away.
Your Main Man may eschew diplomacy but in that case he’d best retire back to the ivory tower. We are talking here of talking-points that have an audience of literally billions of people. Context, like light near a black hole, ceases to exist at such a receptive mass.
To put the short-term interests of the virility of his Faith over the interests of Homo Sapiens getting through a ticklish political time would be the mark of a light-weight. He is now trying to smooth the waters, so I am not sure that your analysis that he’s not interested in the politics stacks up.
Thanks Antonio.
Yes, indeed, wbb, that’s the case. But it’s interesting that myths about the infallibility of the Pope have their way of sticking – even if perhaps some of those myths were created in the service of JP2 and his supposedly world-historical interventions into politics. Benedict has been Pope since April last year. As Cardinal, despite being well known, he was hardly a public figure in the same sense. Knowing many academics myself, I wonder whether people might not be prepared to agree that he might be a little naive about how the media might seize upon part of his remarks.
I am certain that he didn’t anticipate a response which has led to the killing of a nun and the burning of churches as well as threats by Al Qaeda groups against all Catholics.
To expand on my previous point, wbb, when he has made remarks explicitly about the contemporary situation, and in this case directed to an audience of Muslims sitting in front of him, they’ve hardly attracted anything like the attention a much more obscure and less publicised lecture on theology to a University audience received:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_meeting-muslims_en.html
In regard to the Danish cartoons, it’s more correct to note that there was a time lag between their publication and that the response was partial and orchestrated by self-interested parties. The same I’d argue is occurring here on a smaller scale. It’s necessary to note the fact that these statements go through a media filter (and selective reporting is an aspect of that – as to what he says that is reported at all, and what the takeout from what is reported is) but then play into pre-existing political debates, where people on both sides have an interest in maintaining the distortion.
A translation from the German of the remarks of Professor Khoury, whose book Benedict cited:
[My emphasis]
http://www.faz.net/s/RubCF3AEB154CE64960822FA5429A182360/Doc~ECE249D830357497CAC11D2E05FB971B9~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html
“…getting through a ticklish political time…”
This is an example of our age’s propensity for exquisitely dumb passivity of language, action and morality. Bombs are thrown 5000 miles by un-categorised malcontents and a “ticklish political time” is being caused by unnamed forces, about which we have to be prudently vague and even somewhat reverential. Even the adjectives are deliberately infantile: ticklish. Try “barbaric”.
It is Islamic terrorists who are ruining the peace and liveability of the modern world. But – lo and behold – it turns out that it’s really the Pope who represents a clear and present threat to Homo Sapiens! Never mind that the only world worth living in is one where cartoonists can draw whatever they goddamned please and Christian clergmen can give lectures critical of Islam in Rome (or Victoria) and nuns tending sick people in Third World hospitals can reasonably hope not to be shot to death at work for worshipping Jesus the Nazarene.
The Pope has spoken the truth and, as Christ made clear to his Apostles, he should expect to be persecuted for doing so. Jesus himself never cared very much for saying politically correct things in a ticklish political time.
Far from it.
This would be analogous to some sensationalist journalists taking someone’s research into genetics or sociology or neuroscience out of context and accusing the researchers of being ‘racist’. I can think of a few examples like that (and no, I’m not referring to Andrew Fraser or Jack Strocchi but real researchers -something close would be the accusations that Steve Levitt was promotion eugenics in his famous paper on abortion). So naturally I’m sympathetic.
Freedom of enquiry and debate (including encouraging the culture around that) is far more important than what some dopey journalists misreading things or being afraid of hysterical mullahs relying on word of mouth.
Jason, Waleed Aly makes a relevant point in that context:
It’s obvious as well that he chose the quotation in part because Professor Khoury was also at the address as an honoured guest. That’s not something that should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with conventions and norms of academic courtesy.
