FACING BENEDICT’S EGG
I’ve got nothing against Germans. Some of my favorite supervillains are Germans. So I have no knee-jerk bias against the latest affront to Muslim sensibilities. And maybe that’s why I’ve been itching to address this most recent uproar.
Okay, not that recent, it’s been over a week now and it’s long-since left the news cycle in favor of race relations on “Survivor”, but I’ve still been itching over it. As a refresher:
Pope Benedict 16 gave a speech at a university and quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Muslims around the world took offense, some of them going so far as to firebomb churches.
That’s the short version of the story, which is the only version anyone got, which I think is a big problem. More on that later.
In a way, it’s just as well some time has passed for all the obvious remarks to be well out of the way. Such as the irony of Muslim radicals firebombing churches to protest their being characterized as violent. Brilliant. I’d argue that fanaticism has clouded their capacity for reason, but I’d hate to invite a suicide bomber’s “rebuttal”.
As one might guess, I’m not terribly sympathetic with the fundamentalists, as many of them would just as soon immolate a bishop for eating hummus with a spork. What’s not so easy to guess is that I’m more than a bit sympathetic to the poor little pope. I do think it was good of him to apologize, and that, for Christ’s sake (and the sake of his religion), he really should edit his text with some anticipation of this sort of thing. But honestly, as for the speech itself, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even a good excuse to cause the end of the world.
I found the Pope’s full speech translated at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14848884/
I did not read it all because, by all that’s holy, it is boring. For one thing, it’s academic. Which should have flagged everyone that the outrageous remarks were not pure and simple racism, because God forbid anything in academia is pure and simple. The Pope had to know this was boring. That’s not a nice feeling. I know when I’m doing stand-up and I feel I’m losing the crowd, I might throw in something a little shocking just to get a reaction. Maybe that’s what Pope Benny did. Maybe the emperor’s blasphemy was the papal equivalent of dropping the F-bomb. Hell, it’s a wonder he didn’t throw in quotes from Hitler, Mamet and Snoop Dog just to keep people awake.
Anyway, what I did glean from the transcript is that the speech was about this emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, talking to “an educated Persian” about Christianity and Islam and, at the point of the infamous quote, he’s talking specifically about holy war. Now, critics are saying the pope was bad for quoting this guy because it suggests he shares his views (to the point where the pope, in his apology, basically said, “I don’t share his views”). To be fair, Ben doesn’t presage the quote with a full-on “…views expressed in this passage does not reflect the opinion of the Vatican and its subsidiaries”-type of disclaimer, but he does hint that it’s a bit uncomfortable. His words leading into the quote are:
“…he addresses his interlocutor with a STARTLING BRUSQUENESS on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying…”
Right after the quote Ben continues:
“The emperor, after HAVING EXPRESSED HIMSELF SO FORCEFULLY, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.”
I put those words in capitals, by the way, because (a) it’s fun to imagine any German raising their voice abruptly and (b) the words in capitals tell me the pope was at least acknowledging that the words carried weight. Regrettably, he failed to work in something a little more on-the-nose along the lines of:
“Okay, this Manuel guy liked to puff up the chest and go over the top, rhetorically speaking, it’s true, and he was a bit of a self-righteous ass, all right, but hello? 14th century Emperor? Not a job you get with a mid-sized ego and a diploma from Byzantine Finishing School…”
To many critics, giving anything less than an outright disclaimer was tantamount to endorsing the remarks word for word, and fine, Benedict probably should have realized that, what with his pope gig being on the world’s theological radar.
What bugs me, though, is that there was context behind the quote, AND NOBODY REPORTED THAT. Nor did they mention that the speech continued for another ten long, horrible, boring paragraphs about the differences between cultures and what can be done to advance their co-existence reasonably and peacefully. The short version of the story that I mentioned above is the version the world heard. In fact, most tv reports I saw casually referred to “the Pope’s remarks” when talking about the quote from the 14th century gung ho emperor, leaving the gossip-prone to spread the word, “Did you hear what the Pope said..?”
It’s one thing for religious fundamentalists to fixate on one quote in a speech. Frankly, I think you’d have to be looking specifically for controversy to pick it out in this case, which meant listening to the Pope’s whole speech carefully, which, having just skimmed this drudgery, I understand would make the most reasonable audience eager to blow stuff up. But it’s a shame that our Western sound-bite society is equally guilty of just grabbing one sentence and making it the entirety of a speech’s meaning. Quotes are good. Quotes shed light on different eras, different attitudes, and different schools of thought, not to mention a lot of similarities with our present-day lives. But if media, political and religious institutions don’t even try to acknowledge the context, if people choose to condemn the words rather than grasp the ideas (and it’s possible you’d get to condemn the ideas, zealots, just give them a chance!) then the notion of free speech isn’t working. We may as well start looking for a more basic form of expression that communicates meaning without the dangerous ambiguities of language.
Maybe a cartoon..?
