Last week’s papal speech was ill-judged and badly-advised, says robert fox
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The successors to St Peter as heads of the Roman Catholic Church, the Popes of Rome, have at times been spiritual and venal, recluses and saints, sinners and even criminals, brilliant philosophers and theologians, actors and men of the world. All have had one thing in common, whether they liked it or not: they have all been politicians.
This is what the present Pope, Benedict XVI, appears to have forgotten when he addressed his old university at Regensburg last week on the ticklish matter of faith and reason in Islam and Christianity.
He thought he was on home turf, talking to a closed audience on a matter dear to his heart. The transcript of his address shows signs that he improvised, initially at least. Carried away by the emotion of the occasion, his heart may have ruled his head.
Being the Pope, and not just an old boy of |
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| In the age of the internet and satellite television there are no longer any walls to such pronouncements |
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the theology faculty at Regensburg, his words were bound to travel beyond the university. In the age of the internet and satellite television there are no longer any walls to such pronouncements. They are bound to have consequences, and they are quite likely to be far from the original intent.
And so it has proved. The reference to a discussion on reason and faith taken from the Ancient Greeks into Christian and Islamic doctrine has triggered riots by angry Muslims in Africa and Asia. The Turkish leadership has indulged in some misleading condemnation - probably to make the Pope cancel his planned visit there, a political act in itself - and a Catholic nun, Sister Lionella Sgorbati, 66, has been murdered outside the hospital where she worked in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu.
Why? Why are we here again in the murky world of words, images, rumours and false witness used to inflame? We have seen it before with The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie and, more recently, the Danish cartoons - the clash of misguided intentions 
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