[Los Angeles Times] George Weigel - In a brilliant lecture at the University of Regensburg last week, Pope Benedict XVI made a number of crucial points that are now in danger of being lost in the polemics about his supposedly offensive comments about Islam. The pope said that irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women, and children "is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul." If adherents of certain currents of thought in contemporary Islam insist that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, then they must be told that they are mistaken. We know that, in the past, Christians used violence to advance Christian purposes. The Catholic Church has publicly repented of such distortions of the Gospel and has developed a deep theological critique of the misunderstandings that led to such episodes. By quoting from a robust exchange between a medieval Byzantine emperor and a learned Islamic scholar, Benedict XVI was trying to illustrate the possibility of a tough-minded but rational dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The writer is a senior fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center.
2006-09-21 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive