When even the pope has to whisper

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA10Ak01.html ^ | Spengler

[mal]

Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform. This we learn from the transcript of a January 5 US radio interview with one of Benedict's students and friends, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, posted on the Asia Times Online forum by a sharp-eyed reader. For the pope to refute the fundamental premise of US policy is news of inestimable strategic importance, yet a Google News scan reveals that not a single media outlet has taken notice of what Fessio told interviewer Hugh Hewitt last week. No matter: still and small as Benedict's voice might be, it carries further than earthquake and whirlwind.

[Aussie Dasher]

Benedict is a very astute individual.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Great read.

[peyton randolph]

he does not believe Islam can reform.

We know it wasn't intelligently designed, but can Islam evolve? ;-)

[Malesherbes]

Once they blow up a whole American city, the whispers will become stentorian.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Is there a pertinent quote worthy of posting?

[ClearBlueSky]

Islam SCREAMS...and the Pope whispers?
This is terrifyingly wrong.

[Falconspeed]

George Weigel describes Pope Benedict XVI as follows: "His sermons are miniature masterpieces of Christian doctrine, the refined reflections of a man who has thoroughly mastered the Bible and 2,000 years of Christian tradition."

[PetroniusMaximus]

He's right.

Current American doctrine is built of straw.

Islam, in it's current form is fundamentally unreformable. Any "true believer" ideology is unreformable without the death of a charismatic founder or the destruction/deconstruction of central tenets.

Islam, as an ideology/religion, must be dismantled before the world Muslim population can ever hope to be free.

[LordBridey]

The fact that the West still has such a leader as Benedict XVI in itself is cause for optimism. It might be too late for Europe, but it is not too late for the United States, and that is where the pope's mustard seeds may fall on fertile ground.

I liked this one.

[joesnuffy]

Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform.

For the pope to refute the fundamental premise of US policy is news of inestimable strategic importance.

Yet a Google News scan reveals that not a single media outlet has taken notice.

[claudiustg]

Fundamentalism is self limiting. People become rebellious under the yoke. Fundamentalism doesn't last. Look at orthodox Communism or the staying power of Puritanism or Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Women in Iran, after becoming accustomed to Western clothes were forced to dress in an Islamic fashion by the Revolutionary Council. They adapted by wearing long black overcoats and black headscarves, a rather elegant alternative to the burka. Now that it has been decreed that they must wear the traditional black burka, how long do you think these Mohammedan fashion police are going to last? These are not uneducated peasant women. You need the women to make any long term change in society.

Even Saudi Arabia, the very center of Islam, is not stable.

[Tree of Liberty]

Radioblogger

HH: Father Fessio, before the break, you were telling us that after the presentation at Castel Gandolfo by two scholars of Islam this summer with Benedict in attendance, as well as his former students, for the first time in your memory, the Pope did not allow his students to first comment and reserve comment, but in fact, went first. Why, and what did he say?

JF: Well, the thesis that was proposed by this scholar was that Islam can enter into the modern world if the Koran is reinterpreted by taking the specific legislation, and going back to the principles, and then adapting it to our times, especially with the dignity that we ascribe to women, which has come through Christianity, of course. And immediately, the Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there's a fundamental problem with that, because he said in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world, and therefore by establishing a Church in which he gives authority to His followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations. I was...I mean, Hugh, I wish I could say it as clearly and as beautifully as he did, but that's why he's Pope and I'm not, okay? That's one of the reasons. One of others, but his seeing that distinction when the Koran, which is seen as something dropped out of Heaven, which cannot be adapted or applied, even, and the Bible, which is a word of God that comes through a human community, it was stunning.

HH: And so, is it fair to describe him as a pessimist about the prospect of modernity truly engaging Islam in the way modernity has engaged Christianity?

JF: Well, the other way around.

HH: Yes. I meant that.

JF: Yeah, that Christianity can engage modernity just like it did...the Jews did Egypt, or Christians did to Greece, because we can take what's good there, and we can elevate it through the revelation of Christ in the Bible. But Islam is stuck. It's stuck with a text that cannot be adapted, or even be interpreted properly.

HH: And so the Pope is a pessimist about that changing, because it would require a radical reinterpretation of what the Koran is?

JF: Yeah, which is it's impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Koran, as it's understood by Muslims.

[PetroniusMaximus]

but he's wrong here...

"He's used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations."


Specifically...

"by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it,"


The Bible speaks authoritatively - whether we "interpret" or "adapt" it correctly or not. The Church does not enhance the Bible's authority by "adapting" it to modern situations. If there had never been a Catholic Church, the Bible would still be as inspired and authoritative as it ever was.

The Bible's claim to inspiration is ON PAR with that of the Koran - the unchanging Word of God. Where the Koran and Bible differ is in regards to the quality of the message each contains.

This will ultimately decide which one survives.

[Mike Darancette]

Washington believes, the long-marginalized Shi'ites will adapt to religious pluralism. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Islam, fixed in amber since the High Middle Ages, will metamorphose into something like American mainline Protestantism.

LOL - I picture people in turbans and berquas bringing goat casseroles and jello salads to pot luck dinners at the mosque.

[Tree of Liberty]

I agree with you that his his reasoning that Christianity's strength is in its maliability is flawed, but his conclusion is correct, nonetheless.

[308MBR]

Islam is ripe for reform. It took Christianity 1400 years to have an enlightenment. However, in the case of Islam, reforming a turd just produces a differently shaped pile of poop.

[BackInBlack]

'The Church does not enhance the Bible's authority by "adapting" it to modern situations.'

Why not? It allows modernity and Scripture to jibe.

Another argument for the malleability of Christianity -- though this argument is quite contrary to the very notion of an authoritative church hierarchy -- is that Christ's arrival signaled a shift from the law being written on tablets to being written on our hearts. The old Hebrew law was thrown out, in favor of two fundamental principles: love God above all else, and love your neighbor as yourself.

[de Buillion]

Great article! Now someone needs to tell GWB that there ain't no good muslims, according to the Pope!

[NYer]

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