Word: benedicts
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Says a Vatican insider with a shrug: "Everyone's asking, Did the Pope make a mistake? Was it intentional? It doesn't really matter at this point." Whether Benedict had actually intended Regensburg to be the catalyst, he had become a player...
...daily La Stampa ran the headline THE POPE AND BUSH ALLIED AGAINST TERROR. The association with the Iraq war and U.S. interrogation methods must have horrified the Pontiff, if only because it could undermine the church's honest-broker role in regional conflicts. "It's easy to say, 'Go Benedict! Hit the Muslims!'" says Gibson. "But that's not who he is. He is not a Crusader." Shortly before Regensburg, Benedict had endured Western criticism for repeatedly demanding a cease-fire after Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Angelo Cardinal Scola, a protégé of the Pope's who edits Oasis...
...bombers today go to their fates with the Koran's verses on their lips, it invites questions about Islam's credentials as a religion that is willing to police its own claims of peace and tolerance. As conservative Catholic scholar Michael Novak points out, the Vatican's pacifism gives Benedict unmatched moral standing to press this point. "Being against war, he can say tougher things ... than any President or Prime Minister can. His role is to represent Western civilization...
Perhaps so, but then he might have to represent its past as well, including all the historical violence done in Jesus' name (despite the Gospels' pacifism). Discussion of Christianity's dark hours has not been his penchant. Moreover, the position Benedict took in Regensburg--that Islam and violence are indeed essentially connected--worked as an opening gambit but doesn't leave much room for either side to maneuver. People asked to flatly renounce their Holy Writ generally don't. And Benedict has little give--because first, he seldom says anything he is not prepared to defend to the bitter...
...there? John Esposito, a respected Islam scholar at Georgetown University, says the Pope can't confine himself to meetings with Christian leaders. "He must address the Muslim majority." Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor at George Washington University and one of the 38 signatories to the October letter to Benedict, says the Pope should deliver an "earnest expression of commonality"--even if it's only the widely accepted observation that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim descent from the biblical figure of Abraham. Father Richard McBrien, a theologian at Notre Dame, says that "if he doesn't bring up the issue...