His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave the speech on Tuesday, days ago now, but it’s all just now starting to get into the news. Certainly I first year about it today. I of course do the right thing and go find a copy & read it. Hard to know what to think about reactions to what the Holy Father said without actually knowing what he said, huh?

So I read it and am not especially outraged. He quotes a fourteenth century Byzantine emperor, quoting a rather charged statement actually, but qualifying the quotation by noting that it’s a rather charged statement. And apparently I read an early translation of the orginal German into English, which translation misses even more qualifiers.

But, okay, I’m not a follower of Islam, so I won’t pretend that I can adequately judge their sensitivies to bias and insult. I myself am fairly sensitive to anti-Catholic sentiment, heck, was so when I didn’t particularly believe in God. So let’s just stipulate that what the Holy Father said is in fact offensive to Islam.

Does that justify fire-bombing churches? (Although neither of the two churches bombed in Nablus were actually Catholic churches. One was Anglican and the other Greek Orthodox.) And shooting and killing a Catholic nun in Mogadishu? That’s just fucking crazy.