What do Greg Mitchell and the Pope have in common?
posted at 10:26 pm on September 18, 2006 by Allahpundit
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Neither one’s a particularly trustworthy journalist, neither one has a reputation for being fair to bloggers, and neither one is above redacting and rewriting published pieces after the fact.
I mean, allegedly redacting and rewriting. Sorry, Greg!
The Slate piece is correct, by the way. I read the Pope’s speech on the Vatican website at some point yesterday and I’m 99% sure that bold text wasn’t there at the time.
Nightly Pope news: Juan Cole blames Muslims’ “sensitivities” on their postcolonial sensibility, which is an elaborate way of saying it’s the west’s fault; the Telegraph borrows a plot arc from the Bush = Hitler storyline and blames the Pope’s coterie of yes men for not having stopped him before he said something so rash; the Pontiff’s visit to Turkey is, tentatively, still on, although there’s no word yet if he’ll meet with any representatives of the 0.2% of the population that isn’t Muslim; and finally, serious props to the CBS Evening News for their choice of guest on tonight’s “freeSpeech” segment. Fatwas have been issued for less.
Update: Greg Tinti has a PDF of the Pope’s speech, which he says he downloaded a day or so after the controversy started. The bolded part isn’t in it.
Update: Memo from Anne Applebaum: stop apologizing.
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Allah: You’re memory servers you right. Here’s a .pdf of the Pope’s speech pulled from the BBC a day or so after the news broke. The bold text was not there.
Greg Tinti on September 18, 2006 at 10:42 PM
Or serves, either way.
Greg Tinti on September 18, 2006 at 10:43 PM
Mark Steyn has made a hash of all such attributions by pointing out that the muslims in the Middle East were some of the people least subjected to colonial administration. He thinks that’s their very problem and a mistake that should be remedied. I’d be in favor of imposing colonial administration on muslims, too, if I thought the Americans had the combination of cruelty, courage, stamina, and moderation it requires.
Kralizec on September 18, 2006 at 10:47 PM
Irshad Manji is an incredibly brave young woman along the lines of Hirsi Ali..which begs the question: WHY are the loudest, bravest, clearest, reasonable voices Muslim WOMEN? For a religion that seems to be terrified of them, it is a real paradox.
labwrs on September 18, 2006 at 11:15 PM
It’s not, really…If I were a wacko extremist I’d be afraid of the reasonable voices too–especially if I had been raised to consider the wielders of those reasonable voices as less than human.
Nothing worse than being shown to be wrong–and REALLY wrong–by someone whom you view as inferior. The natural response–or at least the predictible response–is to be even more of a prick than you were before.
Bob's Kid on September 18, 2006 at 11:35 PM
The Pope is a very strong social conservative, but the Vatican always leans too liberal on foreign policy issues. The Vatican right now obviously thinks it can appease Muslims by apologizing. Hopefully, they will wake up and become more like the Danes.
I’m taking an excellent graduate course this semester: History of the Catholic Church I. The professor is very conservative and his day job is at the Department of Homeland Security. One of the texts required is The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc. It was published in 1938. Here is one of the lines from the book in the Chapter “The Heresy of Mohammed,” talking about the last great attempt of Islam to take Europe:
My professor stated that many analysts that knew their history immediately knew why Osama Bin Laden had chosen September 11 to attack America.
The terrorists have been waiting for an excuse to target the Vatican, so apologizing is not going to make the conflict go away.
januarius on September 18, 2006 at 11:39 PM
Benedict did not apologize for the content of his talk at the University.
He has not leaned left on foreign policy.
F. Rottles on September 19, 2006 at 4:04 AM
F. Rottles,
Pope Benedict did apologize. While the Vatican has been staunchly conservative on social issues, Cardinal Sodano, the former Vatican secretary of state, has been extremely liberal on foreign policy. Just look at his comments on the Iraq War and the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.
I’m taking the class at the Notre Dame graduate school of Christendom College. Because of the location, many of the students taking the evening classes and professors are employees of various government agencies, and all are devout Catholics. American Catholics strike me as conservative both on domestic and foreign policy issues, while many European Catholics such as Pope Benedict, while conservative on social issues, are pacifists.
However, Al Qaeda and other terrorists are looking at the conflict as a religious one, which is why Osama Bin Laden chose September 11 as the date to attack America. For the Pope to apologize will only embolden the terrorists.
These are the comments about Islam I would like to hear from Rome.
januarius on September 19, 2006 at 6:23 AM
januarius, Benedict is not pacifist. I think that perhaps his various statements on war have been too subtle for American audiences. And our left/right divide (in the US and in Europe) tends to encourage misreadings, unfortunately.
As for the perceived apology, he expressed distress that some people misunderstood his message and reacted as they did. He was not trying to make a non-apology apology, as some politicians might do, but he was again being careful and precise. Stuff gets lost in the translation.
I think that this has plagued him for years — even when he speaks to Americans in English or to the Italians in Italian, to the Germans in German, and so forth. His message is clearest when his audience is in sync with his sentiments, so that his reasoning is better received — such as during the weeks following JPII’s death.
And his written statements are brilliant in their clarity. I think a comparison of his speech and his clarifying statement illustrate this point.
Best wishes with your challenging studies.
F. Rottles on September 19, 2006 at 7:15 AM
Hannity & Colmes had a Vatican priest on their show last night, and he made a point of saying that the Pope did not apoligize for making the remarks, rather, he was sorry that the remarks were taken out of context and as a result people were hurt.
BlueStateBlues on September 19, 2006 at 9:11 AM
Manji’s with the International Security Studies program at Yale. I just wonder whether that includes her security, because she’s going to need it.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on September 19, 2006 at 9:40 AM
Two points really quick. First, the Pope did not issue any apology for his words about Islam. It was one of regret that the words were taken as offensive. I have read a lot of Pope Benedict and (previously) Cardinal Ratzinger in my time and he is different than John Paul II in his language, he is much more subtle in his public addresses.
Second, the text on the website was immediately tagged as provisional and if you have had any prolonged experience with the Vatican this is typical especially if it is an address given in public. They post the text as written before the speech and then revise to reflect what was actually said during the speech. The provisional tag lets everyone know that changes will happen until that tag is removed. To equate this with journalism (sic) and its practice seems a bit disingenuous. The articles in the news paper are not considered provisional until otherwise notified (no matter what actually happens).
The Pope seems to be standing up against the protesters by taking the quiet resistent view of a much smarter professor that always pisses off the students because they, in their heads, know he is right.
DrM2B on September 19, 2006 at 11:15 AM
januarius, thanks for this info. IMHO the Pope did not apologize for the remarks. I remember going to the Vatican wevsite and wandering off to a different site christusrex which still has the virulent anti U.S., pro Palestinian page one. However the Vatican site is not like this.
entagor on September 19, 2006 at 1:11 PM
“The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.”
So he told us he was going to change the text, and then he did. It’s too bad the change distances him from the the emperor who was as right back then as he is now.
Kevin M on September 19, 2006 at 4:38 PM
What happened to the old “One True Church” and all others are going to hell! I think it’s time for an Italian Pope again!
Dread Pirate Roberts VI on September 20, 2006 at 12:18 PM
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