More thoughts on Pope Benedict's lecture. While the Pope has nothing to apologize for, the quotes he used were certainly intentional and guaranteed to get a world-wide reaction. Pope Benedict is a chess player, he's quite a few steps ahead of everyone else. He's planning a trip to Turkey in November and he decides to quote a Christian Emperor from Constantinople in 1391?!? Yowee!! The coolest thing I've read so far on this was by Lucyna at Sir Humphrey's (a kiwi blog):
Sitting here thinking tonight, it came to me what Benedict was doing. I've read the entire speech a couple of times now, and I think that what he's doing is reaching out to us, all of us that live in the West. His speech got the attention of the MSM because it said something that the Muslims might react to (and predictably on cue they do), but, more critically is the need for us to read the speech.. Because he's talking to us about the nature of God and laying out why God is not the same as Allah. He's also linking it to our historical past, the Byzantine Empire during the time that it was under seige by Muslims intent on taking over and forceably converting or killing the resident population. Which they did less than 100 years later. He's saying that God does not countenance conversion in this manner and any god that would is not our God.
I have been inspired to write this because of that thought that Benedict is talking to us. This thought was then confirmed by a commenter on JihadWatch who had translated some headline in a Bishop's online newspaper to English. One said:
"They removed reason from God: The true criticism of the Pope is to the West."
Good eye, Lucyna, good eye. Also found an amusing comment on the Pope from Hans Kueng, the Swiss-born Catholic theologian (big critic of Papa Ratzi):
"He didn't fulfil any of the hopes of reform-oriented Catholics. But on a personal level, he made a nice impression and was on the wavelength of the faithful. He's not a media pope with acting talent trying to pull in applause. Rather he is someone who concentrates on the central truth of Christianity, belief in God."
Exactly! That's what Popes are supposed to do. He's a theologian, the leader of the Catholic Church, not a politician.
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