You misunderstand me I think Nahum - I agree with much of what you say. This topic has been quite ‘madly’ debated on The Guardian's website several times and with more than 500 postings on some:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_bates/2006/09/post_390.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/madeleine_bunting/2006/09/post_393.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anas_altikriti/2006/09/an_insufficient_apology.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_brown/2006/09/benedict_and_the_jihad.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2006/09/gods_reactionaries.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1876422,00.html

I have cross referenced your article on one of these (the second or last I think) – believing yours to be better framed. Unfortunately, wrongly of me, I’ve more or less started my contribution here with my conclusion there – after reading more than 1,000 posts – unfair of me really.

My point is: of course it is OK and indeed correct to look at the past to learn lessons, but only so we can improve how we do things in the future (and when doing so we contextualise the process appropriately) and of course the only place we can really do this (actually change behaviour) is in the present. I also recognise, people get stuck in the past and some never change.

Group signifiers are violently defended these days (on all sides) with little depth of understanding of what lies behind. For some, blind faith and ‘Chinese whispers’ about the past seem to be enough. Just because I don’t elect to wear a lapel-pin to signify my affiliation with such and such a ‘gang’, doesn’t mean to say I have no understanding of either life or God. Christ attempted to liberate the minds of people, not get them to sign up to a different club and give their personal power away to be misused by some self-interested other.

If we are to use ‘identity’ labels, other than each others names, especially for groups, my personal preference is “people”.

Have you read "Four Quartets" by T.S. Elliot?

Shorbe,

It is a risky thing betting on the end of Christianity, those who have done it in the past often have an axe to grind or some heresy to put in its place. What's yours?

"People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad . . . The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable . . . It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob . . . It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to avoid them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect." GK Chesterton Orthodoxy

Shorbe its not the end of Christianity its just the end of you.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI08Aa01.html

Christianity is undergoing a worldwide resurgence
http://www.amazon.com/Next-Christendom-Coming-Global-Christianity/dp/0195146166
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Beijing-Christianity-Transforming-Changing/dp/0895261286/sr=1-1/qid=1158889392/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4383835-3540954?ie=UTF8&s=books

I agree with what you write re i slam. All religions are not the same.
The modern opium of the people is not religion but the very opposite the belief in ultimate nothingness.

Cheslav Milosh wrote

"it is a belief in the nothingness after death the huge solace of thinking that after all betrayals our greed our cowardice and our murders that we are not going to be judged"

I guess most haven’t as yet understood the precise nature or context of the polemic the Pope gave at the University of Regensburg. I’m not particularly a Pope fan or his apologist, but if one were to actually read his speech, reasonable minded people would suggest his words warrant no apology. It would appear, those who have expressed the greatest moral outrage in various editorials etc. have been the least reasonable and the most emotional.

Here’s some of what all the fuss is about (part may even seem at odds with early church thinking, a la, the last paragraph.):

“…The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. 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." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

… we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. 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….

John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos…

Logos means both reason and word…

The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude, which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.” - Pope Benedict

Reida,

I think you'll find that is what I argue in my piece. The pope is arguing a fairly consistent, conservative argument. He is worried about the de-hellenization of Christianity, and wants Christians to become more orthodox, whilst advocating the place of reason within this orthodoxy.

But it is no secret that contrary to his predecessor, this Pope is no pluralist: For him, Christ is the only way. All others are heresy. He has made similar comments before, in that he believes it impossible for Islam to correspond adequately with contemporary culture. The same criticism might be leveled at parts of Catholicism.

But my point was that he has a very public and political position (regardless of whether he wants to acknowledge this or not), and with that comes responsibility. If he uses his pulpit to say 'stupid things,' to incite hatred or outrage, when he could articulate his points without doing so, he is being very foolish indeed. Lives are at stake here, and the world is already divided along some fairly tense lines.

Times like these call for understanding, and diplomacy, measured words of wisdom, not foolish firebrands. What does it matter if his speech is articulate if he chooses to quote something so offensive to many if not all Muslims as he has chosen to do. Did he really have to use THAT particular quote?

Kevin,

A more measured response to you. I have looked at some of the links you provided, and I think I may have misunderstood you somewhat.

I think I was projecting a response to triumphal atheists, who belittle me because of my particular religion. I don't assume to be any better than anyone else (at least i try not to), because I think that considering humans in heirarchical terms is pompous and not reasonable.

We must all reject this type of reasoning, and live our lives in every moment as if we are all equal. This is the only way toward peace. Of course we're not perfect, but you gotta try...

Nahum,
The degree of understanding required here is to appreciate the measure and nature of why there are those who seek to attack. There is always a time and a place for diplomacy and measured words – the greatest men and women in history, however, have never shied away from causing offence through language. It would seem the least violent but most ‘offensive’ men in history (Jesus included) have suffered death at the hands or at the instigation of those they offended.

The argument or polemic put forward by the Pope appears not to be what we so much believe but the abhorrence to be felt at the violence in forcing others to a similar belief. Secondary to this, is his obviously personal belief in the idea of the universality of “Christ”. Christendom, with its earthly ‘kingdom’ and crusades, was an aberration to a ‘gospel truth’ and it was abandoned through the process of Reformation and Enlightenment. The West certainly bears a mantle of guilt because of what has been done in the name of “Christ”; it cowers, semi-paralysed, unable to fully act for fear of the accusation of hypocrisy.

What is now being done in the name of “Allah” is in need of similar reformation - a restoration that will entirely change the current face of Islam. The world perhaps slumbers, sick to death of another religious war and the religious bigotry surrounding it. But the issue runs deep, beneath what is superficial to religion. Our ‘globalisation’ will ensure the current ‘terror’ will in some way strike us all – our words need to ‘offend’, critically, those who permeate such terror. Our strong demur, in response this terror, is far more reaching than any respectful silence.

Well said relda,

Caroline Glick puts it this way.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0906/glick092206.php3