Posted on 12/13/2011 9:55:16 PM PST by dangus
Really, Alex? You show me ANY Western news source about the Pope kissing the Koran NOT based on this one interview. Because I couldn’t find a single one. Which is really odd, given that the interview happened WEEKS after the Pope supposedly kissed the Koran.
Anyone who has EVER mentioned the incident in any way, shape or form has as their sole information source that one interview, so on what basis is anyone going to deny it? I didn’t deny it; I only asked if anyone can confirm or deny it. And apparently not a soul on FR can do either.
Idiotic conclusions about President Bush one could reach by your logic:
* George W Bush really was a coke addict.
* He procured several abortions for Laura Bush.
* His father conspired with space aliens to destroy Ross Perot’s daughter’s wedding.
* Those damned space aliens endorsed Vice President Gore instead of him.
(That logic being, “no-one denied it, so it must be true.”)
In case there is anyone else here not familiar with the story, and it's present lack of working links back to the original, here's another link to the story, this one being the oldest I could find after a hour or so of searching;
with an embedded internal link to their own page's published "copy" presently singularly; They claimed they obtained the story from FIDES.
You mention that the only physical evidence we have is the photo. In one sense, we don't even have that.
But we presently can find enough instances of the photo, and in one location I came across, including a purported link to the photo itself, leading to a 404 page at FIDES.
Also can be found multiple instances of links shown to the original article at FIDES, but with that destination link also becoming apparently
404 at some later date, around or after the year 2006, or so it seemed to me from comparing multiple mentions and discussions referencing the item.
After that time, mentions, if there is a link provided, most frequently point to the CatholicCulture.Org page which is still active.
It is of note that all of these copies match with the earliest copy I have been able to find, which is dated June 6, 1999.
The Daily Catholic links, in light of the rest, is strong enough support that at this juncture, it is acceptable to assume that the "interview" was indeed run by FIDES,
and first published by them.
It is most likely that the interview itself was conducted by FIDES also, as is mentioned in the headlines at Daily Catholic;
How convenient now for them the story is no longer accessible on FIDE servers. The story launched a thousand web pages, much weeping, wailing and wide-spread crankiness, then some years later 'poof'.
You do otherwise raise many good points. I was almost convinced, until considering them in detail.
I had particular problem with #'ed point(1) Not a planned event? Ok, I'll concede it is doubtful the pope planned on or intended to kiss a koran on purpose. But the event was otherwise "planned", in that it was a scheduled audience of religious leaders, one of them, the Chaldean patriarch being an affiliate of sorts.
It was certainly "planned" by the giver of the book to bring and present a book to the pope, that seems obvious.
As to;
That only appears possible if one assumes that the Chaldean never caught a direct, close look at the gift that was to be presented?
Really, what are the chances of that? They were all members of the same delegation. It's possible they may have traveled together. One would think that they traveled together, on the Iraqi 'dime'.
It's likely they shared enough common language to be able to communicate, before and after the event. The Chaldean, one cannot imagine,
is incapable of reading Arabic. It is doubtful the patriarch would mistake something else for a koran. I'm sure he's seen a ton of them, for he would have been living in a culture surrounded by them, all his life...
For all we know, the gift could have even been mentioned or talked about by the giver of the book, to the other delegate members.
Rather than his relying upon Iraqi television accounts to having informed him of what the book was, it would make more sense to argue that the Chaldean simply had to have noticed the book some time previously to it being actually handing directly to the pope.
---how can anyone miss it? it's a big book!---
We would have to believe that he didn't see it for what it was, didn't realize that the most likely book a Muslim religious authority figure would present one of JPII's religious stature, would be a finely made Koran. (or Hadith?)
If we go down that road, it would begin to rely upon it all being elaborate subterfuge on the part of the Muslim members of the delegation. That sounds tempting, I know...
What seems much more plausible, is that the Iraqi TV coverage after-wards was more like the Iraqi's trying to make Islamic supremacy hay out of the affair, or read other meanings into it which would be to their own liking.
In some ways, in the hearts of some Iraqi's, it could have well back-fired, as it would help prepare the hearts & minds of some Iraqi's, to the idea that the coming invasion was NOT one of religious war nature, with the West coming in the name of religious Crusade against Islam itself.
In the world of discussion as to the unintended consequences of the alleged book kissing, that is a possible one on the positive side of the ledger that may have been overlooked, and may have helped serve to save a few lives which would have been otherwise lost, hurling themselves against overwhelmingly superior firepower.
Guys like Osama Bin Laden WANTED the West to come against Islamics in the form of religious strife & war. That's why he and his minions did what they did. The Iranians, with their stooge Muqtada Al Sadr, worked very hard at trying to stir up the religious part, which in the face of superior firepower, would only lead, and did lead, to the greater loss of life among the Iraqi populace.
I'll grant you that it doesn't seem very likely that it was a "planned event" if the plan portion included anyone from the Vatican, Pope included, deliberately organizing or planning upon him being brought that book so that he could kiss it, to 'show his love'.
The Chaldean patriarch's statements concerning the event are a first person witness account of the proceedings, which corroborate what was shown and claimed on television.
If we are to contemplate the witness to somehow have been in error, we must also recognize that at this time, there is no evidence whatsoever that supports that speculation. What we do have evidence of, is a FIDES interview, and a photograph.
That being said, I'm more than willing to otherwise accept, and consider as most plausible explanation, the sort of explanation you enclosed in your point #3.
It would beggar belief that is was calculated move on the Vatican's part.
I do however, have strong suspicions concerning the disappearance of the item at FIDES. Accident, or on purpose?
I’m not conspiratorial. It’s been 12 years, and by removing the article, they certainly don’t remove all the hundreds of bloggers which went nuts over it.
But I thoroughly disagree with your analysis of the nature of the event. We only have the picture to go on, but the full-wide picture makes it look nothing like a formal presentation by the delegation as a whole. And I’m not doubting that the patriarch was a witness, but it’s plain he’d had heard the media assert frequently what had happened. If the pope were on trial, I’d simply like to ask him, “how did you learn that the book was a Koran?”
That said, having seen the botched Assissi interreligious conference, etc., it IS very plausible that the Pope knew it was a Koran and kissed it, anyway; Assissi II was a very different event, indicating to me that John Paul II agreed with many of the complaints about Assissi I, even though he had gone along with Assissi I, at the time.
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.
Until reading your thread right now, I had not picked up on the fact that this was a binder.
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