Last week, two of the most preeminent leaders of the world spoke out. Each represents hundreds of millions of people. Each holds an office many revere as a bastion of Western civilization's noblest aspirations and highest ideals. Each claims a deep personal faith and spiritual conviction, in the service of truth and virtue. And each has expressed views that stand in stark contrast to their apparent sincerity, proving once again that sincerity and conviction are not measures of truth or righteousness. I am speaking, of course, of Pope Benedict XVI and of President George W. Bush.

In a speech delivered in his native Germany, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor who expressed the view that Mohammed preached a religion of violence, spread by the sword, and brought great evil into the world. In an academic lecture one is certainly free to cite the views of historical figures whose words across the centuries may have a wide variety of effects on listeners today. No one disputes the accuracy of Benedict's quote, and history is surely replete with innumerable examples of past and present figures making damning statements about one group or another in sweeping terms. What is disturbing about this quote is that a man of keen intellect and extensive knowledge, the leader of Roman Catholicism should publicly display both a distressing distortion of the actual teachings of Mohammed, and, perhaps worse, such an alarming and reprehensible insensitivity to the current volatile climate vis à vis relations between the largely Christian industrialized nations and the Muslim world. To say the pope's comments were ill-advised is putting it politely.

What makes this insensitivity all the more troubling is that it came from the mouth of one who claims to want to promote reconciliation in the name of the inclusive one whom the Church has often called the Prince of Peace. Given the furor generated at the time of his elevation to the pontificate by the revelation that Benedict was a member of Nazi party as a Hitler Youth, and the Church's strenuous efforts to insist on his change from that mindset as an adult, one would expect him to be especially sensitive to the fact that things in today's media-driven world of sound-bytes can easily be distorted and create unexpected repercussions of seismic proportions. In one seemingly routine speech, the Pontiff has stirred up a firestorm of Muslim outrage that is like pouring gasoline on a bonfire. Such faux pas can undo in a stroke the steps toward rapprochment that others, like Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, worked for years to build.

One has to wonder how it is possible to come to the highest office of the Roman Catholic Church and possess so little understanding of the fundamental teachings of another of the world's major religions- especially one so deeply intertwined with the Judeo Christian tradition and sharing many of its roots and principles. In the religious rhetoric of today, we are confronted with a perennial and problematic tendency. Those who speak in the name of any particular faith comparing it to any other, generally make no clear distinction between the founders' teachings and the periodic distortions of them by the adherents of the religions tracing their origins to those founders. The pope should surely be aware of this. The insult is further compounded by the baffling apparent failure of any of the Pope's advisors discreetly pointing out to their boss that the quote might be considered


Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2006 by Faith In Diversity Institute