That is the question being asked by many, including some Catholics on the ‘net:
Some of my readers take umbrage when I suggest it was a blunder for Pope Benedict to have used a cite that was bound to be used by the press to inflame Muslims, particularly since he could have gotten to the same point from other directions (including quoting Islamic scholars who have condemned Islam’s tendency to violence). The thing is, part of the task of the Pope is to work for peace and to protect his flock. It is not a denial of Christ to needlessly invite a bunch of thin-skinned thugs to destroy the Church in Iraq, to murder nuns, and to kidnap priests. We want very much for the Pope to be presiding over a system of law and to give the word that says, "Okay. I’ve had it with Islam. Go forth! Conquering and to conquer!" But this is simply not his task. The bishop, and supremely the Universal Pastor, has responsibility for the care of *all* the souls in his jurisdiction–including the Muslim ones. Benedict said nothing untrue–which is why he has not apologized for what he said, not should he. But he is trying very hard to counter the bad effects of what he need not have said, but did. If he did not think those ill effects of his words were, in some sense, his responsibility, he would not be saying anything. The last thing Benedict wants is to destroy the Church’s ability to speak to both East and West. He may already be too late, but only time will tell.
Which brings us to the real tragedy of this situation.
The pope was making a speech to a German university on the subject of faith and its relationship to reason, and he took a detour in the speech to touch on one of his pet subjects–that religion must not be used as a basis for violence.
So in the process of taking a detour to say something meant to help break the link between religion and violence, he happened to quote a particularly inflammatory line from 600 years ago that could and has stirred up the potential for religious violence.
And the line isn’t even necessary to his speech! He could have made all the same points without the inflammatory line–and even without bringing Islam into the discussion.
This didn’t have to have happened, and it is hard not to see it as the first (or second) major gaffe of Benedict’s pontificate (the other one being what happened when he visited Auschwitz).
How serious a gaffe is it?
It could get him killed.
Either when he goes to Turkey or when a fanatical Muslim pulls a gun on him in Rome. All it takes is one, after all, and the Muslim political leaders are as likely to use this as a pretext to redirect their populations’ anger as they were when they whipped the Muslim community into a frenzy over the Danish cartoons.
Still, Benedict went about this noble business in a very imprudent way. The statement he quoted—that everything new Mohammed brought was “evil and inhuman”—is simply untrue and so obviously hurtful that it will prevent anything else the pope might say from getting a hearing. Given the predictable reactions in the Muslim world, it is patently counterproductive to try to make the legitimate point that Muslims have sometimes used violence to spread their faith by quoting, even without endorsing, the untrue and much more sweeping statement that everything peculiar to Islam is “evil and inhuman.” If Benedict wishes to call Muslims to account for wrongful acts, current and historical, committed by Muslims against Christians, well and good, but he ought not do so by grossly overstating the case in an obviously provocative way that he himself does not believe and then apologize in stages for having done so.
Canberra Archbishop Mark Coleridge, a former papal speechwriter, has no doubt that Benedict wrote every word of the speech himself. And he is just as certain that it didn’t go through the usual complex vetting process in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, intended to pick up precisely this kind of pitfall.
"It takes a long time to write a papal speech, with draft after draft being seen by various eyes until it reaches the Pope himself, and he has to own it. That process is based on long and bitter experience of misfortune," Coleridge says.
"This speech was anything but crude polemics. As a theological discussion it was beautifully done. But he didn’t seem to be aware of the potential pitfalls. That’s because he’s new to the role, which is unique – a Pope can never speak just as a theologian."
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