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.

Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history–September 11, 1683.
januarius

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.

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.

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.

Hi, I’m Faith! Ali-Bubba asked me to blog for him this morning, because he knows how much I care about women’s rights. He said he got the idea from Wuzzadem, who needs some money….

He has not leaned left on foreign policy.

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:

Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history–September 11, 1683.

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.

For a religion that seems to be terrified of them, it is a real paradox.

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.

Juan Cole blames Muslims’ “sensitivities” on their postcolonial sensibility…

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.