By Alexander Smoltczyk in Rome
Borghese knows most Vatican experts. "If you want to understand this press scandal, there's one thing you mustn't forget: The overwhelming majority of Vatican experts aren't Ratzinger fans; they certainly weren't enthusiastic about him before the conclave, nor during it." Ever since Ratzinger took office, many have been waiting for the Teutonic bulldozer to make his first wrong move.
Marco Politi says now that "the lecture was no blunder. It's well written and well thought out," he says. "The quotation was a blow to the face for moderate Islam. It's part of a logical development. After all, the pope has had reservations about the way the dialogue with Islam was conducted under Pope John Paul II ever since he took office. Unlike Wojtyla, the current pope isn't dreaming of climbing Mount Sinai in order for all monotheistic world religions to pray together. He wants to set up signposts in his dialogue with Islam and say: This is an aspect that doesn't follow the path of rationality."
Simpson too is convinced that Ratzinger knew what he was doing. "He made only two minor changes to the lecture when he spoke. He must have known that this passage was explosive -- handle with care." Things stayed quiet on Wednesday. In Germany, the significance of the passage on Islam was noted only by two papers, the dailies Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Berliner Tagesspiegel.
But the Italian dailies set the tone. The conservative Corriere della sera discovers "nothing resembling a refutation of Palaiologos's view, Ratzinger even seems to hold essentially the same position."
Urdu, Turkish, Hindi and Persian
The New York Times weighed in not long afterwards saying that the pope's lecture used "unflattering language about Islam." The story immediately appeared on its Web page, and was sent on from there. BBC World Service dispatched the news in Urdu, Turkish, Hindi and Persian.
Still, no question about the passage on Islam was asked during the final press conference at Munich airport on Thursday. Manuel II Palaiologos seemed to have disappeared back into the past.
It's only when the journalists were already heading for their flights back to Rome that their mobile phones began to ring with the news that the Grand Mufti had already registered his displeasure with the speech in Turkey. He accused Benedict XVI of having displayed a "crusader's mentality" and a "hostile attitude." Turkey's President of Religious Affairs, Ali Bardakoglu, will later say he hadn't even read the text of the lecture at this point.
Two hours after touchdown at Rome's Ciampino airport, headlines like "Pope infuriates the Muslim world" were scrolling across the screens of news programs the world over. They referred to the pope's "disparaging remarks on the Koran" causing "unrest." Lombardi issued a clarifying statement the same evening -- but it was already far too late.
Théodore Koury was on the road when he found out his name had suddenly become the center of a developing religious dispute. "A former assistant wrote to me by e-mail, pointing out that my name had been quoted by the pope," he said. And not just by the pope.
During the hours and days to come, the statement by Khoury quoted by Benedict became the driving force behind a media tsunami -- one whose effects were felt around the world. In Qatar, Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, Al Jazeera's house televangelist, called out a "day of peaceful rage." In Pakistan, thousands of Muslim clerics and scholars demanded the pope be removed from his post.
Weather from the Old Testament
The deputy leader of Turkey's governing party, Salih Kapusuz, issued a statement that the pope would enter history on par with Hitler and Mussolini: "He has the dark mentality of the Middle Ages. He is a pitiful being who has not benefited from the spirit of the Reformation in the Christian world."
The pope's lecture was shamelessly instrumentalized by all sides. The German weekly Welt am Sonntag featured a crusading editorialist writing about "the struggle for freedom -- mainly freedom of thought -- against imprisoned, oppressed and manipulated thought. This cultural clash cannot be avoided."
On Sunday, the airspace above Castelgandolfo was closed to air traffic and plain clothes anti-terrorism units mingled with the pilgrims. It was raining heavily -- weather seemingly straight from the Old Testament. Al Jazeera aired a live broadcast of the words Benedict spoke before the Angelus prayer: "At this time," the pope intoned, "I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought."
The comments were about as close to an apology that any pope has ever come. But the final step -- the genuine "peccavo" or apology, the "I have sinned" -- was never heard.
"That was no accident," Tübingen-based theologian Hans Küng said the week before last. In his view, it's inconceivable that a thinker of the caliber of his former colleague Ratzinger could have made his comments about Islam inadvertently. "He should have read my book first," Küng said. Ratzinger "probably wanted an intellectual debate but failed to foresee the international consequences," Vatican expert Marco Politi believes.
Politi's hypothesis seems supported by the fact that the disclaimer in the reworked, official version of the pope's lecture, issued in October, refers only to the "polemic" and the "unacceptably brusque form" of the Byzantine emperor's remark -- not to its content. Benedict explicitly says he agrees with Manuel's position on the "relationship between faith and reason."
The media catastrophe that started in Regensburg was partly due to the clumsiness of the Vatican's newly staffed press agency. Another reason was the absence of a person in the pope's orbit with the courage to warn him about possible mistakes -- someone without overblown respect for his authority. The curia is now counting on Cardinal Bertone as a reliable reviewer of speeches and lectures penned by Benedict. But Bertone's critical distance is not so great -- he prefers to differ from himself than from the pope.
The mistake
Benedict XVI spoke about the fundamental importance of the logos -- the "Word." At the same time, he underestimated the explosive potential of the spoken word in today's world. "In the beginning was the Word." That's more than just the opening phrase of St. John's gospel: It's also the fundamental rule of scandal. In today's global communication, "logos" is the 10-second soundbite, not the full text of a lecture, complete with footnotes.
That was the mistake.
It was the only mistake. For even as the debate over inter-religious dialogue and the role of Muhammad continues, a "Center for Christian Culture" is being opened -- with the support of the both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Vatican. And on Oct. 15, 38 Islamic scholars published their open letter to the pope. They included Ayatollah Mohammed Ali Takshiri from Iran, the Grand Mufti of Egypt and dignitaries from Russia, Bosnia, Istanbul and Oman.
The letter is scholarly and full of medieval references -- as if written to be read in Regensburg. It paints a different picture of contemporary Islam. "Jihad" doesn't necessarily mean "holy war," the authors write: It can also mean "struggle in the way of God." The letter points out that, under Islam, "non-combatants are not permitted or legitimate targets," adding that "If a religion regulates war and describes circumstances where it is necessary and just, that does not make that religion war-like, any more than regulating sexuality makes a religion prurient."
It marked the first time respected Islamic scholars had engaged with the content of a speech by the pope. They even defined the place of reason within faith as if they had studied under Professor Ratzinger: In their letter, the scholars argued that "there is a consonance between the truths of the Koranic revelation and the demands of human intelligence."
And so, even human error might occasionally serve a purpose.
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