The context and the audience are important in interpreting the text. In this instance Benedict was speaking to theological and religious studies scholars at a University – which chose to honour him because he was once a Professor there. Contrast his very different remarks which I’ve cited above which were made to an audience of Muslim religious leaders and explicitly designed to refer to the religious aspects of the current world situation, not in the context of what to many would be a rather abstruse philosophical or theological point about faith and reason.
So much for Papal infallibility!
As I saw it unfold, I just thought – typical bloody academic; completely failing to make the transition to high political office. Requires dumping the intellectual subtleties and prolixia, for easy to chew truisms.
Beazer’s much the same at times – though he’s getting better. Im sure Papa Ratzi will take a lesson from this ‘un.
PS While it isnt the point – it is worth noting that Islam spread slowly to Indonesia and Malaysia via Arab traders, not invading swordsmen. So, given the “spread by the sword” line doesnt actually hold true for the world’s largest Muslim nation – maybe its not worth exhuming Manuel’s views in any context, Benny.
Well, indeed, Lefty E, but again the points that Khoury made are relevant.
But poor old Manuel with an “Empire” that stretched about 30 miles around Constantinople and to a few enclaves on the Greek coast might have needed his remarks read in context as well.
Getting breathless, Crusader Lad, will not convince me that I ought to join you at the barricades. Your religious position is well-known hereabouts and that’s fine. Ratzinger is supposed to be Pope, but. His words need to be measured. Precisely because of the religious whackjobs on the other side of the monotheist fence you feel the need to foreground at all times.
Christ all bloody mighty, but why do you insist so tediously that before any of us liberal relativist panty-waists criticise your mob that we preface our remarks with whole paragraphs stating the bleedin obvious that there are some seriously dangerous and excitable types out there ready to kill us all. We know all that. What’s at issue is how we respond in the face of it. That’s what’s interesting to discuss.
Of course we need to be prudently vague about our characterisations of a faith adhered to by one billion homo sapiens.
Hell, they can’t all be wrong.
Mark, I thought you said papal infallibilty was a myth.
Which is my point. Is why Herr Ratzinger needs to get smart quick. It may be hard on an enquiring theologian – but he’s wrapped himself in a different cloth – sacrifices are required. Hark at the likes of CL lining up behind Ratzinger’s so-called “truths” already.
I didn’t say it was a myth totally, wbb, just that there’s a bit of a myth around that Popes are all seeing all cunning politicians. As I’m suggesting, one of the important policy decisions Benedict has taken in his Pontificate is to de-emphasise the political/diplomatic role of the Vatican. This has extended from headline actions such as appointing a non-diplomat as Cardinal Secretary of State to much less commented on changes to the instructions regarding the function and roles of Vatican diplomatic delegations to the UN and NGOs.
Infallibility only applies to statements made by the Pope ex cathedra and in agreement with all the Bishops on matters of faith and doctrine. Since it was defined by Vatican I in 1870, there has been precisely one infallible declaration – of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in 1950.
Catholics are quite free to disagree with the Pope’s opinions on politics, as C.L. himself has noted when he’s been accused of disregarding Vatican statements about the War on Iraq, for instance. Though there would be an expectation that one’s views would accord proper weight to Catholic social teaching.
In the context of this speech, Benedict is discussing some core teachings on faith and reason, and his views would carry great weight for Catholics. But his sociological diagnosis of the “crisis of relativism” is more his view than that of the Church, but again he’s the Pope and if you’re a Catholic you should take it seriously.
It’s also an intellectually interesting argument – and has been presented as such.
Anyway, in the spirit of Antonio’s comment, I’d ask you and C.L. both to take the tone of your comments down a notch or two.
I presume that you’re referring to Islam here, wbb, though of course Catholicism is a faith adhered to by one billion (ish) homo sapiens too.
Well, I agree with that.
He probably should have made it clearer what he intended to do with the quotation and the clarification that it didn’t represent his view should no doubt have been made at the time rather than subsequently.
