The History of Errors

Perhaps he was having trouble with his Oxford Book of Quotations or whatever the equivalent compendium of encyclicals, bulls and learned writings of the Roman Catholic Church happens to be called. In any event, the Pope has put his foot in it.

I'm not often one to defend His Holiness. I emphatically disagree with most Roman Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuals, birth control and abortion; I think that priests should be allowed to marry if they want to; and I'm generally unimpressed by the conservatism of church leaders. All this being said, the overarching message of the Pope's address, as noted by Jewish Studies Chair James Diamond, is an overwhelmingly positive and balanced one (well, for the Pope): Benedict's conclusion - that to act without reason in any religion is to contravene divine will and law - is both pertinent, timely, widely applicable to everything from consumerism to nuclear proliferation, and to my belief, true.

What's just as distressing as the Vatican's inept editing skills is the fact that every news outlet I've seen has made a hash of the Pope's befuddled, crypto-Orientalist (but not I think malicious) point, including its context both within the history of Christian thought, and in the current climate of world events.

His former Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative, highly doctrinaire Roman Catholic (if he weren't, this guy might be the Holy Father right now.) As such, when Benedict XVI hit the stage at his alma mater, the good ol' U of R Theological School, I have to assume he decided to get all erudite on the Faculty's ass - and being well-regarded as one of the world's foremost conservative Catholic theologians even before he became Pope, he might have disappointed the crowd if he hadn't been. So the Pope dug up what I can only assume is a fairly obscure reference in a very obscure book to an even more obscure historical figure - Manuel II Palaeologus, the second last Byzantine Emperor.

Manuel's position in the winter of 1391 was an exceedingly awkward one, involving heavy dynastic infighting with his own family, not to mention the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the 14th century equivalent of Vietnam, with less communism and more sand - European powers jockeyed for interest and territory, fighting the indigenous (in this case Turkish) forces and playing politics with the powerless Byzantine rulers while wasting huge amounts of treasure and manpower in what was truly a quagmire. Manuel was, at age 41, living in the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and licking boots as part of the game of power politics. Sounds suspiciously like another epoch I could mention, doesn't it.

Something I read the other day claimed the whole document was made up. It's not implausible. There have also been a number of reports that the Pope, unlike his predecessor, has had little use for the opinions of his advisers on sensitive topics, particularly Islam. That's not implausible either. What's hardest to believe is that in our future imperfect, dialogue with Muslim interlocutors is perceived by the essentializing powers that be to be more difficult, and less necessary, than in our civilization's "semi-barbaric" pre-Renaissance.

Evil, indeed.