I’ve got nothing against Germans. Some of my favorite supervillains are Germans. So I have no knee-jerk bias against the latest affront to Muslim sensibilities. And maybe that’s why I’ve been itching to address this most recent uproar.
Okay, not that recent, it’s been over a week now and it’s long-since left the news cycle in favor of race relations on “Survivor”, but I’ve still been itching over it. As a refresher:
Pope Benedict 16 gave a speech at a university and quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Muslims around the world took offense, some of them going so far as to firebomb churches.
That’s the short version of the story, which is the only version anyone got, which I think is a big problem. More on that later.
In a way, it’s just as well some time has passed for all the obvious remarks to be well out of the way. Such as the irony of Muslim radicals firebombing churches to protest their being characterized as violent. Brilliant. I’d argue that fanaticism has clouded their capacity for reason, but I’d hate to invite a suicide bomber’s “rebuttal”.
As one might guess, I’m not terribly sympathetic with the fundamentalists, as many of them would just as soon immolate a bishop for eating hummus with a spork. What’s not so easy to guess is that I’m more than a bit sympathetic to the poor little pope. I do think it was good of him to apologize, and that, for Christ’s sake (and the sake of his religion), he really should edit his text with some anticipation of this sort of thing. But honestly, as for the speech itself, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even a good excuse to cause the end of the world.
I found the Pope’s full speech translated at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14848884/
I did not read it all because, by all that’s holy, it is boring. For one thing, it’s academic. Which should have flagged everyone that the outrageous remarks were not pure and simple racism, because God forbid anything in academia is pure and simple. The Pope had to know this was boring. That’s not a nice feeling. I know when I’m doing stand-up and I feel I’m losing the crowd, I might throw in something a little shocking just to get a reaction. Maybe that’s what Pope Benny did. Maybe the emperor’s blasphemy was the papal equivalent of dropping the F-bomb. Hell, it’s a wonder he didn’t throw in quotes from Hitler, Mamet and Snoop Dog just to keep people awake.
Anyway, what I did glean from the transcript is that the speech was about this emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, talking to “an educated Persian” about Christianity and Islam and, at the point of the infamous quote, he’s talking specifically about holy war. Now, critics are saying the pope was bad for quoting this guy because it suggests he shares his views (to the point where the pope, in his apology, basically said, “I don’t share his views”). To be fair, Ben doesn’t presage the quote with a full-on “…views expressed in this passage does not reflect the opinion of the Vatican and its subsidiaries”-type of disclaimer, but he does hint that it’s a bit uncomfortable. His words leading into the quote are:
“…he addresses his interlocutor with a STARTLING BRUSQUENESS on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying…”
Right after the quote Ben continues:
“The emperor, after HAVING EXPRESSED HIMSELF SO FORCEFULLY, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.”
I put those words in capitals, by the way, because (a) it’s fun to imagine any German raising their voice abruptly and (b) the words in capitals tell me the pope was at least acknowledging that the words carried weight. Regrettably, he failed to work in something a little more on-the-nose along the lines of:
“Okay, this Manuel guy liked to puff up the chest and go over the top, rhetorically speaking, it’s true, and he was a bit of a self-righteous ass, all right, but hello? 14th century Emperor? Not a job you get with a mid-sized ego and a diploma from Byzantine Finishing School…”
To many critics, giving anything less than an outright disclaimer was tantamount to endorsing the remarks word for word, and fine, Benedict probably should have realized that, what with his pope gig being on the world’s theological radar.
What bugs me, though, is that there was context behind the quote, AND NOBODY REPORTED THAT. Nor did they mention that the speech continued for another ten long, horrible, boring paragraphs about the differences between cultures and what can be done to advance their co-existence reasonably and peacefully. The short version of the story that I mentioned above is the version the world heard. In fact, most tv reports I saw casually referred to “the Pope’s remarks” when talking about the quote from the 14th century gung ho emperor, leaving the gossip-prone to spread the word, “Did you hear what the Pope said..?”
It’s one thing for religious fundamentalists to fixate on one quote in a speech. Frankly, I think you’d have to be looking specifically for controversy to pick it out in this case, which meant listening to the Pope’s whole speech carefully, which, having just skimmed this drudgery, I understand would make the most reasonable audience eager to blow stuff up. But it’s a shame that our Western sound-bite society is equally guilty of just grabbing one sentence and making it the entirety of a speech’s meaning. Quotes are good. Quotes shed light on different eras, different attitudes, and different schools of thought, not to mention a lot of similarities with our present-day lives. But if media, political and religious institutions don’t even try to acknowledge the context, if people choose to condemn the words rather than grasp the ideas (and it’s possible you’d get to condemn the ideas, zealots, just give them a chance!) then the notion of free speech isn’t working. We may as well start looking for a more basic form of expression that communicates meaning without the dangerous ambiguities of language.
Maybe a cartoon..?
posted by David Pryde at 7:13 PM
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