'(T)he Pope has a need, at all costs, to
depict Christians as persecuting villains and Muslims as innocent
victims.' Spot on!
From The American Catholic
By Donald R. McClarey
The Pope was singing his same old song again:
Interreligious dialogue is an important way to counter
fundamentalist groups as well as the unjust accusation that religions
sow division, Pope Francis said.
Meeting with members of the Argentine Institute for
Interreligious Dialogue Nov. 18, the pope said that in “today’s
precarious world, dialogue among religions is not a weakness. It finds
its reason for being in the dialogue of God with humanity.”
Recalling a scene from the 11th-century poem, “The Song of
Roland,” in which Christians threatened Muslims “to choose between
baptism or death,” the pope denounced the fundamentalist mentality which
“we cannot accept nor understand and cannot function anymore.”
Go here
to read the rest. This is fairly common for the Pope, fundamentalist
bashing and Christian bashing. PopeWatch doubts that the Pope could
define who are fundamentalists to save his soul, but for his purposes it
is simply a handy insult for people who take religion a good deal more
seriously than he apparently does.
His use of the Song of Roland is interesting since it is a completely
fictional account of a battle which occurred in 778 where the rearguard
of Charlemagne’s army, under Count Roland, was massacred by the
Basques, not the Muslims. Somehow this fairly humdrum military mishap
got transmuted in the twelfth century into the Song of Roland, a
completely fictional account. PopeWatch wonders if the Pope understands
that it was a work of fiction. Does the Pope further understand that
the Church never approved of forced conversions under threat of death,
as such conversions would be worthless? PopeWatch cannot recall such
incidents occurring in real life, as opposed to fiction, during the
period of the Crusades when the Song of Roland was written.
That the Pope digs up this fictional account from the Middle Ages, at
a time when Christians face world wide violence from Muslims, is all
too typical of this papacy where the Pope has a need, at all costs, to
depict Christians as persecuting villains and Muslims as innocent
victims. Future conclaves, here is a thought. Try electing as Pope
someone who actually likes Catholicism and Catholics. A radical concept
PopeWatch knows, but it might just work.
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