Word: regensburgers
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Actually, Benedict will probably try to stay away from matches during his successive stops in Ankara, Ephesus and Istanbul. Speculation about what the Pope will say and do on this visit has consumed Rome for weeks. Papal watchers say Benedict cannot out-Regensburg himself, but gauzy talk about the compatibility of Christianity and Islam isn't likely either. Over the course of his career, Benedict has been averse to reciting multifaith platitudes, an aversion that has sharpened as he has focused on Islam. And that's what could make his coming encounter with the Muslim world, says David Gibson, author...
...Sept. 12, 2006, the day after the world had marked the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Benedict threw himself into the maelstrom. The unlikely venue was his old teaching grounds, the University of Regensburg. His vehicle was a talk about reason as part of Christianity's very essence. His nominal target was his usual suspect, the secular West, which he said had committed the tragic error of discarding Christianity as reason-free. But this time he had an additional villain in his sights: Islam, which he said actually did undervalue rationality and which he strongly suggested was consequently more...
...Koran lends itself to being shanghaied by terrorists, and he can do what politicians can't." In late October, Benedict received a different kind of validation in an open "Your Holiness" letter from 38 of the best-known names in Islamic theology. The missive politely eviscerated his Regensburg speech but went on to "applaud" the Pope's "efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life" and expressed a desire for "frank and sincere dialogue." At a time when the credibility of Western political leaders in the Muslim world has sunk to new depths, the letter treated...
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...
...After Regensburg, the mainstream Italian 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 prot?...