Mark, a few points. I think you’re in slight denial about the fact that this Pope has sent out multiple signals about Islam and violence. And you’re also hyper-apologetic about what a pope said in a lecture: context this, courtesy that… academic this, theological that… Respectfully, you’re playing the Islamists’ game: “…maybe it’ll be OK – provided you can explain yourselves.”
He is a modern man and he should be able to say whatever he likes. Remember? This is central to the argument about dialogue and reason in the modern age. The multi-layered context of Regensburg doesn’t really matter any more. The true context is the dialogistic response presented by the lecture’s reception.
Thesis (distorted or not): that Islam in the contemporary world is culturally enmeshed with violence and intimidation.
Proved. (Again).
Note that he hasn’t apologised for what he said. He has expressed sorrow about how what he said has been received.
Well, I wouldn’t want you beside me at the barricades, Baboon Brain. You’d do a runner.
The ‘Ratzinger is media naive’ theory is nonsense, of course. He has been dealing with, antagonising and being portrayed in the media for nearly quarter of a century.
That wasn’t the thesis he was advancing, C.L.
And I disagree with your reception theory. You seem to want to erase the context of his lecture and substitute the context of the reaction to it.
I don’t know that the apology proves your point. It’s the same as saying that he’s sorry that his views were misinterpreted. I wouldn’t ask him to walk away from them, and of course he has the right to express them – but I don’t understand how if that was the thesis you claim that he was putting forward, most of his remarks were devoted to the problem of “dehellenisation” and its cultural consequences.
He has actually written very little about Islam. Most of his work on truth and religions takes as its text, if you like, the experience and theology of Eastern religions (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism). This is partly because he wants to draw a contrast between belief in an immanent and a transcendent God, and partly because he’s been explicit in saying that the attraction of effectively non-theistic appropriations of Eastern religion have great appeal in the West at the moment. He sees that both as a symptom and as a cause of desires to water down Christian truth.
He’s also made positive statements about Islam, and not just in the talk that I quoted above.
My impression also is that the seminar he held was more devoted to informing him about some of the issues – as he’d be the first to admit that he’s not an expert on Islamic theology and sociology – than anything else. That was certainly the way it was reported in the Catholic press at the time. I think there was a post here about it, but I’m heading to bed so I’ll have to leave you, or others interested, to search the archives.
I’ll repeat what I said earlier to both you and wbb, C.L. Tone it down a few notches, please.
That’s not true, CL, with all due respect. (I’m tonin’ it down.) Islam is a world religion. It is culturally a very catholic enterprise. No doubt you would be right to identify to us some pockets of crazed fundie murderers who’d poke their feet under the outer flaps of the Islamic tent, but to go beyond that is to impugn the predictably human civility of hundreds of millions of people who get up each day to slave in the souk or the Wall Street tower just like you and me.
You could get a rise out of someone less moderately toned than me, by characterising en masse a cultural descriptor, such as Islam, as being deviant and sociopathic. Enmeshed with violence. Sweep it all up, some might say.
That wasn’t the thesis he was advancing, C.L.
Which is why I wrote: distorted or not. An unimportant lecture (in the ’scheme of things’; it’s actually very good) has been transcended by one passage which it contained. That passage – of obvious topical currency and controversy – was chosen purposefully, not merely as an exemplar of, or a convenient introduction to, the propositions on hellenisation and reason that follow. The passage was not merely one that Benedict might just as readily have replaced with something equally serviceable for the same pedagogical goal. Nor was it a ‘mistake’ made by an absent-minded professor.
The context of the lecture is important and I’ve agreed with you that this little passage of renown wasn’t central to the whole. But it was chosen purposefully and it has – in any case – indubitably transcended the whole. We don’t substitute the context of the address; we simply move on to the hermeneutics of the reception. And the two case studies – while Benedict did not intend to author two case studies – are related: the address on how important an immanence of reason is to faith, knowledge and modernity and the manifestation of un-reason in the Islamic reaction. A reaction, plainly, attended by violence, killing, threats, intimidation, fundamentalism, theatrical grievance, wilful exaggeration and so on – all of which are antitheses to reason and dialogue and which are an affront to a reasonably know-able God.
