Was Benedict’s most recent provocation accidental or
deliberate? The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary
cleric. A man who organises his own succession to the
Papacy with a ruthless purge of potential dissidents
and supervises the selection of Cardinals with great
care leaves little to chance.

I think he knew what he was saying and why.

Choosing a quote from Manuel II Paleologos, not the
most intelligent of the Byzantine rulers, was somewhat
disingenuous, especially on the eve of a visit to
Turkey. He could have found more effective quotes and
closer to home. Perhaps it was his unique tribute to
Oriana Fallaci.

Perhaps.

The Muslim world with two of its countries---Iraq and
Afghanistan— directly occupied by Western troops does
not need to be reminded of the language of the
Crusades. In a neo-liberal world suffering from
environmental degradation, poverty, hunger,
repression, a ’planet of slums’ (in the graphic phrase
of Mike Davis), the Pope chooses to insult the founder
of a rival faith.

The reaction in the Muslim world was predictable, but
depressingly insufficient. Islamic civilization cannot
be reduced to the power of the sword. It was the vital
bridge between the Ancient world and the European
Renaissance. It was the Catholic Church that declared
War on Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Mass
expulsions, killings, forced conversions and a vicious
Inquisition to police the cleansed Europe and the
reformist Protestant enemy.

The fury against ’heretics’ led to the burning of
Cathar villages in Southern France. Jews and
Protestants alike were granted refuge by the Ottoman
Empire, a refuge they would have been denied had
Istanbul remained Constantinople. ’Slaves, obey your
human masters. For Christ is the real master you serve’
said Paul (Colossians 3: 22-24) in establishing a
collaborationist tradition which fell on its knees
before wealth and power and which reached its apogee
during the Second World War where the leadership of
the Church collaborated with fascism and did not speak
up against the judeocide or the butchery on the
Eastern Front. Islam does not need pacifist lessons
from this Church.

Violence was and is not the prerogative of any single
religion as the continuing Israeli occupation of
Palestine demonstrates. During the Cold War the
Vatican, with rare exceptions, supported the imperial
wars. Both sides were blessed during the First and
Second World wars; the US Cardinal Spellman was a
leading warrior in the battles to destroy Communism
during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The Vatican later
punished the liberation theologists and
peasant-priests in Latin America. Some were
excommunicated.

Not all Christians joined in the crusades old and new.
When Pope Urban launched the crusades the Norman king
of Sicily refused to send troops in which Sicilian
Muslims would be compelled to fight against Muslims in
the East. His son, Roger II, refused to back the
Second Crusade. In doing so they showed more courage
than the leaders of contemporary Italy, who are only
too willing to join the imperial crusades against the
Muslim world.

’To make sure of being right in all things’, said the
founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, ’we ought
always to hold to the principle that the white I see I
should believe to be black if the hierarchical church
were so to rule.’

Today most Catholic prelates in the West (including
the Bavarian in the Vatican) and politicians of
Centre-Left/Right worship the real Pope who lives in
the White House and tells them when black is white.

Amen.