Pope's apology contradicts intentions

September 25, 2006 —

Happy anniversary, Lutherans. On this day 451 years ago, your faith was in essence legitimized by the Peace of Augsburg, which promised to end the internecine warfare in central Europe that had been raging since Martin Luther's 95 Theses were nailed to a church door in Wittenburg. With peace secured, Catholics and Lutherans were both able to focus on eliminating the much peskier Anabaptists and Calvinists.

Society has advanced quite a bit in the past four-and-a-half centuries. Today, at least in the West, we have full suffrage, refrigerated food, and on-demand pornography. You'd think the superstitious squabbling would have gone the way of bloodletting. And naturally, you'd be wrong.

A year after the overblown Muslim reaction to the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad as a terrorist comes the overblown reaction to a quote from Pope Benedict XVI. Now one thing's for sure, Pope Benedict XVI is no John Paul II. Besides bearing an uncanny resemblance to Emperor Palpatine, Benedict XVI recently managed to infuriate millions of Muslims by quoting a fourteenth century Emperor, who said "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Naturally, this caused quite a calamity in the effigy industry, which was temporarily forced to shift production from George Bush effigies to Pope-gies. I'm sure the Popemobile has been reinforced with another layer of bulletproof glass.

Moderate Muslims lament the stereotyping of their faithful as violence-inclined. But when the Pope offered criticism of their faith, many Muslims acted as if the world had turned against them. Rather than offering rational - well, at least rational as far as religions go - defense of Islam, they decried that someone - especially the head of one billion Catholics - would have the gall to insinuate that they were violent. Anyways, to prove their peaceful intent, some Muslims decided to set churches ablaze and promise death to the Pope if he visited Turkey, an Islamic, but secular nation. It reminded me of the scene in PCU where students protested about how they weren't going to protest anymore.

Eventually, the Pope gave in - kind of - and said he felt "deep respect" for Islam, but did not offer a direct apology. Which, for eschatological reasons, I'm glad to see.

The day the Pope apologizes for criticizing Islam is the day I start believing that Armageddon is at hand. Christianity and Islam are both predicated on the "I'm right, you're wrong" notion of spirituality. As soon as one side starts to tip their hand, the other side will go in for the kill.

It's not as if the Pope declared the second Inquisition against Muslims. But you'd think that was the case. Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf called for a world-wide ban on the defamation of Islam to the United Nations General Assembly this past week. Which leads to the question: how does one enforce this ban? If someone criticized Islam as a violent religion, would the ironic punishment then be to cut off their head?

Either all religions should be open to ridicule or criticism, or none of them should. I choose the former. Without an open dialogue, how can one defend charges that their religion is indeed the correct one?

Every day, I keep trying to convince myself that Islam is not inherently violent. Just as I'm about to commit to that position, something comes along to drag me back into the muddied waters of uncertainty.

Was the Pope's statement ill-advised? Of course it was. In this age of religious fanaticism, Benedict has just added fuel to the fire. But by apologizing, Benedict contradicts the beliefs of billions of Christians, undercuts his own legitimacy, and lets Muslim extremists believe that they can get away with anything.

You may be wrong, but hold your beliefs to the death, Pope Benedict XVI. After all, isn't that the point of organized religion?