I would argue that Benedict’s reference to “jihad” (a bit of a red flag word that one – I don’t think its potency to reporters would have been lost on him) and the wisdom he recognises in the words of the Emperor founded his treatise in the present mindfully, not as an accident of composition. That he should have designed his lecture this way says a lot about his concerns. Underlines, as well, not merely his (for some) exclusivist soteriology but also his suspicion that Islam is inherently problematic in the bigger picture of cultural and philosophical revival in the contemporary world. For us this is hard, he seems to say; for them, is it even possible?
Well, I think we have an answer.
Oh well, look on the bright side; while two tribes who happen to believe slightly different sets of religious nonsense argue, maybe Ratzinger will be too busy to declare intelligent design official Catholic doctrine.
You make some effective & valid points Mark…upon reflection I may have jumped the gun by way of some ‘impetuous’ comments on another blog. Always willing to learn & stand corrected if the occas. demands it.
My concerns emanate from the timing, setting & lack of reference to the sins of Christian armies. I don’t stand alone here.
Considering the cultural/political environment of late, perhaps his Holiness should have retained assistants who could have provided him w/ relevant feedback on Islamic affairs & the tone of the speech before he decided to go ‘where eagles dare’? Just a thought.
What then, does Pope Bendict mean?
Stop it you’ll go blind.
I think one of the Vatican Nuns summed it up best “Isnt it a long time since Benedickedus”.
Religion the opiate of the mass wankers.
One word, two syllables, “Lighten up” (that’s directed at Muslim fanatics).
OK I’m reading it now and bang! Ratzinger clanger no. 1 leaps out:
A jihad is not a holy war but a holy struggle…
For example a mosque group helping out on Clean Up Australia Day could be said to be on a Clean UP Australia Day Jihad.
It’s only Westerners who don’t really care about understanding islam and who believe that there are
redsmuslims under the bed ready to pounce who think it means just holy war (I’m looking at both CL and wbb).How hard could it be to check the wikipedia entry?
Anyway back to the reading…
OK… The Greek translation of the Old Testament means that the Westen Church has severed it’s ties with its Eastern origins…
I’m not feeling encouraged by this line of thought… Still reading.
What you reading it for, Christo? Currency Lad has given us all the exegesis anybody could reasonably demand.
The Pope was therefore saying that Islam is an overgrown death cult that we all need to treat with great disrespect.
Hmm well if you left out the paragraphs on Islam it could read just as easily as an attack on present day capitalism or belligerence, imperialsim or whatever your modern bugbear is.
Without those paragraphs it could be a critique of the modern church deHellenizing itself. And even there he papers over some of the Church’s less glorious periods:
Erm… I thought there was a lot more than that going on during the reformation – you know, the socio-economic dimension, such as say the commodification of church functions: eg. the selling of papal dispensations etc. Has he heard of the Borgias? An entertaining read for this is Q by “Luther Blissett.”
Is this church “rationalisation”? And hence is Islam to be feared because it is more socialised? (even though yes, in some places the influence of the mosque is as counter-productive as the influence of the christian church as in, say, some parts of the US or mediaeval Europe).
But those paragraphs on Islam colour the rest of the speech so that when he talks reason in the church and the hellenistic tradition we think of those ca-razy middle easterners… : /
I have to admit that I don’t know enough about Islam to know how important this Ibn Hazn is but I don’t think it’s enough to go on his word about the “unreasonableness” of Islam when the wikipedia Jihad article I reference about says the following about Islam’s attitude to truth and reason…. ie. that however different scholars interpret jihad there is an underlying struggle for the truth and justice.
A lot like that other prophet who shares part of my name.
