Vatican Reminds Muslims, and West, of the Golden Rule

The one-sided and virulent tirades and violence against the West, against local non-Muslims, and against each other from tin-turban MidEast religious and political leaders has woken some in the West, while others continue to rationalize excuses for the inexcusable.

One of the purposes of religion is to remind us and hold us to standards of decent behavior, in order not only to create better hereafters but to create better here-and-nows. If the leaders of a religion don’t emphasize and pursue this prime purpose, its practice – regardless of the nice words in its scripture -- has devolved into some sort of secular faith in or beard for something else, becomes corrupt, oppressive and aggressive, and doesn’t deserve to be respected, and deferred to, as a religion. A political force maybe, but not a religion.

Professor Steve Bainbridge, proud of his Catholicism and catholicity, on February 5 expressed his “disappointment with the Vatican’s tepid response to the violent reaction in the Islamic world to the Danish cartoons." "Moral relativism,” Bainbridge called it. Bainbridge cited the clearer thinking of new Pope Benedict, and a friend of mine with deep experience in the Vatican confirmed that the Vatican bureaucracy was likely following a more entrenched Euro-weenie meme.

Just as our Arabist weenies in the State Department need straightening out from above from time to time, it seems Pope Benedict has clarified where the line is for his bureaucrats.

Reuters Religion Editor headlines his dispatch, “Vatican to Muslims: practice what you preach,” and quotes the stronger line led by the Pope.

Pope Benedict signaled his concern on Monday when he told the new Moroccan ambassador to the Vatican that peace can only be assured by "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others, in a reciprocal way in all societies."…

"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome….

"We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera….

"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves," Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa. Jesus told his followers to "turn the other cheek" when struck.
"The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he said….

Bishop Rino Fisichella, head of one of the Roman universities that train young priests from around the world, told Corriere della Sera the Vatican should speak out more.
"Let's drop this diplomatic silence," said the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. "We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."

BRAVO!

Christians in the Middle East have suffered almost as much as Jews the oppression by Muslim states and street thugs. As Reuters politely sums the effects (the same Reuters that demurs from calling terrorists 'terrorists':

Christians make up only a tiny fraction of the population in most Muslim countries. War and political pressure in recent decades have forced many to emigrate from Middle Eastern communities dating back to just after the time of Jesus.

As yet, however, we haven’t seen a 21-part television special in Egypt called “The Protocols of the Elders of Rome” as they did recently the “of Zion” calumny.

Pope Benedict isn’t waiting. Nor is he waiting for the Nazi-like cartoon images of Jews prevalent in the Middle East press, that the West winks at as just those Arabs at it again.

The Pope has shown religious leadership. Will we see similar from the liberal Protestant denominations in the West, whose distorted and forgotten sense of religious and Western values led them to defend terrorists by disinvestments in Israel?