Monday, April 09, 2007
Only Pope Benedict could go to Tehran
This Sunday's New York Times Magazine offered an unusually interesting look at Pope Benedict and his effort -- as the author describes it -- to "re-Christianize Europe."
The core of the Pope's conviction:
Benedict is one of the most intellectual men ever to serve as pope — and surely one of the most intellectual of current world leaders — and he has pinpointed the problem of the age, as well as its solution, at the level of philosophy. His argument, elaborated in the years leading up to his election and continuing through his daily speeches and pronouncements, reduces to something like this: Secularism may be one of the great developments in history, but the secularism that holds sway in much of the West — that is, in Western Europe — is flawed; it has a bug in its programming. The mistaken conviction that reason and faith are two distinct realms has weakened Europe and has brought it to the verge of catastrophic collapse. As he said in a speech in 2004: “There exist pathologies in religion that are extremely dangerous and that make it necessary to see the divine light of reason as ‘controlling organ.’ . . . However . . . there are also pathologies of reason . . . there is a hubris of reason that is no less dangerous.” If you seek a way out of the vast post-9/11 quagmire (Baghdad bomb blasts, Iranian nukes, Danish cartoons, ever-more-bizarre airport security measures and the looming mayhem they are meant to stop), and for that matter if you believe in Europe and the West” (the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, the whole heritage of 2,500 years of history), then now, Benedict in effect argues, the Catholic Church must be heeded. Because its
tradition was filtered through the Enlightenment, the thinking goes, the church
can provide a bridge between godless rationality and religious fundamentalism.
In 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope) wrote, “The Muslims ... feel threatened not by the foundations of our Christian morality but by the cynicism of a secularized culture that denies its own foundations.”
And here, then, is how the Pope sees the intersection of European social secularism (and denial of faith) and Muslim culture:
On the other hand, there is a sense in which Christians and Muslims in Europe see themselves as being in the same boat. I spent time in Rome at the pontifical Gregorian University, the Vatican’s premier training ground for priests and others entering religious life, in order to learn about a program, begun in 2000, that brings graduate students from the Muslim world to study Christianity alongside seminarians. The purpose is not to convert the Muslims. “The aim is that they will go back to their own country and speak of their experience here and testify that something different is possible,” said Gaetano Sabetta, who works in the program, and by “something different” he meant a new model of cooperation and understanding as both faiths grapple with secular culture. The Muslim students say they feel bewildered by Italian society but are comfortable at the Gregorian itself. “Within the university, the atmosphere is very religious,” says Omar Sillah, a student from Gambia. “It feels natural to me, as a religious Muslim. But as soon as you step outside the premises, it’s a different world.” The chief reaction of these devout, culturally savvy Muslims to living in Europe seems to be pity. “The situation of Christianity here is very sad for me,” says Ahmet Kademoglu, from Istanbul, who sometimes gives talks on religion at public schools in Italy. “When I speak to groups of students here, I feel they treat religion like a football club, a side you are on. Whereas for me religion is where I find answers to the problems of life.”
Read the entire article.
It made me think that, while many have talked about the notion of a Presidential visit to Iran being akin to a Nixon visit to China, or a Sadat visit to Jerusalem, in fact the most interesting opening might be a Papal Visit with [name your significant globally recognized Islamic leader]. Would it be the Chief Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei (or his successor)? No other political opening would have sufficient meaning.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Apr 09, 02:52:00 PM:
This sounds alot like Dinesh D'Souza.
I hope the Pope gets more of a fair hearing than he did.
The return to a Christian Worldview in The West won't satisfy the Jihadi's, but it might stregthen Muslim Moderates.
By , at
Mon Apr 09, 04:15:00 PM:
Tigerhawk -- I'd be interested in your take on another article in the Sunday NYT Magazine -- "The Undeparted," by Noah Feldman. Subtitle is "No matter who's elected in 2008, our troops will probably remain in Iraq." Thoughts? MCU
By 
Jim in Virginia, at
Tue Apr 10, 06:52:00 AM:
A Benedict- Khameini meeting should be in a neutral location. Lhasa, Angkor Wat, or Salt Lake City?
Fascinating idea.
By Pax Federatica, at
Tue Apr 10, 08:07:00 AM:
Khamenei may not be the right person for Benedict to meet for this purpose. He's a leader of Shi'ite Islam, whereas Sunni is the flavor of Islam that is behind most of the trouble in Europe. The trouble is, Sunni Islam doesn't have a single universally recognized leader - which, indeed, is one of the things the Sunni Islamists of Europe (and elsewhere) are looking to change.