CL,
It is geting increasingly difficult to take you seriously. You aggressively defend Catholicism yet say you are not Catholic. And you do your defending in a way that is decidely un-Christian and which indicates you have an enormous chip on your shoulder.
“Islam is inherently problematic in the bigger picture of cultural and philosophical revival in the contemporary world.”
Yes, I largely agree, although one shouldn’t ignore the existence peaceful Muslim individuals and communities. One also shouldn’t ignore the fact that Christianity has a sordid past, as you well know. To use one example, I grew up in a country town in Victoria where much of the population is Lutheran. Yet Luther was a disgusting figure and a rabid anti-semite. This from wikipedia:
“In his 60,000-word pamphlet[76] On the Jews and Their Lies, published in 1543 as Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, Luther spoke of the need to set synagogues on fire, destroy Jewish prayerbooks, forbid rabbis from preaching, seize Jews’ property and money, smash and destroy their homes, and ensure that these “poisonous envenomed worms” be forced into labor or expelled “for all time.” “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther#Luther_and_antisemitism
If Christian sects like Catholicism and Lutheranism can throw off the legacy of a hateful and diseased past, then why can’t the currently sordid sects within Islam?
Yeah wbb but CL also says:
which also ignores present socio-economic conditions inthe middle-east. I would argue, as millions of other people also do, that the problems in the middle-east are political and not religious. (You know that there’s a war on? Do we have to rehearse the whole boring obvious Israel debate again…) Any attempt to colour it as a religious problem is if not misguided but disingenious, to say the least.
How handy it is that middle easterners have a different religion. We can rape their countries all we liked and blame it on their crazy religion. Hold on. Didn’t I read somewhere else similarly misguided people blaming IRA attacks on the influence of the catholic church..?
apologies to all the pedants for my heinous typos, bad use of tense and conjunctions in the hastily typed posts above.
Christo, you seem foolishly intent on forging ahead to arrive at your own conclusions about Islam. Whereas CL has already spoken the truth about Islam. It is a diseased movement that is enmeshed in violence. Christo, now is not the time to split sociological hairs. You with us or not?
A busy morning for the peanut gallery!
A jihad is not a holy war but a holy struggle…
Heh. Cristo quotes Wiki too – case closed!
Meant to add, Mark, that the address also returns to the Emperor’s discourse. The Islamic theme is intentional and – as I said above – founds the treatise in the events of the present. Purposefully.
I have never said I am not a Catholic, Steve. It is increasingly difficult to take you seriously. Agreed that Luther was a disgusting figure. Unfortunately for your typically dotty thesis – what about TEH evil Christians? – Lutherans aren’t presently killing people every day or flying planes into buildings.
I’ve read the lecture.
Much of the unfavourable criticism of it in this thread and elsewhere is based on a crude consequentialism that does violence to the intent of the lecturer.
Let me observe that the lecturer has a powerful and sinuous intellect.
His major self-appointed task is to resynthesise hellenic thought and bible-based faith. He believes, correctly enough, that this separation began in Western Europe during he Middle Ages, especially with the thought of Duns Scotius. He believes that this separation has been catastrophic for both faith and reason. I wish to show that he has mishandled and overstated his case.
The lecturer uses several methods to argue his point that hellenic thought and bible faith represent a privileged sythesis of reason and faith. These methods represent a brave effort, but they are, in the end, inadequate to his purposes.
I restrict my self to discussion of the lecturer’s assertions about encounters between the world of the bible and the hellenic world before the birth of Christ. (There is much to be argued with in the lecturer’s assertions about the Christian era as well.)
1.
Commits the logical fallacy of the excluded middle. Until the lecturer corrects that, no sensible discussion is possible.
2.
Obscurantist special pleading.
3.
Again, special pleading, based on a primitive understanding of the nature of biblical sources.
4.
Historically inaccurate. any “enrichment” that took place was all one-way, from Greek to Hebrew.
Thus the lecturer gets off to an unpromising start.
