Posted on 09/18/2006 11:38:47 AM PDT by Ebenezer
(abridged version)
Herewith a potpourri of reflections on the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict and reactions to it, intermixed with a bit of my own commentary. As many commentators, Muslim and other, do not know because they manifestly have not read the lecture, it was not chiefly about Islam. It was a considered reflection on the inseparable linkage of faith and reason in the Christian understanding, an incisive critique of Christian thinkers who press for separating faith and reason in the name of “de-Hellenizing” Christianity, and a stirring call for Christians to celebrate the achievements of modernity and secure those achievements by grounding them in theological and philosophical truth.
I have had the opportunity of many extended conversations with Ratzinger-Benedict over the years, and he is a man of great gentleness and deliberation and extremely careful to say what he means. What he said at Regensburg he has said many times before. Contrary to many reports, he has not apologized or retracted his argument. He has indicated sincere regret that many Muslims have reacted to his statement as they have. The response of those who are properly called jihadists is, “If you don’t stop saying we’re violent, we’re going to bomb more churches, kill more nuns and priests, and get the pope too.” In short, the reaction has powerfully confirmed the problem to which Benedict called our attention.
Some think that Benedict was not as judicious as he might have been in quoting a medieval emperor of the East who, faced by Islamic conquest that succeeded in turning Christian Constantinople into Islamic Istanbul, declared that Islam has produced only inhumanity and evil. That is arguable. Benedict did say at Regensburg that the emperor’s words were excessively “brusque.” But the citation was also a way of reminding everybody that this conflict with Islam bent upon conversion by the sword is very long-standing.
It can be argued that the Regensburg lecture will turn out to be the most important statement by a world leader in the post–September 11 period. Of course, not all Muslims are jihadists, whether in the Middle East or the rest of the world. But jihadism is the ominous threat we face, and I again wish that more people would read Mary Habeck’s sobering book now out from Yale University Press, Knowing the Enemy. Habeck, who teaches international relations at Johns Hopkins, is unlike so many students of Islam, in that she takes very seriously what these people actually say they believe, and how they intend to act upon what they believe. Jihadism is the religiously inspired ideology that is committed to employ whatever means necessary to destroy the West (which its proponents view as the Christian West) and force the world’s submission to Islam.
The editors of the New York Sun compare the current controversy with John Paul II’s courage and candor with respect to communism. They write: “The current pope, like his predecessor, is fighting a two-front war. He must take on radicals outside his faith while also convincing his co-religionists of the seriousness of the fight. In this sense, Benedict’s decision to quote the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus is an apt one. Manuel was the penultimate eastern emperor, who presided over a drastically diminished realm in the face of the mounting threat of Islamic conquest. Manuel was also one of the many emperors who were unsuccessful in persuading western Christians to aid the failing empire. The pressing question is not only whether Islam will take up Benedict’s challenge but whether well-meaning Christians, who have sometimes wanted to feel removed from the battle, draw strength from the pope’s leadership.”
That may strike some readers as excessively belligerent, but I think it is, in the main, a fair statement of the question before us. Please note that Benedict has addressed these questions many times before. Especially instructive is his 1980 book of essays, Church, Ecumenism and Politics.
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Of course, we must cultivate optimism and hope, or at least hope. (Readers know that I have a thing about “optimism”—which is often simply a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don’t want to see.) But many of our influential commentators in the West are in deep denial, believing that candor in the quest for truth is dangerously provocative, and we must therefore conform to the violent demands that we say nothing to offend Muslim sensibilities. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, to surrender in advance.
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Benedict’s responsibility is to set forth clearly and uncompromisingly the Christian understanding. At Regensburg he said: “God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word— reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John [the Evangelist] thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God.”
As history is turning out, this theological truth is at the very core of what is likely the greatest political and cultural struggle of this century, and maybe beyond.
ping
It is actually irrelevant what the Pope said. Muslims do not need excuses to kill or riot.
What?
The Pope's words don't need to be explained away. The muslims are clearly angry about anything and everything.
"What?"
Interesting.
The Muslims need an excuse to kill about as much as an alcoholic needs to an excuse to drink.
Remarkable but true analysis. I think the Pope's address cut through to the heart of the whole dispute. I hope people are beginning to understand this - certainly, after years of relativism and the shrugging off of "abstractions" and theological investigation, there is some irony in the fact that it should turn out that theology (along with epistemology) is precisely the center of the entire conflict over the future of the human race.
Looks like it already, from the amount of comment it's drawing.
Thanks for posting this -- always good to have Fr. Neuhaus's take.
No, lacking one they will invent it.
I thought so.
I have met Neuhaus. He is an important commentator on the religious scene. I agree with everything from his article, except I have not met the pope.
I often read Byzantine history because that forgotten empire fought against Islam for so many centuries and preserved Europe in doing so. There were times when the Ottoman Empire was tolerand of Christians and Jews, but they never tired of expanding to take over the West. That dream will never die.
Why did the Muslims conquer a worn-out city, Constantinople? Why did they even try? Because Constantinople was the symbol of Christianity, the ultimate conquest.
Does that mean Rome was due to be in the crosshairs even before Benedict said anything?
I wish our media commentariat would take this approach. Stop pretending they have the same ideals, goals and methods as secular Westerners.
A BIG AMEN....
Yes, of course. Two of their high priority items are the recovery of Spain (Andalusia) and the defeat of Rome.
According to one ancient story, Muhammed was asked, which would be defeated first, Rome or Byzantium? He answered, Byzantium, but went on to say that Rome would be conquered too.
The Imams still refer to this. I've lost the reference, but I posted a quotation from an Imam to this effect, taken from Little Green Footballs in 2005, on a thread yesterday.
There was not much left to pillage and plunder in 1453 Constantinople, perhaps courtesy of the Fourth Crusade armies some 250 years before. In any event, the fall of the city to the Ottoman Turks genuinely shocked the Western powers, although their support for the embattled Byzantines was inconsistent and lukewarm at best.
Instead we have to overcome the inane (for all practical purposes) replacement which has permitted "feelings", to replace or at least suppress, "knowledge" as basic to understanding the natural and supernatural world.
The poor Holy Father has to build on a virtual tabula rasa.
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