From the story
I don't know what role who played, save running across a claim or two of who exactly was the man standing next to the pope. It is likely it was not the Chaldean himself, which leaves one of the other two, the Iraqi muslim cleric, or the man from whatever Iraqi "ministry of religion", or what-have-you, however it was put.
The photo doesn't show several persons standing closely together in unison. That doesn't mean they couldn't have been just a few feet out of the picture.
I'd never said the word "formal", nor had I insisted upon them being all arrayed in front of the pope sort-of all at once -- but the words of the Chaldean do rather suggest something of that kind, or at least that they were all present as a group, even if only one person was actually standing before the pope presenting the book, being that he said that "the delegation" presented the koran, not "so-and-say" presented a koran.
It seems to me -- the impression I get -- is that it was a scheduled, small "audience" for the delegation. Rather par for the course. A typical, or common enough visitation attended by a government religious bureau official, a Catholic religious authority of that same nation, and another religious official, that last one being of the dominant religion in that nation. Nothing out of the ordinary, all in all.
That presentation itself is one thing, and as you've said, you were not disputing the Chaldean as being a witness. I was arguing that it is very likely the Chaldean would have had plenty of opportunity to SEE the book, some time before it was presented, if not also as a witness to the event itself. How could he have mistaken that big thing, for something else? It's not likely he was not near enough at some point to not be able to ascertain well enough what it was.
That's a lot of to overcome on the way to the belief the Catholic member of the delegation had no direct knowledge of what the book was, mistakenly getting his info from Iraqi TV, with his own words describing the incident as he did -- for what reason? Just a plain mistake, he never was close enough to see it. Or---Fear for his life being taken by some Iraqi muslim if he offered a different version of the story, even as he was being interviewed by the very Roman Catholic Fides?
How many hoops much we jump through, how much reason must one suspend, to consider much less believe the wives-tales version that is being passed around in some places -- that it was some other book?
Just to be clear: the original source, FIDES, is absolutely Catholic; I certainly don’t believe either the news source or the Chaldeans were in any way trying to slander the Pope, of the Church.
At that time in Iraq, the genocidal crazy running the country was actually a secularist, and neither the Wahabbis or the Saudis had manipulated the muslims, meaning that Iraqi Islam was frozen at the state it was when Hussein took over in the 1950s, before the Iranian Shiites, PLO and Wahabbis stoked the death-cult aspects of Islam throughout the Middle East; the most “dangerous” Muslims at the time were the natural allies of the Chaldeans, the Kurds.
Pope John Paul II saw the primary struggle as between the godless and the God-seeking. He had also seen virulent strains of Hindu and Buddhism subsumed by the cause of international stability, and the other pagan religions virtually disappear.
Further, the Iraqi Muslims still retain a strong, suppressed, Christian way of thinking. Islam is a form of polity, not so much a religion in the Christian sense. You don’t have to believe; you only have to obey. And so many Christian beliefs thrive as “folk religion,” persisting in Islam the way paganism persisted in Christian Europe as “superstition.”
Thus, it would make every sense in the world to me if the Chaldean archbishop regarded Iraqi Muslims as stray members of his own flock. What’s been disturbing to me is that it’s the Koran and Mohammed which is the element that separates Iraqi folk religion from Christianity. In the Middle Ages, the Christians found much to be admired among the “Mohammedans.” The neoclassical Westerners seems to have thought that this was because the Moslems were so cool: “look at all the art and science they have.” The East knew to differentiate between the Christian, incumbent culture of the Middle East, and the evil teachings of the Koran which perverted it. Hence, that Patriarch of Constantinople who Benedict XVI famously cited at Regensburg, Paleologus, was teaching the West what the East knew, when he said: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.
So, kissing am Iraqi, despite his being a Muslim would be a wonderful thing for the Pope to do. Kissing the Koran would be a serious error, one that I’d like to confirm from more than one source.