It is evident that the lecturer’s thesis is built on foundations of sand.
(His now notorious reference to Manuel II is very ambiguous in intent, for it introduces well enough his theme, but is also a red rag to a bull, but this isn’t the main thrust of his piece.)
The Pope quotes a dead King who says there is a link betwen violence and Islam.
The reaction from Muslims. violence. says it al really
Nobody ever seems to want to notice but dreadfully sane peace loving “christian” America is responsible for 48% of the worlds armaments production and trade.
It is also the worlds largest user of WMD’s of all kinds.
But that doesnt have any thing to do with world wide terrorism — does it!!!!
Also the dreadfully sane peace loving Christian west gave us World Wars 1 & 2.
Then there is the question of the use of reason to justify ones religious beliefs.
I cant see how one could possibly be a Christian of any kind if one REALLY used systematic reason to examine any of the Christian “truth” claims.
The same applies to Islam.
True philosophical enquiry begins with an open hearted/minded disposition of not-knowing and the consequent thorough examination of all propositions and alleged “evidence”.
What do we really know?
What do we really know about what may or may not have occurred 2000 years ago? Or yesterday afternoon for that matter!
“I have never said I am not a Catholic, Steve.”
Rubbish. You said you were not a practising Catholic only a few weeks ago when I japingly suggested you do some penance.
You also conveniently ignore a number of recent events such as the Christian Serb slaughter of Muslim Bosnians and the Christian involvement in the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda. On the latter, note the following:
” Since the genocide, Rwandans have converted to Islam in huge numbers. Muslims now make up 14 percent of the 8.2 million people here in Africa’s most Catholic nation, twice as many as before the killings began.
Many converts say they chose Islam because of the role that some Catholic and Protestant leaders played in the genocide. Human rights groups have documented several incidents in which Christian clerics allowed Tutsis to seek refuge in churches, then surrendered them to Hutu death squads, as well as instances of Hutu priests and ministers encouraging their congregations to kill Tutsis. Today some churches serve as memorials to the many people slaughtered among their pews.
Four clergymen are facing genocide charges at the U.N.-created International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and last year in Belgium, the former colonial power, two Rwandan nuns were convicted of murder for their roles in the massacre of 7,000 Tutsis who sought protection at a Benedictine convent. ” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53018-2002Sep22.html
Accordingly, since the 1990s, Christians- including Catholics- have been involved in two acts of genocide that have killed many tens of thousands of people. This outweighs the death toll from Islamofascist terrorism by at least one hundred to one.
So maybe you should purge the sins of your brethern before you cast stones at your neighbours. What do you think?
If people could keep to the topic – ie Pope Benedict’s intentions and the reactions – I’d be grateful. I’m not willing to entertain a dispute on the relative quantum of violence committed by various religions’ followers. If it’s not embedded in a broader theory about the causes of violence, it becomes a slanging match and the figures are tossed around just to score points. Similarly this thread isn’t the place for discussion of world politics, the War on Terror, WMDs, etc.
Thanks, Katz, for the interesting contribution.
Benedict’s thought is a tad Hegelian for my liking, I must admit.
That’s wrong, however.
Instances BC?
I don’t have time to elaborate much, as I have to be in town at a meeting soon – but let me just observe that it’s wrong to assume that “Greek” culture and “Semitic” or “Eastern” culture were entities that had hard boundaries – though that particular myth was propagated by the Greeks themselves. In fact, if you look at the various Middle Eastern civilisations, there was a lot of productive interchange. As to Hebrew culture, I refer you to the synthesis developed in places like Alexandria by Greek speaking Jews. This is one of the points that Benedict is making – I look forward to the promised footnoted version of the address which he is working on, which will no doubt clarify the sources for his argument.
Steve, you really are terribly ignorant on these matters. I said I was a non-practising Catholic, not that I had ceased being a Catholic. As for the rest of your leftie equivalence theory rant, it has nothing to do with the Pope’s address or the biggest force in terrorism today: Islam. Anyone who denies this is more or less deranged.
