The Pope was not attacking Islam

23 September 2006

Piers Paul Read says that the controversial nature of the Pope’s address has been missed in the furore over Muslim sensitivities: he was daring to equate Europe and Christendom

Here he is not talking de haut en bas about devout Muslims and Hindus in the Third World. Quite to the contrary, he is talking of his native Bavaria which, together with the provinces of the former Austro–Hungarian empire, remains one of the world’s ‘profoundly religious cultures’. To Pope Benedict, as to Pope John Paul II, also a Central European, Christianity, with its fusion of faith and reason, cannot be abstracted from its genesis in Europe. ‘Christianity,’ he told his audience, ‘finally took on its decisive character in Europe. We can also express it the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.’

Thus to Pope Benedict, though the Catholic Church is universal, its roots are in Europe and Europe is its home base. This is why an Islamic nation like Turkey should not be admitted to the European Union, and why the spiritual renewal of ‘old’ Europe is the most urgent task at hand. When it sinks in, this equation of Europe and Christianity may prove more contentious than his use of the brusque words of a Byzantine emperor about Islam.