The whole furore over the Pope's speech has been blown out of all proportion, just because a short soundbite was taken out of context. This is what is so irresponsible about news - it takes a tiny bit of something out of context and then relays it around the world just to wind everyone up.
I can honestly say that I am a completely neutral observer (not being a Catholic at all), but taken in context, there's nothing to be offended about. I'm not a fan of "God's Rottweiler", particularly, but I intensely dislike being misled by the media.
This is what he actually said:
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read... of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.
In the seventh conversation...the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. ... he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."
The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
- The Pope distances himself from Manuel II by prefacing the quote with the phrase "with a startling brusqueness" and following with "after having expressed himself so forcefully".
- Manuel II was talking in the sense of comparative religion, saying that the main difference between his religion (Orthodox Christianity, which didn't do forcible conversions as far as I know) and Islam was that Muhammad had only brought violence (in addition to stuff that other religions had already invented). Clearly they hadn't really got the hang of interfaith dialogue in those days.
- The Pope is quoting this in support of his argument that faith and reason need to go hand in hand; not as part of an attempt to persuade people that Islam is bad.
- He is specifically talking about Islam because he wants to make the point that the Muslim view of God (in the 14th century at any rate) was that God transcends our categories, even rationality; whereas the Byzantine view was that not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. He then reflects on the question of whether the Greek view is universally true, or just an opinion.
3 comments:
We were discussing this very subject at work (that is, the quote being taken out of context). But - given the current world political situation - was the pope wise to use Islam as an example? Or did he have something in mind when he did so? That is, the world situation was precisely why he did use Islam.
I agree with your central point, though - the press do enjoy getting into a lather about things.
Good post. Thanks for this. I'd been meaning to check out the context online myself but got distracted by, well, life. I assumed that the context would make things clear, but it was imsmeggingpossible to find out what it was from the Radio 4 news reports, which did everything to big up the 'controversy' (thus making things worse) and nothing to explain in detail what the Pope had actually said. It was nothing short of irresponsible. If we'd tried something like that in the mocks on my journalism course we'd have been hauled over the coals for it.
Yeah, it's clear from the translation that the fact it's a quote about Islam is peripheral to the argument. I wondered if it could have been toned down, but on re-reading it's clear that the use of the first part of the quote, the part which has caused the furore, is necessary in order to make sense of the second part - and as you point out, the Pope distances himself from it with a precise and sensitive observation on its nature. I think quite a strong case can be made for the choice of quote being politically naive, but that depends on one's assuming that the potential world-wide audience is made up of potato-heads, instead of rational, intelligent human beings, such as those he was directly addressing at Regensburg.
Now millions of Muslims, among others, one supposes, across the world, with the help of the BBC, have shown that to be the case. The fact he used it at all shows him to be partial, but he is the head of the Catholic Church, for chrissakes.
There are, as you say, many examples of Christians using violence in the name of the Church, with forced conversion being an element of it (one can add all of South and Central America to your list), but presumably none of them - or none that the Pope is immediately aware of - raises the theoretical discussion of faith alone versus faith and reason together in a way which would have been relevant to his speech.
Further thoughts:
1) It is always possible that he was subtly sending a message, one which has been ignored, by quoting the part which reads: 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...
2) One would have thought that anyone capable of delivering such a complex and intellectually demanding speech as this would have been able to figure out the impact it might have.
3) It's interesting that he was reading up on these dialogues in the first place.
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