Infallibility No guard Against Stupidity

The recent emanations from the Vatican are worrisome. If the pontiff’s initial choice of public story-retelling wasn’t imprudent enough, the statement from the Holy See that Benedict didn’t mean to offend Muslims really does make one wonder from which planet the Pope just landed. For Catholics, it cannot inspire much confidence in their leader either.

There are so many angles from which the incident is plainly lamentable. First, referring to (yes, he was quoting a fourteenth century figure, but he was not doing so disapprovingly) the prophet Mohammed’s personal legacy as “evil and inhuman” is not just a sign of gross, possibly bigoted, ignorance; it is also patently hypocritical coming from quarters with as much blood on their hands as the Vatican’s. Or perhaps the pontiff has been too lost in his theological ivory towers to have read up on the genocidal ways of the papal-sanctioned Crusaders, or, more recently, on Vatican sympathies for the Third Reich.

Secondly, the idea that such comments could be made without at least perceived offence requires that the speaker be particularly un-attuned to Muslim sensibilities. Even if one could somehow accept this outlandish proposition; the sin of thoughtlessness remains: The pontiff would know that many Christians would not take kindly to the suggestion, or citation, that, say, Christ was evil. And he most probably has heard of a certain Golden Rule too.

It is a different matter why the Christian world might have reacted differently to just such a statement. For one, Christians do not find themselves in the same existential place as do Muslims today, which for reasons of history, and power-shifts, as well of gross injustices wrought upon populations of their co-religionists today, render Muslims hypersensitive and insecure. Neither does the ummah have a leader of quite the political stature or clout of the Pope to rile others with such injudicious words.

But I digress. I have probably added little to the sum total of the reader’s knowledge. Except, perhaps, if the reader has been sold on Islam-spread-at-tip-of-sword myths. What is more interesting is to note the context of the offensive statements, for it reveals something of a confused mind.

The Vatican has rejected the interpretation of the pontiff’s remarks as an attack on Islam. And there is the predictable apology for ‘causing offence; which was not, of course, the intention.” A non-apologetic apology, that is. As tenable explanations “this should not be interpreted as an attack on Islam” carries the approximate weight of “I smoked but didn’t inhale.” Hiding behind ‘interpretation’ isn’t particularly effective, even if one is careful to say “quote/unquote.”

Defenders of Benedict’s speech, like compatriot Angela Merkel, claim that critics "misunderstand the aim of his speech, which was to call for dialogue between religions". But that is a straw man. Yes, the speech seemed to touch on dialogue between religions, and, more particularly, between the religious and the secular. But it doesn’t follow that all statements were thus conciliatory or devoid of aspersion. Let’s examine the context and what was actually said:

The German-born Pope explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith. In his defence, the pontiff did stress that they were not his own words when he quoted the Emperor Manuel II of the 14th century Byzantine Empire. The emperor’s words were, the pope said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."

Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

All very well, but someone forgot to tell the pope that citing an obscure Emperor’s unflattering opinion of Islam and its Prophet was about as necessary in making the point of incompatibility between violence and Godliness as would be the citing of, say, my comments about my mother-in-law. Only, the former is much stupider. And no amount of hand waving and spin can escape this.

The theme of the speech was not, as is claimed, the search for a basis for interfaith dialogue. It was about the compatibility of reason with faith, and how the use of violence might relate to this. The pontiff’s own words were, “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”

A good topic for a scholarly powwow, admittedly. But then, as if deliberately courting controversy, the pontiff continued, “The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality,” buttressing the point with a quotation from some French Islamist on how Allah is not bound even by His own word.

As key statements go, they don’t get more significant, or telling, that the one above.

What is really interesting, if you have even a slightly philosophical bent of mind, is that these statements were made in the context of the pontiff’s suggestion that the category of Reason be expanded to accommodate more than mere objectivist positivism, or in other words, be more than what the common man understands as logic and believing only what you can see and measure.

The pontiff asks, “Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.”

And how do we know that this synthesis between biblical faith and Aristotlean reason is possible? Well, since the evangelist John said so, it must be true: “In the beginning was the logos [literally, “the word”; loosely, Reason], and the logos is God.”

It would be unfair to subject the average reader to the theological intricacies that followed in the speech. But it would not, I think, be unfair to state that the thrust of the argument was that Christian faith is compatible with reason, if reason were to be understood as more than mere empiricism with logic and mathematics as its structural base. Reason, in other words, must make room for the mystical. Whether the argument is tenable is a question for epistemologists, or anyone taking a serious academic interest in his faith.

What is not of mere academic import, however, is that the pope’s speech clearly seems to co-opt this synthetic space for Christianity. Or, at the very least, there is the clear suggestion that there is no room within it for Islam, or vice versa. Recall the quoted statement “[Allah’s] will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” Recall also the pontiff’s own, “decisive statement” in his argument against violent conversion: “Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”

So, in one fell swoop, the pontiff denies the Islamic traditions of the Mutazilites, Asharites, various sufic orders and even the current, varied, Shiite discourse on the accommodation of the mystical in reason and rationality. If the pope was speaking of and for all religious streams when he called for this same accommodation, he did one heckuva job confusing his audience.

It is not clear why Benedict should have chosen to speak of violent conversions, but even setting aside that question, for those willing to connect the dots, the implications are easy to interpret: To be violent is to be unreasonable, is to act against God. And Islam, which doesn’t put much stock in reason, cannot therefore have a philosophical opposition to violence.

One could challenge the premise that equates violence with unreason. But we won’t. Examining the appropriateness of the example used to make his point against non-violence, given the recent happenings in Lebanon, is a worthier enterprise. Against such a background, it is rather odd that the Pope should choose to preach the value of turning the other cheek. Of course, one cannot fault him for taking a particular philosophical/ethical standpoint. But in doing so, he could have shown greater sensitivity and discretion.

The word from the Vatican yesterday was that “The pope’s lecture was meant as a reflection on the relationship between religion and violence in general, and to conclude with a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come.”

But if it truly meant to condemn religiously-motivated violence across-the-board, why didn’t Benedict just cite an example from Christianity’s chequered history. It’s not as if he’d be hard-pressed finding something that way!

What is disconcerting is not just the possible loss of goodwill capital built up by his predecessor over two decades of interfaith bridge building. It is also the abject ignorance of a man who was a long-time curator of Catholic theology and doctrine, who clearly should know better.

And, not to be trivialized, as a shepherd, he has failed dismally in protecting the interest of his sheep everywhere. Let’s hope his lapse does not come back to haunt him.