Word: islam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...baldly controversial - lecture on faith, reason and violence. It was the young papacy's quintessential Ratzinger moment, as the 79-year-old professor-turned-pope returned to his old university in Regensburg to draw a theological line in the sand that set off a worldwide debate about how Islam and the West should talk to each other. Yet last week, that same man, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was famous for his doctrinal rigidity, was in Turkey doing and saying things on the same issue, Islam, that few could have ever imagined...
...Pope flip-flopping on Islam and celibacy? A closer look simply shows a world religious leader wading through our troubled times with all the skills, limitations and serendipity that come with being human. An analysis of his past week may offer clues to where the papacy is headed...
...Church officials insisted that it was a "personal" prayer, unrelated to any Christian liturgy, while Turkish newspapers proclaimed the Pope "prayed like a Muslim." The mosque visit will go down as a watershed in a papacy that just two months earlier had nearly drowned in a speech critical of Islam. Benedict, long doubtful of different faiths praying together, got lost in the moment. Don't expect such papal adventures to happen often in the future, but as an old Italian Vatican hand put it last week: "Traveling changes people...
...Turkey trip will be hailed as a great success of Vatican diplomacy, and the Holy See's new Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, can take a chunk of the credit. The softer tones on Islam, the visit to the mosque, openly warm exchanges with Benedict's Orthodox counterpart, the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I - and no major glitches - means the Pope returns to Rome with a new dose of what he sorely needed when he left: consensus. The Regensburg speech, and the risk it might incite violence, divided many Catholics - even those who may have instinctively agreed with...
...total of Benedict's speech in Regensburg and his visit to the mosque is that he is relevant on the Islam-and-the-West debate. But how can he stay relevant? Most Church insiders agree that ultimately this Pope's greatest gift is his intellect rather than his showmanship. This means that his next big act on Islam will likely be with words rather than gestures. But no one in Vatican circles I've spoken with can imagine how he can pick back up where he left off in Regensburg, directly questioning the historical and philosophical foundations of Islam, without...