Papal apologies
There has been a huge reaction to the Pope's comments on Muslim and lack of an apology.
It's a truism of journalism that correspondents get too close to sources who populate their specialist field. Thus, security correspondents kiss-up to cops, political correspondents think like politicians etc.
But it's hard to see an earthly reason (whatever about a celestial one) why Irish religious-affairs specialists should feel protective of the Pope, unless it's to do with their own instinctive prejudices. In our papers and on the airwaves, the estimable David Quinn and Patsy McGarry were quick to turn Muslim criticisms of Benedict's German remarks back on allegedly thin-skinned, malevolent critics, who were taking a historical quotation "out of context".
Out of context, huh? Well, it's true that Ratzinger was not in fact addressing a Regensburg rally of neo-Nazi skinheads to gee them up for burning mosques. Fair dues to him. Still, the implication that a "complex academic lecture" cannot also be reactionary, insensitive and inflammatory is an insult to complex academics.
The summary you rarely heard: a guy who rose through the church ranks with hardline hostility to interfaith initiatives makes a speech affirming Christianity's historic relation to rationality, along the way contrasting that with Islam and citing in support – with passing acknowledgment of "brusqueness" – a 14th-century source. Yes, he did quote Manuel II Paleologus approvingly and as his own starting point. No, he didn't note any irony that the dark and dirty church of Manuel's day behaved stupidly and shamefully in relation to a more enlightened Islamic world and otherwise.
Right and reason
I'll leave it to John Waters to defend Il Papa's free-speech rights, and perhaps to explain why "I'm sorry you were offended" is sufficient apology. I'm more concerned about the media's reflex to seize upon any Muslim expression of offence as self-evidently a first step toward murderous fatwas and bloody jihad in St Peter's.
According to, eg, Quinn, we should see something sinister in the two-day delay between Benedict's little-reported speech and the stories of Muslim reaction. Ah-ha, it's those Shi-ite stirrers at it again, going through Western culture with a fine-tooth comb in search of material to arouse the Arab Street. If they were really so concerned, they should have stood up right there in Regensburg and told the Pope what's what. Right?
Such a nonsense narrative exploits the widespread inaccurate reporting of the Danish cartoon controversy. Then, we saw a normal, slow escalation of a frustrated campaign (letters of protest, then requests for apology, followed by seeking international support, then calls for boycott, street rallies etc) treated as evidence of evil forces at work.
By last weekend, despite the reasoned tone of the vast bulk of Muslim reaction, we were supposed to be worried about Benedict's security, courtesy perhaps of an obscure Iraqi threat. This helped evade a much larger question: why is Pope Benedict suggesting Islam is intrinsically irrational and even violent, just as Pope Bush tries to revive his crusade on roughly the same principles?
In this context, the Sunday Tribune poll showing huge opposition to Bush and little worry about Muslims here is encouraging, as is the widespread resentment of the excessive "war on terror" in Kildare. Most of us are not ready crusaders.
These benign attitudes thrive despite journalistic conventions that dictate no legible bemusement or horror when, for example, Condoleezza Rice recently warned NATO that failure to stabilise Afghanistan "will come back and haunt us". In the very same press conference, she stumbled evasively through the history that has indeed haunted the US, that of its support for anti-Soviet Islamists in Afghanistan who went on to form the basis for Taliban and al Qaida power.
Where do media outlets fit into Irish anti-war and anti-Bush sentiment? Such sentiment is apparently so weak and passive that a weekly magazine reflecting it sells perhaps 5 per cent as many copies as a Sunday newspaper excoriating it. Much anti-war "activity" consists of hours surfing the 'net for like-minded views, and often being misled into the intellectual and political dead-end of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The Tribune poll left out any question about the crusaders' Irish airfield, aka Shannon Airport. Our attitudes to the wars, ongoing and impending, are not academic matters, they're real and local. Marching with other anti-war people in Dublin on Saturday 23 September is the very least we can do.