AT VFR, Howard Sutherland writes:

Isn’t every Pope’s primary mission to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations and call people–all people–to the Christian faith? Rather than make statements that imply an equivalence between Christianity and Islam, Pope Benedict should exhort those Moslems who have moved into Christian (or once-Christian) lands to enter into the life of those lands fully by embracing the Christian faith. (Of course, I would prefer that the Pope exhort Moslems in Europe–and everywhere else, for that matter–to embrace Christianity and then return to their ancestral homelands, there to proselytise among their kin still benighted by Islam. But if expecting the Pope to call Moslems to convert is unrealistic, how unrealistic is it to expect him to tell them to go home?)

It may be unrealistic to expect a Pope of today to do that, but Popes of times past were not at all shy about exhorting Moslems to embrace the Cross and decrying the invasion of Christendom by Islam. Thought experiment: if Pope Benedict were to do that, what might he say in response to the inevitable deluge of hostile criticism? I think it could be very simple: “This is my mission as Christ’s Vicar on Earth; what else should I do? The call is not issued in hatred; quite the contrary. If Christians hated Moslems, we should encourage them to remain in the spiritual darkness that is Islam. Instead we call them to the light, in love.” Should the Pope actually say that, giving those reasons, I think that–once over the initial shock–his own flock would support him. In any case, the new Western taboo forbidding substantive criticism of Islam would be broken. The only prudential reason I can see for the Pope’s refraining from calling the Moslems to Christ is the risk of bloody Moslem retaliation against the surviving Christians in Moslem-ruled lands.

I read the Moslem cleric’s remarks directed to Pope Benedict. Honeyed words, and rather at odds with Islam’s actual record. Taqqiya, anyone? The mention of how Moslems are succeeding in establishing Moslem Theology programs in German universities smacks of triumphalism. As for Moslem theology, I thought there wasn’t a whole lot of room for interpretation in reading the Koran and Hadiths anyway. All I would expect these programs to do is agitate for the imposition of Sharia in Europe, while being shielded from any criticism by the Diversity Doctrine.

I have great respect for Pope Benedict, and I still believe he represents an improvement over the line of John XXIII-Paul VI-John Paul II (I’m leaving out the unfortunate John Paul I, because I have no idea what he might have done had he any time in office). But these times call for a fighting Pope, and the scholarly–and elderly–Benedict is not that. My fear for the future is that any conceivable conclave in the near-term will be institutionally incapable of electing a fighting Pope unafraid to identify Islam as hostile to Christianity, even though it so plainly is.

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