The Damaskinos Report

My previous post contained a link to the Pope's lecture about issues as faith and reason which sparked an outrage across the Islamic world.

I have found the reaction to be yet another example of the hysterical climate in which we are currently operating in the world. A number of simple points can be made about the lecture and its aftermath:

1. The Pope was not in fact endorsing the view that Muhammed was "evil and inhuman". Rather, his point was that it is wrong to try and justify violence on the ground of religion. Indeed, his Holiness noted the Koran's injunction against compulsion in matters religious. The quote was in the context of the records of a highly intellectual debate between a Christian and a Muslim philosopher of the 14th century (I am always dubious when such debates are attributed to Emperors whose mindsets were, by necessity, normally much more temporal in nature). Reading it in that historical context, the 14th century debate was largely in a classical Hellenic form where strong rhetoric is used and reason and syllogisms are taken to extremes in order to test out points of contention.

2. The hysterical reactions we have seen to date does rather confirm the concerns raised in Ratzinger's lecture about the enforcement of religious doctrines by violence. Sure, the Catholic Church had been guilty of such violence in the past. But that does not make the current climate of fear (whether physical or political) instilled by the kinds of reactions and threats and demands that we now see. One does not have to agree with what the Pope said. It may even be the case that his lecture's underlying thesis was wrong or at best sloppy. People of good faith can have disagreements over things. But to start issuing threats and rounding condemning the alleged wrong as an asserted fact without tackling its substance is, to my mind, a real threat to free intellectual discourse.

3. In any event, some of the criticisms of the Pope smacks of hypocrisy. How can some of the critics throw stones when they live in or even rule over nations that routinely criticises, lampoons and persecutes those of other faiths? Comparatively, a single quote in lectures that is open to criticism and debate is, even if the points made are wrong or inappropriate, much more preferable to lives or livelihoods being threatened just for believing in something else.

4. As for those who claim that the Pope should choose his words carefully - why should he? For one, he is speaking out on the basis of his conscience. Even if we do not agree with him (this speech aside, I have always found Ratzinger's work during his time as the head of the modern equivalent of the Inquisition to be irksome at best), he is showing the world the importance of speaking out and not be cowed or scared by possible threats. As JS Mill had said, only by letting issues be debated without fear or favour in the "marketplace of ideas" could humankind move forward.

5. Further, popes have not really been political leaders since the 1929 Treaty of Lateran at the latest, but probably even before that, for it was in the 1870s when the Papacy lost its lands to the Kingdom of Italy. To the extent that people like John Paul II had been seen as "political" leaders, it was only an incidental externality to his role as a moral leader. Same with the current Pope. As a moral leader, he has a duty to proclaim what he thinks is right (even if we do not agree with him) without fear or consideration of consequences. After all, speaking out on issues cut both ways - those who are now criticising Benedict XVI are probably the same people who praised Archbishop Oscar Romero's courage in El Salvador in speaking out fearlessly against injustices there before being assassinated in the early 1980s. Why should one case of speaking out be lampooned as "well he should be more careful with his words" and another be lauded as courage of the highest order?

Herewith endeth my rant for the day.