I know all about Rwanda, by the way, as I had family helping to pick up the pieces in situ. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Much hand-waving here Mark!
All the extant Greek texts are catalogued and concordanced. There is no evidence of leading Hebrew ideas getting any currency in Greek texts.
Certainly, as a maritime, and occasionally expansionary culture, the Greeks came into contact with neighbouring cultures.
Fighting with neighbours, living with neighbours, even reading their books is one thing. Incorporating and adapting their beliefs and ideas is quite different.
Not even in Greek popular culture is there much of an imprint of Hebrew culture. Much less is there any evidence of it in “high” Greek culture which embodied the quest for hellenic “reason”.
Take a current example: Even Cardinal Pell, it seems, reads the Koran, with the intention of rejecting it.
So, Muslims using sword and fire to compel converts, eh? Clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. If we can get Benny boy to read some history of the institution of which he is head, that should stop him coming out with stuff like this. If we can get a Muslim leader who would defuse the situation by pointing this out, we may quell a few of these riots. This would be a clear case of moral equivalence not hurting anyone.
Aye Andrew, and keep an eye peeled for the stampede as the Muslim world’s “moderate majority” trip over themselves to condemn Iran’s repeatedly stated intention to exterminate the Jews. No risk of it happening any time soon, though. They didn’t say anything about the UN’s conclusion earlier this year that Jakarta’s jihad in East Timor cost 150,000 lives. Draw a cartoon of the “prophet”, however, and look out!
Waleed Aly’s OpEd says all that needs to be said about the insult-to-Islam issue.
What is more interesting then, is why wise words from a 30-something man seem to count for so little, judging from commenters’ (here and elsewhere) lack of interest in them. Now *that’s* an insult.
“Of course we need to be prudently vague about our characterisations of a faith adhered to by one billion homo sapiens.”
And why on earth should that be the case, other than that a vocal group of rancourous barbarians are unreconciled with the scientific method and are willing to spill blood in their efforts to destroy the entire edifice of humanity’s progress? There has been no shortage of “non-vague” “characterisations” of another particular “faith” held by, say, 1.5 to 2 billion homo sapiens, so precisely why bother treading lightly now? The simple fact is this – if you are a genuine “secularist” (meaning somebody who, whatever their private rituals, is an ardent opponent of coercing people on the basis of faith or superstition), then you can have no principled reason to withold your fire simply because the delicate sensibilities of your targets might be upset, and they be driven to murderous violence.
Allow me to be epistemologically blunt – Muslims, as with all other religions, uphold a belief system that is unfalsifiable; that is, it is neither proven, nor even able to subject itself to empirical proof. Of course, they oppose rational enquiry for others’ benefit, but necessarily demand it for themselves. To then insist that your “faith” which, as far as you can prove, may well be a load of emotional gibberish, should be firewalled from the warranted intellectual attacks of people who DON’T believe public life should be held to ransom by mythical beings, is just unbelievable hypocrisy – and utterly immoral. Muslims are currently by far the worst offenders in this regard, and like Christians did three or so centuries ago, they need to learn to GROW UP.
“This outweighs the death toll from Islamofascist terrorism by at least one hundred to one.”
This is an utter lie from start to finish – the death toll in southern Sudan since the early 1990s has far outstripped the Rwandan genocide and the Bosnian “genocide” put together; here’s a hint – it was instigated at the hands of an Islamist government. I could add scores of thousands killed by murderous fanatics across the entire Sahel, Nigeria, Indonesia, etc, but I think you get the point.
I specifically asked people not to get into this ridiculous “x have killed more people than y” debate – and evidently that’s been a request made in vain. As I’m working all this afternoon, I won’t have time to police this – so I’m going to close the thread. If anyone has any contribution to make that’s on topic, please email me at mbahnisch (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll re-open the thread later.