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COMMENTARY
September 20, 2006
Defending reason
There is more, far more, to be said about Pope Benedict’s speech at Universität Regensburg last week. It was an important statement, not only for Catholics. But what he said has almost dissolved in the international fracas over a quotation of a quotation, taken maliciously out of context. The Pope was speaking about the ground rules for “dialogue”, not only between Muslims and Catholics. He was saying that Reason -- let’s give that a capital letter -- was the only ground on which we could discuss anything, since in matters of Faith, we are bound to disagree. But even our respective beliefs may be examined in the light of reason, and must be, if our dialogue is not to be a sham, an imposture, a dissemblance, a cheat.The first thing is to note that the speech was only obliquely about Islam. Angry Muslims who think it was all about them have been badly misinformed. The Pope was addressing the intellectuals of the West, through a fine old institution of higher education where he used to teach. He was offering a “Selbstkritik der modernen Vernunft” -- a critique “from within” of modern reason. He was very careful to take no article of Catholic faith for granted, to play by the rules of strict reason. Let me explain to my non-Catholic reader something about the Catholic faith. We believe that Reason and Faith are entirely compatible, though of course not identical -- and we're willing to play both sides of the street. In proposing a dialogue from within reason alone, the Pope was doing just what Thomas Aquinas did in his Summa Contra Gentiles. Then as now, Catholicism had to compete with Islam, Judaism, Atheism, and all other Isms, for the allegiance of men. Verily, when St John inscribed the opening words of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” -- the “logos”; reason -- he was acknowledging with the Greeks that reason is divine. Reason was not something discovered by Voltaire. In the words of my friend Lee Harris (private email), a great modern thinker who is certainly not a Catholic, “In the Pope’s magnificent address he never, for a single moment, attacks modernity from magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. His intellectual honesty and fairness are impeccable -- and a model for us all.” Now that is the sort of man the Pope was addressing. Pope Benedict was speaking about the fate of reason in our postmodern world, about the importance of defending it whole. The reader who wants to learn about that, may now search out the speech on the Internet. It is worth reading several times, for a lot was being said about reason itself, and how much broader it is than narrow “scientific” reasoning. The English translation has several minor flaws; read it in German if you can. I can't, but am told on good authority that the style, in the original, is extraordinary. It is curious how people who spend half their lives pretending to know things they don't know, spend the other half denying they know what they do. In this case, from what I can make out, almost everyone, regardless of his religion or lack of religion, knows in his bones that the Pope was right, in condemning the use of violence and intimidation to convert people, and insisting, like a certain Byzantine emperor before him, that our dialogue be based on reason, instead. The irony of Muslims turning violent because they thought the Pope accused them of using violence instead of reason, has not been lost, perhaps even on some of the perpetrators, after they have vented their hot heads. Nor the irony that this can’t be said aloud, for fear of more violence. But I also observe, more hopefully, that despite a few incidents, including attacks on churches in the West Bank and elsewhere, the intimidation of Catholics going to church on Sunday in London and many other cities worldwide, and the murder of a saintly nun in Somalia, the vast majority of Muslims refuse to be upset. Even the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has told its adherents to drop the issue, and the ayatollahs say the Pope was just speaking on orders from the Crusaders and Zionists (which is soft, for them). Benefit-of-the-doubt respect for the Pope was shown in many of the Muslim responses. Here is something to remember even about the worst Muslim fanatics: that they are more apt to choose "secular" targets, than Christian or Jewish religious ones. In Jerusalem, for instance, Palestinian suicide bombers hit pizzerias, not the Orthodox Jewish settlements in Mea Shearim. Whatever the formal teachings of Koran and Hadiths, imams throughout the Dar al-Islam have traditionally taught Muslims to show respect to sincere religious of other faiths, and to keep cool heads. (It's the new Salafist sort, shipped from Arabia, that we have to fear.) This habit of discouraging communal violence is deeply inculcated, and it is why the Islamofascists themselves stress secular targets, knowing that they require the crossing of fewer taboo lines by their followers. Muslims, seeing Christians and Westerners as “the other”, are too apt to attribute the worst motives to us. But ditto, vice versa. Reason will remain the only possible ground for dialogue between us, too. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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