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September 20, 2006

Pope Benedict Sets Forth a Bold Agenda

Topics: Faith

George Weigel, a senior fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church," in referring to Pope Benedict's lecture at the University of Regensburg last week as "brilliant," says that Pope Benedict XVI made three crucial points that are now in danger of being lost in the polemics about his supposedly offensive comments about Islam. Finally, a writer has brought that which has been very much needed into the discussion surrounding the Pope's lecture. I call it clarity:

... all the great questions of life, including social and political questions, are ultimately theological. How we think (or don't think) about God has much to do with how we judge what is good and what is wicked, and with how we think about the appropriate methods for advancing the truth in a world in which there are profound disagreements about the truth of things.

... irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children "is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul." If adherents of certain currents of thought in contemporary Islam insist that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, then they must be told that they are mistaken: about God, about God's purposes and about the nature of moral obligation.

... The pope's third point -- which has been almost entirely ignored -- was directed to the West. If the West's high culture keeps playing in the sandbox of postmodern irrationalism -- in which there is "your truth" and "my truth" but nothing such as "the truth" -- the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because the West won't be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending. A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilization possible cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilizations

Continue reading, "The Pope Was Right."

As I said in my introduction of Weigel's piece - clarity, finally. If only the world will get it - as for most of the MSM, I hold out little hope. Islamic apologia sells more papers.

HT - Real Clear Politics

Posted by Richard at September 20, 2006 3:40 PM

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