How to read Pope Benedict-and how not to
Date: December 4, 2006
Time: 9:17am est

Some commentators of things Catholic are interpreting Pope Benedict’s trip to Turkey as the emergence of the Pope-politician-diplomat. This is what I got from Ian Fisher’s New York Time’s piece on Sunday. I’m glad Ian found some of my quotes useful, and I often like Ian’s reporting, but I found this story to be way too thick on interpretation: Has the Pope gone wobbly? Has his grip on certainty slipped? Is he still recognizable to his previous supporters after praying in the Blue Mosque?

Gracious me. Was he supposed to march into Santa Sophia and drive out the money changers with a whip?

First of all, I don’t want to be one who’s "got the read on the Pope." I frankly prefer to let Pope Benedict be himself, and I will watch and listen, and try to learn something. I think that’s the best way to understand—genuinely and sincerely—what Benedict is up to. Hyper-analysis of his every move under a purely political lens is never going to give us the true picture of things.

And just what have I learned, watching and listening to Pope Benedict since last September in Regensburg ? I see him reaching out dramatically in two directions. To the secularized west he is saying: your ego-centric rationalism bereft of transcendence is going to kill you. And to the Islamic world, he is saying: you either show that Islam can be lived in a reasonable, non-violent manner or Islam will draw the west into a violent confrontation.

Regensburg was simply a continuation of much thinking Cardinal Ratzinger had been doing shortly before being elected Pope, the fruit of which was published in his recent book Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures. And there was no disconnect between that and what went on in Turkey.

In Turkey we saw one and the same Pope Benedict, quite carefully measuring every word and gesture, pursing his objectives. On any number of instances in his speeches in Turkey you will find him holding clearly and serenely to principle—everything from human dignity to the primacy of Peter. And in Turkey , as at Regensburg , he appealed again to the notion of human dignity, insisting that respect for the human person is common ground on which both Islam and Christianity can stand. It is as if by sheer repetition of this truth that Benedict hopes it will begin to sink into some Muslim minds—perhaps among the youngest. I hope he is right. As I have said before, the notion of human dignity has a rather short half-life in the minds of most Muslims; perhaps it gets more traction with moderates. But he continues to look for common ground and he has probably hit pay dirt on the issue of rejecting western-style agnosticism and hostility toward religion.

Can one look back on the past months and say that Benedict has a "project" underway? I think many of us would be inclined to think so, but again, best to let Benedict be Benedict. But there’s no doubt that the Holy Father would really like to get both western secularists and Islamic fundamentalists to do some serious soul-searching. He is a student of history and he knows, as history has shown again and again, reason without transcendence, transcendence divorced from reason—these roads always end in violence.

Speaking of reason and the Pope’s latest book, I will be taking time over the coming weeks to offer some brief syntheses and commentary on Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures. Hopefully you will find them useful.

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