{"id":11,"date":"2008-03-27T14:03:01","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T14:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html"},"modified":"2008-03-27T14:03:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T14:03:01","slug":"oops-he-does-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Oops, he does it again…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another papal paradox: The Pope who was expected to create such a stir among Catholics after his election has instead found his greatest controversies centering on his relations with Islam. First he met–in secret, until the word leaked out–with the late Italian author and avowed atheist and fierce critic of Islam, Oriana Fallaci. A year later, in September 2006, he delivered his famous Regensburg speech <\/a>that led to violence by Muslims and a serious rift between the Vatican and the Islamic world.
\nNow, Benedict himself has baptized an Egyptian-born Muslim–and also a fierce critic of Islam–Magdi Allam. Allam has lived in Italy for years, and is a well-known journalist for an Italian daily. When Benedict baptized Allam at the Easter vigil, it created waves in the Islamic world, and understandably. Allam has said, e.g., that “the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.”
\nLook, if Benedict wants to make a point, that’s fine. But now comes news of the Vatican trying to back away from Allam and his remarks<\/a>, much as they tried to do after Regensburg. It wouldn’t take a prophet to predict such an outcome. So how did it happen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another papal paradox: The Pope who was expected to create such a stir among Catholics after his election has instead found his greatest controversies centering on his relations with Islam. First he met–in secret, until the word leaked out–with the late Italian author and avowed atheist and fierce critic of Islam, Oriana Fallaci. A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOops, he does it again... - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oops, he does it again... - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yet another papal paradox: The Pope who was expected to create such a stir among Catholics after his election has instead found his greatest controversies centering on his relations with Islam. 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A…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-27T14:03:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Oops, he does it again... - Benedictions: The Pope in America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Oops, he does it again... - Benedictions: The Pope in America","og_description":"Yet another papal paradox: The Pope who was expected to create such a stir among Catholics after his election has instead found his greatest controversies centering on his relations with Islam. 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A…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html","og_site_name":"Benedictions: The Pope in America","article_published_time":"2008-03-27T14:03:01+00:00","author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html","name":"Oops, he does it again... - Benedictions: The Pope in America","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-27T14:03:01+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-27T14:03:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/oops-he-does-it-again.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Oops, he does it again…"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/","name":"Benedictions: The Pope in America","description":"A blog by David Gibson","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}