Reason Versus Rage

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - September 22, 2006

In the midst of his very fruitful apostolic pilgrimage to his native Bavaria, Pope Benedict stopped at the University of Regensburg, where as a young professor he became famous for his challenging and erudite lectures.

On September 12, he gave another, to a group of German university professors. The main point of his address was to discuss the importance and mutual dependence of faith and reason.. He sought to demonstrate how God who is love — Deus Caritas Est — is also reason, Logos. If we wish to please God, he suggested, we must seek to reflect both his love and his reason. One of the conclusions that must flow from the rational and loving nature of God, he said, is an uncompromising condemnation of the irrationality of violence to advance the cause of God. He also strove to make the case that "acting according to reason" is the ground for dialogue among all who seek God.

Toward the beginning of his discourse, he made reference to a passage in a book he had recently read — describing a 14th century dialogue between a learned Persian Muslim and the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos — which he considered relevant to the issue of "faith and reason." He said,

"In the seventh conversation-controversy, … the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). … He turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: '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.' The emperor 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. 'God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...'"

Benedict illustrated what he thought the point of the passage was and why he used it when he concluded, "The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature." The rest of his lengthy and scholarly discourse focused on the history of the relationship between faith and reason in the West.

An attentive reader can clearly see that the pope's point was not to make his own the "brusque" assessment of a 14th century emperor that the fruits brought by Mohammed were "evil and inhuman," like the practice of violence to force conversions. It was to affirm his words that "God is not pleased by blood," that "not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature," and that "to convince a reasonable soul, one does not need … threatening a person with death."

Many Muslim readers, however, did not read the text carefully in its context. They reacted with outrage to the mere mention of a passage from 1391 that seemed to criticize and insult the prophet Mohammed and imply that Islam is a violent religion.

Rather than demonstrating that Islam is, as they insist, a rational and peaceful religion, many Muslims responded with an incredible barrage of irrationality and violence. In the name of Islam, five Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza were attacked with guns and fire bombs; an Italian nun, Leonella Sgorbati, taking care of sick children in a Somalian hospital, was killed, shot in the chest, stomach and back; demonstrators with fists raised burned effigies and photos of the pope in public squares; imami in various countries compared Benedict to Hitler and Stalin; Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, trying to benefit from the controversy for their own maleficent objectives, declared war on "worshippers of the Cross" and vowed to "slit Christian throats"; and some British Muslims, outside of London's Catholic Cathedral, held signs saying "Jesus is the slave of Allah" and called for Benedict's death.

Benedict, personally and through his new Vatican spokesman and new Secretary of State, did what he could to try to clarify any misinterpretations of what he said and meant. He stated he was "deeply sorry" that "a quotation from a medieval text, which does not in any way express my personal thought" was "considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims." And he reiterated a call to honest conversation, saying "my address, in its totality, was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

But dialogue must occur, as he said in his Regensburg discourse, "according to reason," and at least right now, it is hard to see how this can occur when one set of interlocutors deem the mere mention of a 14th century opinion in a scholarly disquisition "a weapon of mass destruction" and tantamount to "trying to revive the spirit of the crusades."

Such a dialogue is difficult to anticipate when one side of the discussion is outraged at the slightest possible insult to the one they call the Prophet and yet seems to think nothing about offending the sensibilities of the other by repeatedly burning in effigy images of the one they call the vicar of Christ on earth.

Such a conversation cannot effectively occur when one side of the table seems to be in a state of utter denial about the violent tendencies of many of its members, or is prepared, at the least offense, to burn down the others' places of worship and threatens to kill its leaders and innocent charitable workers.

Benedict XVI wants a "frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect." The question is whether Muslims do and can show themselves capable of it.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.