{"id":480,"date":"2009-05-14T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/the-pope-in-the-holy-land-two.html"},"modified":"2009-05-14T10:00:53","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T10:00:53","slug":"the-pope-in-the-holy-land-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/the-pope-in-the-holy-land-two.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope in the Holy Land: Two verdicts"},"content":{"rendered":"

At PoliticsDaily.com, Elizabeth Lev (the daughter of Mary Ann Glendon) titles her analysis “How Israel Could Have Been a Better Host to Benedict,”<\/a> and as the title suggests, takes aim at Israel and some Jewish leaders for undermining that leg of the pilgrimage. Her walkaway:<\/p>\n

\n

“But in Jerusalem, despite the gaily colored papal flags alternating with the blue Star of David, the impression seemed to be that receiving the pope was more of a burden than an honor. Compared with the pope’s gentlemanly overtures of peace, his hosts seemed like petulant schoolchildren. It was a sad showing for the Israelis. What could have been a historic encounter was soured by grumbling from the sidelines.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The other entry is from Yours Truly and is called “How the Pope Fell Short as a Guest.”<\/a> And as that title suggests, I’d give il papa<\/em> a mixed grade at best–above all for a “missed opportunity” with the Jewish community that can never be recovered. <\/p>\n

The other difference between the two verdicts is that I am right, of course. Right?<\/p>\n

BTW<\/strong>, I would take issue with just two of Lev’s assertions:<\/p>\n

One<\/strong>, she says that after the Regensburg blowup, “Benedict issued a clarification and invited Muslim leaders to dialogue, garnering a positive response from 138 Islamic scholars.” Actually, the Muslim scholars initiated the dialogue request, and after some delay the Vatican accepted. <\/p>\n

Two<\/strong>, Lev says that “The opposition of the Ratzinger family to Hitler’s regime is a matter of public record.” In fact, there is no such record I know of, and Joseph Ratzinger himself has said that while his family had no love for Hitler, they never made any public statement or action because that would have endangered them. Many others did object or resist, and suffered the consequences, though Ratzinger does not make mention of them in his writings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At PoliticsDaily.com, Elizabeth Lev (the daughter of Mary Ann Glendon) titles her analysis “How Israel Could Have Been a Better Host to Benedict,” and as the title suggests, takes aim at Israel and some Jewish leaders for undermining that leg of the pilgrimage. 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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\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}