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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...
High-ranking Vatican sources say Benedict will avoid repeating the Islam-and-violence trope in any form as blatant as Regensburg's. Instead, suggests Father Thomas Reese, a senior research fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, an independent nonprofit institute at Georgetown, the Pope may take a less broad-brush approach to the issue by repeating his sentiment from Cologne: "He could say, 'You, like me, are concerned about terrorism' and he would like to see Islamic clerics be more up front condemning it." Once over the hump, happier topics should be easy to find. "Quite frankly," says...
...that doesn't mean he was right. Muslim attention has focused mainly on the lecture's association between violence and Islam, but the most important and disputable aspect of it was Benedict's reflection on what it means to be European. In his speech at Regensburg, the Pope attempted to set out a European identity that is Christian by faith and Greek by philosophical reason. But Benedict's speech implicitly suggested that he believes that Islam has no such relationship with reason--and thus is excluded from being European. Several years ago, the Pope, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, set forth...
Benedict XVI's journey to Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, is laden with the wounds of history both ancient and painfully contemporary. The Pope's controversial Sept. 12 lecture in Regensburg, Germany, quoted a 14th century exchange between a Byzantine Christian Emperor and a Muslim intellectual in which the Emperor made some distinctly uncomplimentary observations about Islam. The Pope admitted that the Emperor's statement was brusque. But his point in reaching so far back into history was to demonstrate that problems between the Christian West and Islam long precede today's "war on terrorism...
...jihadists believe their time of resumed conquest has come. Through terrorism and the mass immigration of Muslims in Europe, the jihadists are pressing for the reversal of the military outcome of 1683. This is the context in which Benedict attempted to make a larger point at Regensburg. He acknowledged that Christians have sometimes had a problem, and he suggested that Muslims still have a problem, in understanding the relationship between faith and coercion. Violence, said the Pope, is the enemy of reason. Violence has no place in the advancing of religion. To act against reason is to act against...