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.
Of course, you’re right that the Muslim extremists were crazy for burning and killing due to what Ratzenberger said. But in my opinion, unless the guy has his head in a hole in the ground, unless he has read or seen nothing in the news lately about the spreading violence re: cartoons, Iraq, etc. — he was monumentally stupid to inflame their passions again. He knew what he was doing, and must have known better.
PC