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[quote]'The Dialogue Of Cultures'?

The Pope causes a stir by quoting a 14th century "erudite Byzantine [Christian] emperor" Manuel II Paleologus, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".  
 
POPE BENEDICT XVI 
It was supposed to be a walk down memory lane, when Pope Benedict XVI returned to lecture some 1,500 students and faculty at the University of Regensburg —where he taught theology in the 1970s — on Tuesday, 12 September 2006. But the Pope decided to launch into what International Herald Tribune was to headline as "Pope Criticizes Western Secularism and Islam’s Jihad". The German press had of course largely ignored his remarks on Islam, but even the New York Times was forced to comment that he used "language open to interpretations that could inflame Muslims, at a time of high tension among religions and three months before he makes a trip to Turkey". 
His lecture, which ran over half an hour, quoted "the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both ... Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he [the Byzantine emperor] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying:

[b]"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". [/b]

But this was not all. Islam made up just three paragraphs of the lecture, as he expounded on his most pressing worry viz. how Western science and philosophy and reason had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the secularization of European society.  Observers were quick to point to undercurrents of his main worry, the resultant falling Mass attendance (in Germany, it has fallen to under 15 percent) and the increasing immigrations of Muslims and conversions to Islam clashing with his aim of proselytizing.

Predictably his remarks on Islam have resulted in an immediate furore, with references to the "Nazi Pope" by bloggers who fumed that the Pope had jumped on the bandwagon of "Islamofacism" and the Byzantine Emperor's question about Islam was bound to invite counter questions about Jesus. Significantly, the Pope, unlike his predecessor John Paul, as Cardinal Ratzinger, had never approved of joint prayers with Muslims and even as a Pope has never shied away from expressing his skepticism of the benefits of inter-religious dialogue. In 2004, he had caused a stir by openly opposing membership of Turkey in the European Union on the grounds that it "always represented another continent throughout history, in permanent contrast with Europe." The articulation of his skepticism about Islam’s openness to change, given its view of the Koran as the unchangeable word of God, is nothing new for those who have followed the current Pope's career.

But has he been more than provocative this time? As Renzo Guolo, a professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Padua, points out, "This is maybe the strongest criticism because he doesn’t speak of fundamentalist Islam but of Islam generally. Not all Islam, thank God, is fundamentalist."

Predictably, the chief Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, had to step in for damage control: "I believe that everyone understands, even inside Islam, there are many different positions, and there are many positions that aren’t violent. Here, certainly, the pope doesn’t want to give a lesson, let’s say, an interpretation of Islam, as violent. He is saying, in the case of a violent interpretation of religion, we are in a contradiction with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

In the interest of full context and, to ensure that the raging controversy over the remarks of is placed in perspective, we provide the full text

(HERE http://tinyurl.co.uk/vu37  )

of the lecture entitled Faith, Reason and the University - Memories and Reflections from the official Vatican website which, significantly, notes that the Pope "intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional". © Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana[/quote]

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