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Originally Posted by arsenal
But to get back on topic. CP is right. After reading the entire speech, people focus on one passage, and take it out of context. While I am not catholic and have no love for the Pope, he didn't say anything all that bad, when you put it into context and read the entire speech.
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I agree to a certain extent--the context has been getting lost whenever these remarks get played. In essence, the Pope's comments are still pretty ill-advised, though. As I understand it, he's essentially saying that violence has no place in religion, because religion should value "reason." The problem is that he clearly implies that Christianity values reason over revelation whereas Islam values revelation over reason.
Not to get into the theologically nitty gritty here there are two problems with this statement. One is that it's inflammatory--and a scholar of religion ought to know that. The other is that it's pretty clearly untrue--and the Catholic religion's own history shows that. Extremist or fundamentalist religion DOES often value revelation over reason, or over the material world, and this DOES often result in violence--but this is clearly not solely the property of Islam, nor does Christianity have a monopoly on "reason."
Having said that, I echo the thoughts of some who have remarked on the irony that some muslims are turning to violence in order to protest the implication that they often turn to violence.