A diplomatic blunder?

The aftermath of the Pope's Regensburg speech epitomises the vast divide that separates the Western world from the Muslim one, and only serves to reinforce the propriety of that speech. Pope Benedict's speech focused on two preoccupations: the universally applicable theological fallacy found in the logic that allows for the arrogation to oneself of divine justification for violence and suppression of human life; the other, the dangers inherent in contemporary Western Society that is allowing radical relativism to undo all the moral precepts that ensure its survival. The two worlds cannot be further away from each other than they are now.

So how do we bridge this divide? Do we drop bombs on despotic Muslim regimes and install helpless sycophants in their stead who have no real popular legitimisation, or do we talk to Islam and set as the premises of our dialogue, reason and identity? Pope Ratzinger, a razor sharp mind and a brilliant theologian (nobody's fool, and certainly not the naïve, untried, inexperienced Pope some would have us believe) has told the Muslim world that the Vatican's approach to dialogue with other religions shall no longer be based simply on gestures of goodwill, on ecumenical gatherings intent on confidence building, on public relation campaigns that stress on form and not on substance. Pope Benedict has made it clear that he will assert his Church's identity in every ecumenical act it makes, and in so doing is emulating Islam's most admirable quality; one the Catholic part of the Western world is allowing to erode at the hands of "Progress".

This is not a belligerent strategy but a call to look within and defeat the fundamentalist threat from within. Implicit in this new approach, however, is a call to the Catholic world to re-appropriate itself of its roots and identity - just as solemn an appeal and admonition as that directed towards Islam.