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To: AlbionGirl
This was inevitable, and actually I don't see how any talks can proceed without getting it 'out of the way.'

Exactly. This Pope is brilliant beyond imagination at dealing with the thorniest problem of our time (and, no, I'm not Catholic).

If both religions are subjected to indepth rational inquiry, examination will find that Christianity's errors are all due to errant and often naive humans...but Jesus will stand heroic and untainted as always.

Any guess as to what will remain of islam? Whatever remains will be a reformed islam.

This Pope bowls me over will his incredible wisdom and strategic prowess.

7 posted on 09/25/2006 1:15:29 PM PDT by Dark Skies (Allah sez "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.")
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To: Dark Skies
If both religions are subjected to indepth rational inquiry, examination will find that Christianity's errors are all due to errant and often naive humans...but Jesus will stand heroic and untainted as always.

I really don't think this is true, DS. Here's a bit from the History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, who really doesn't have an axe to grind. He was born in '28, he's a Roman Catholic, an Oxford Historian. He can of course be wrong, but so can those who argue with an opposing point of view. He had the guts to admit what needed to be admitted as regards the behaviour of the Church, and not that it was just a few bad apples.

"The idea of Catholic Christians exercising mass violence against the infidel hardly squared with scripture, nor did it make much sense in practical terms. The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature. In Arab territories, Christianity had penetrated heathenism, but usually in Monophysite form - and neither easter nor western Catholicism could find a compromise with the Monophysites in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Arabs, driven by draught, would almost certainly have used force to expand anyway. As it was, Mohammed, a Monophysite, conflated the theological and economic problems to evolve a form of Monophysite religion which was simple, remarkably impervious to heresy, and included the doctrine of the sword to accommodate the Arab's practical needs. It appealed strongly to a huge element within the Christian community. The first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk, in 636 was achieved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the enemy. The Christian Monophysites - Copts, Jacobites and so forth - nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Michael the Syrian, faithfully produced the tradition of his people when he wrote: 'The God of Vengeance who alone is the Almighty...raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us from the hands of the Romans.' And, at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: 'The hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the Arabs - may God strengthen and prosper it.' The religious pattern froze: The Arab Moslems tolerated all Children of the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand. Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and certain Syrian cities. Generally they preferred Arab-Moslem to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to 'liberate.'

Three factors combined to produce the militant crusades. The first was the development of small-scale 'holy wars' against Moslems in the Spanish theatre. In 1063, Ramiro I, King of Aragon, was murdered by a Moslem; and Alexander II promised an indulgence for all who fought for the cross to revenge the atrocity; the idea was developed by Gregory VII who helped an international army to assemble for Spanish campaigning, guaranteeing canonically that any Christian knight could keep the lands he conquered, provided he acknowledged that the Spanish kingdom belonged to the see of St. Peter. Papal expansionism, linked to the colonial appetite for acquiring land, thus supplied strong political and economic motives. There was, secondly, a Frankish tradition, dating from around 800, that the Carolingian monarchs had a right and a duty to protect Holy Places in Jerusalem, and the western pilgrims who went there. This was acknowleged by the Moslem caliphs, who until the late eleventh century preferred Frankish interference to what they regarded as the far more dangerous penetration by Byzantium.

...The idea that Europe was a Christian entity, which had acquired certain inherent rights over the rest of the world by virtue of its faith, and its duty to spread it, married perfectly with the need to find some outlet both for its addiction to violence and its surplus population.

What really created the crusade, however, was the almost unconscious decision, at the end of the 11th century, to marry the Spanish idea of conquering the land from the infidel with the practice of mass, armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. And this sprang from the third factor -the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger. Cisterian pioneer-farming at he frontiers was one solution. Crusading was another - the first great wave of the European colonial migrations. It was, in fact, deeply rooted in Christian cosmology. The Ptolemaic conception of the circumambient ocean had been accepted by the Fathers, and reconciled with the bible in Isidore's encyclopedia. The three continents were allocated to the sons of Noah after the Flood - Shem stood for the Jews, Japhet for the Gentiles and Ham for the Africans or blacks. Alcuin's commentary on Genesis reads: "How was the world divided by the sons and grandsons of Noah?" "Shem is considered to have acquired Asia, Ham, Africa and Japhet, Europe." The passage then went on to prove from the scriptures that Japhet-Europe was by its name and nature divinely appointed to be expansionist. Within a generation of Alcuin, early in the ninth century we first hear of Christendom an entity judged to be co-extensive with Europe, but with special privileges and rights, including the right to expand. Phrases like the 'defense of Christendom' against the Saracens were used (ninth century) and in the eleventh century, Gregory VII referred to the 'boundaries of Christendom' and the Church being 'mistress of the whole of Christendom.' From the start, then, the crusades were marked by depredations and violence which were as much racial as religious in origin....The fall of Jerusalem was marked by a prolonged and hideous massacre of Moslems and Jews, men, women and children. This episode had a crucial effect in hardening Islamic attitudes to the crusaders."

In theory, the Pope doesn't have to do a thing, but the reality is that won't work because people remember. And, good faith is established through honesty. I'm not sure what that will mean to the Moslems in the end, because they are irrational, and in kind, their murderous sprees are also different, with suicide bombings and the like, so the comparison is tough. Add to that, there doesn't seem to be even a small portion of 'moderate' Moslems that are visible or audible, that's a big problem. But how is that different than Germany allowing Hitler to come to power and then sitting by as he commenced with his hideous plans? History does repeat itself. I'm not really judging the Germans. Who knows what I would do, if I had to choose between life and death due to such circumstances?

We're going to probably have to kill a lot of Moslems, including women and children. It's best that we think through it all, so that when our children look back on what we probably will have to do, they'll be able to say we tried to avoid so much death.

8 posted on 09/25/2006 1:41:40 PM PDT by AlbionGirl
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To: Dark Skies
...Jesus will stand heroic and untainted as always.

Of course, but His good name was indeed sullied.

9 posted on 09/25/2006 1:56:10 PM PDT by AlbionGirl
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