Do not Express His Personal Thought? Is He Serious?

Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech on September 12, 2006 at the University of Regensburg in Germany, during which he said that Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus

“...addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: ‘Show me just what Muhammad [may Allāh bless him and give him peace] 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.’ 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. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul...”

The Pope made reference to this emperor’s clearly incendiary remark without refuting it or issuing any disclaimers before or after it. He just simply moved on with his speech.

Then, after several days of widespread Muslim agitation (as should expected) over his speech, the Pope issued an apology in a manner as if to suggest that he didn’t realize he did anything wrong in the first place.

“At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.

“These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”

Do not in any way express his personal thought? Then why bring it up in the first place? If there was something so deeply profound about the emperor’s statement, that it just simply had to be brought up, why not refute it or issue a disclaimer when quoting him?

Furthermore, how does the leader of the Catholic Church speak with any moral authority about religious traditions spreading religion by the sword? Perhaps while searching through history books, he could have read up on the the Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition, and the Portuguese Inquisition. And that is not even to speak of the atrocities committed by the Crusades, in sharp contrast to the military conquests of Salāh al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī (Saladin).

And this expresses my personal thought.