Professor Ratzinger Returns to Ratisbon

Pope Benedict’s recent speech – by now widely known, if not notorious – contained some important observations. But they aren’t the ones that made it into the press and gave him continuous media coverage for several days.

After a heavily academic treatment of “dehellenization” over the centuries, mostly since the Protestant Reformation (meaning efforts to disconnect the Christian message from Greek philosophical and theological roots), the Pope reached an important conclusion: the discipline of theology has been sidelined by a perilous narrowing in the contemporary understanding of reason. He remarked:

“The intention here is… of broadening our concept of reason and its application.… We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons…. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.”

Instructive and insightful observations.

But the Pope’s remarks which have been reported by the media far overshadowed the main point of his speech. Strangely, the Pope seems to feel blindsided by it all. He seems unclear what to do about the sometimes furious reactions to his by-the-way citation of a medieval Byzantine Emperor on the tangential subject (tangential to his speech) of Christian – Muslim relations and the use of violence in religion.

I don’t know whether to be surprised at the Pope’s surprise, or to be blasé about the whole flap. Why he quoted the entire sentence under attack is beyond me, since it wasn’t at all germane to his point. He could have said,

“[The Emperor Manuel II Paleologus] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, referring to Mohammed’s “command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” (The sections in regular print are original, the italics my editing.)

That would have omitted the part claiming that “what Mohammed brought that was new, …you will find things only evil and inhuman,” which even the Pope characterizes as “startling brusqueness.” Why retain those hostile, inaccurate, offensive words?

I think the most likely explanation (and the one I prefer to believe) is that Benedict XVI, ever the teacher, was offering a scrupulously complete citation in a university lecture. He practiced teacherly forms for decades, and they continue to shape his style.

Alternatively, he was testing the reaction to a difficult and unpopular opinion, which he claims he does not hold himself, by hiding behind somebody else’s words.

In any case, there is no room for ex-Professor Ratzinger to be naïve on this point. He must weigh his words more carefully. He is no longer a university professor. He has a new job.