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Vatican City, 16th September 2006 (CNA) - Pope
Benedict XVI regrets that his recent comments have been misinterpreted in an
offensive way, thus spurring outrage among many Muslims, according to the
Vatican’s Secretary of State. On the second day of his new job, Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone released a statement clarifying that the Pontiff regards
Muslims with “respect and esteem,” and calling people to give his remarks a
“complete and attentive” reading.
Bertone said that it was necessary to release
a statement in addition to the one released by the Director of the Holy See
Press Office, due to the reaction by many Muslims to a short passage in the
Pope’s recent address at the University of Regensburg. The reaction of the
Muslim world has moved from the expression of displeasure by Muslim clerics
to the burning of effigies of the Pope and attacks on Christian churches in
the Middle East.
The cardinal emphasized that Benedict holds
the same position on Islam as the Church expressed in paragraph 3 of the
Vatican II document “Nostra Aetate.”
The document states that that the Church
regards Muslims, “with esteem,” noting their adoration of “the one God”
their honor for Jesus (who Muslims consider a prophet) and Mary, their
valuing of the moral life, and attentiveness to prayer, almsgiving, and
fasting.
Benedict, Cardinal Bertone continued, wants to
continue the inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue that his
predecessors began. In August of last year the Pope met with members of the
Muslim community, telling them that, “We must seek paths of reconciliation
and learn to live with respect for each other’s identity.”
Protests in many Muslim countries began
Thursday after Islamic clerics condemned the Pope’s words. Groups of angry
Muslims gathered, chanting anti-Catholic slogans, holding signs, and burning
images of Pope Benedict. This morning the Associated Press reported that
groups of Palestinians, bearing guns and firebombs attacked five Christian
churches on the West Bank, leaving bullet holes in the churches and charring
walls and doors.
The words which have spurred on such violence
were not even the Pope’s own. Benedict very clearly noted that he was
quoting the words of Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleaologus when he noted
that the prophet Mohammed’s teachings on jihad were “evil and inhuman” and
do not mesh with the earlier surah 2, 256 of the Quran which reads, “There
is no compulsion in religion.”
Bertone said that the Pope “did not mean, nor
does he mean, to make (the opinion of the emperor) his own in any way.” The
Pope was simply using the comments to speak “in an academic context” on the
theme of “the relationship between religion and violence in general, and to
conclude with a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for
violence, from whatever side it may come,” Bertone said. He also noted that
“a complete and attentive reading” of the Pope’s words make this evident and
that the Pope has made similar statements against religious violence in the
past.
“The Holy Father thus sincerely regrets that
certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the
sensitivities of the Muslim faithful, and should have been interpreted in a
manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions,” Bertone concluded,
noting that it was in the same speech that the Pope himself warned
secularized Western culture to have respect for religious cultures such as
those in the Muslim world. Benedict told the West to guard against "the
contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be
an exercise of freedom."
“In reiterating his respect and esteem for
those who profess Islam,” Bertone said, Pope Benedict, “hopes they will be
helped to understand the correct meaning of his words so that, quickly
surmounting this present uneasy moment, witness to the ‘Creator of heaven
and earth, Who has spoken to men’ may be reinforced, and collaboration may
intensify ‘to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice
and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.’”
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