<img attachment="manuel_ii_paleologus.jpg" align="left" class="frame" caption="Manuel II Paleologus">Do not be alarmed. Though the pope has been in headlines lately, he has not been kidnapped, conceived a child with Britney Spears or baptized Suri Cruise (which would be <i>awesome</i>). It must be a slow news week, because the global media monster heaved its noisome bulk in a slightly different direction, using the Pope's pointy hat to poke at the hornet's nest of Islamofascism. With news of terror on the wane, it was about time we had our fears squarely refocused on the 21st century's answer to communism. The papal bulls, proclamations, opinions and dissertations released so far under this pope indicate that he's both extremely conservative and just as willing to sacrifice untold numbers of dark-skinned believers for what he believes the church's core beliefs should be: purity before God is more important than breathing---at least for other people. That makes him difficult---but not impossible---to defend. Agree or disagree with the pope, one can at least refuse to swayed by a media smear campaign beamed to a television near you on wings of out-of-context quotes and deliberate misinterpretation. Most of what the pope has to say is about theology, philosophy and comprises citations from centuries worth of such literature in ways that attempt to elucidate modern society in a way that keeps God relevant and people properly cowed. In a word, he's boring. This goes a long way in explaining why very few people seemed to read farther than the first few paragraphs in a recent speech he gave, <a href="http://romancatholicblog.typepad.com/roman_catholic_blog/2006/09/faith_reason_th.html">Faith, Reason & the University</a><fn>. Of those that did, <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9709" source="AntiWar.com" author="Justin Raimondo" title="In Defense of Pope Benedict: The Catholic Church is an enemy of the War Party">In Defense of Pope Benedict</a> offers one of the more lucid clarifications. One of the ideas in the speech (though not the main point) is that religion, reason and ideas cannot---and should not---be delivered from the barrel of a gun or the point of a sword. To do so is to leave the path of Catholic faith. Good enough so far, not much to argue about there. Pope Benedict goes on to argue that Catholicism is unique among widespread world religions in that it believes so strongly in reason, and a reasonable God. He argues that the only other choices, <iq>the "primitive" irrationalism of Protestant and Islamic mystics, on the one hand, and godless rationalism on the other</iq> are a big problem in the world today. It seems that the best defense is a good offense in religion too. The part of his speech that caused the most uproar, <iq>Show me just what Mohammed 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.</iq> is a <i>citation</i> from a 14th century text. It's perfectly valid to cite it, it comes from a classic text on a dialogue between <iq>the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam</iq>. It also illustrates the Pope's point of non-violence. More's the pity that he couldn't manage to dredge a similar example from the Catholic Church's nearly completely pacifist history, just to balance things out a little. He had a plethora of <i>incidents</i> to choose from, like the crusades or the <a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/history/inquisition/">Inquisition</a>, both of which occurred around the same time as the conversation he cited (the Spanish inquisition went on for 300 years). He could have reached back to the old Testament, in which a prankster God literally just <i>fucks</i> with the chosen people for centuries, inciting and tempting them to wars of conquest and genocide against non-believers. Though the point of his speech was clearly a plea for non-violence, it's hard to believe he didn't know what he was doing when he used Islam as his sole example of religious violence. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq09162006.html" source="CounterPunch" author="Tariq Ali">Papal Insults: A Bavarian Provocation</a> concurs, saying <iq>I think he knew what he was saying and why</iq> and that <iq>Islam does not need pacifist lessons from this Church.</iq>. Quite right. The Pope should have had the humility to cite an example or ten from his own church's blood-soaked past. Let the muslims criticize themselves in return and we have the beginnings of diplomacy. <bq>Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death</bq> This other citation in his speech illustrates exactly the point he was making; it applies far more aptly to the Bush administration today than it does to its original target (the Turks). But it's subtle. The provocation against America's crusade is subtle and open to interpretation, whereas the provocation against Islam is an accusation of past misdeeds. In other matters, the Vatican has criticized the invasions of Iraq and, more recently, Israel's attacks on Lebanon. Contrary to recent claims incited by this speech, the Catholic Church is clearly not standing in the Global War on Terror camp with both feet. <a href="http://mitchellfreedman.blogspot.com/2006/09/main-point-of-popes-speech-reason-can.html" source="MF Blog">The main point of the Pope's speech: Reason can be compatible with faith</a> has similar analysis of the speech, noting also that the preponderance of it dealt with subtle issues of Greek, or Hellenic, philosophical influence on religious interpretation in Europe. Perhaps pope Benedict would have had a bit more leeway if he hadn't shown himself to be so staunchly conservative in other publicly voiced opinions. More's the pity because the boring parts after the first few paragraphs espouse an enlightened, compromise-ready philosophy for religion in the 21st century. It is perhaps best to end with some citations from the more well-intentioned and less diplomatically clumsy---and provocative---parts of his speech. <bq>This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. ... [However 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</bq> In essence, his is an effort to defend theology as a fully viable study partner to philosophy and history, though it requires that <iq>we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable</iq>. Do not cast out theology in general because it has horrible representation in the world's religions and its practitioners---that is to confuse the science of thought with its bureaucratic, power-seeking extrusion in the real world. <bq>Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: 'It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being -- but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss.'</bq> <hr> <ft>All of Benedict's citations are from this unofficial translation. It reads quiet well and the Vatican web site proved to be too inscrutable (and slow) for this mortal unbeliever to find the official copy.</ft>