The EMO-tings of a First Year Law Student!

So the new Pope, Benedict XVI gave a speech recently, and because he had the audacity to say a few critical words about Islam and the Prophet Mohammad he is now coming under fire from the jihadists and Islamists in our midst and the elitist, secular-purists who see in religion, in the Judeo-Christian faith all that is wrong in, and with, our world.

The offending lines that have been saturated in the media . . . "There is no compulsion in religion. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But natrually the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending into details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the Book and the infidels, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: 'Show me just what Mohammad 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'. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God', he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."

"The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

These are not Benedict's words, but his quotation of Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, an educated man of both Christianity and Islam during a series of dialogues explaining the tension between the two great monotheistic religions. It isn't a scribe against Islam or Muslims at all, but an example of what happens when reason becomes divorced from faith, and that reason is central to faith.

Benedict continues, "...Any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be 'scientific' would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. If science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religious and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by science, so undestood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective conscience becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason when necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it."

This danger Benedict refers to I think can be likened to what many, specifically Christians, refer to as 'post-modernism', that catch-all phrase you first learn in college and reading philosophy that at its core rejects universal truth, or at least universal truisms, that are objective in nature, in favor of subjective ones, wherein there can be little consensus or agreement, or truth, simply preferences. This is fine, in fact good when it comes to food, dance, art, musical tastes, fashion, games, hobbies, sports and the like but not so good, in fact dangerous when it comes religion and ethics. As an agnostic still searching for higher meaning in this world I can be skeptical of religion, organized and self-serving at times, and at the same time, admiring of the values and ethics is prophesizes and recognized that values are not old-fashioned and traditional, but classical in nature. Whether or not you are a follower of the New Testament, the Old Testament or neither doesn't matter when it comes to treating your fellow human beings with respect, according them the dignity they deserve and demanding the same in return. What Benedict was trying to say, in his native German or in Latin, translated here in English, is that these objective pillars, and many more particular to his Christian faith, cannot be sacraficed on the alter of faith, dismissed as unreasonable, relegated to personal preference in a multicultural, pluralistic world, not because we don't live in a multicultural, multireligious, pluralistic world, but because they dishonor God.

And it is not politically incorrect, or blasphemous to suggest that this culture of ethics, of values, of respect for others applies to Muslims as well as Christians and the rest of us. If the many protestors who are now burning images of Pope Benedict alongside President Bush, do not accept this then that is their problem, but given the interconnectedness of peoples of all faiths and religions the world over, it impacts us and therefore is our problem too. To pretend otherwise, as sophisticates in the press and the media, who have focused on the few sentences quoting Emperor Paleologus is to deny this fundamental reality; to indulge oneself that the fundamental challenge in today's computer fragmented and networked world, a world that features chemical, biological and nuclear weapons increasingly outside the hands of rational states and democratic governments is that the age-old problem is OF religion and not of THOSE who follow religion. It confuses such an ethic of religiosity and objectivity, and of decency, in favor of one that cannot confront evil, because in the subjective universe of the multiculturalist and personal preferences, there is no such thing as evil at all.

Benedict has since stated he is sorry, not for what he said, but the (over)reaction while still standing by his speech and the clarity of his words. Now I'm no Catholic, and have my issues with some of their tenets, celebacy, priestly fondness for little boys, opposition to birth control, but if Benedict never utters another word during the remainder of his Papacy, he has done us all much good.