The real Benedict XVI stood up in his second year of office, displaying distaste for Western secularism and Islamic integralism alike.But he was also capable of conciliatory gestures, such as praying ‘like a Muslim’ in a mosque.
Two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI presented himself as a “a simple, humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord,” marking a break with the superstar image of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
His time as the Vatican’s chief inquisitor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had earned him the sobriquet “God’s Rottweiler”, which in time transformed into a reputation as “philosopher-pope” offering a “time out” of reflection for the Catholic Church.
But during his second year as Pope, he has shown that the Rottweiler in Ratzinger can still bite hard. The Vatican’s incursions into Italian politics, against a timid attempt by Prodi’s centre-left government to give legal recognition to opposite and same sex cohabiting couples, rekindled memories of a pre-conciliar church bent on asserting its secular power through skilful political manoeuvring.
According to many political observers, these machinations contributed to the near-fall of Prodi’s government just two months ago. Surely a dire warning to Maltese politicians who could make a similar attempt in Malta.
Yet it was a quote, taken out of context by the Pope’s Muslim detractors, which stands out as the most eventful moment in Pope Benedict’s second year.
The quote sparked a war of civilizations pitting the most influential religious leader in the West against Islamic fundamentalists and moderates alike.
The highly charged lecture was the young papacy’s quintessential Ratzinger moment, as the 79-year-old professor-turned-pope returned to his old university in Regensburg to draw a theological line in the sand that set off a worldwide debate about how Islam and the West should talk to each other.
“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” was the offensive quote taken out of a Greek text dating back to 1391.
But why did the Pope risk provoking Islam at a time when the Islamic world was aggrieved by the war in Iraq and inflamed by Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy?
Pope Benedict’s lecture represented a parting from the Vatican’s previous policies on dialogue with Islam, away from promoting harmony at all costs towards more reciprocity. He wants the Muslim world opened up for Christian missions in the same way that Europe is open to Muslims, and conversion out of Islam to be a legal or social possibility.
The lecture essentially represented a reasonable call for clarity from the Islamic world on the morality of violence. Yet the unfortunate quote nearly wrecked any chance of meaningful dialogue between two religions at a time when it is needed most.
Yet just two months later the Pope managed to mend the fence in a clear sign that the conciliatory Benedict can still win the day over the more confrontational Ratzinger.
During a visit to Turkey, the new Pope ended up doing and saying things on the same subject, Islam, that few would have thought possible.
Benedict’s late decision to accept an invitation to the Blue Mosque was a watershed in the history of the Papacy.
When Istanbul’s top cleric Mustafa Cagrici told the Pope it was time for a “moment of serenity”, as they were both facing in the direction of the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Benedict neither turned away nor turned cold.
He simply lost himself in prayer for all to see.Church officials insisted that it was a personal prayer, unrelated to any Christian liturgy, but Turkish newspapers proclaimed the Pope “prayed like a Muslim.”
The mosque visit will go down as a watershed in a papacy that just two months earlier had nearly drowned in a speech critical of Islam. Benedict, long doubtful of different faiths praying together, got lost in the moment.
In Turkey, he repeatedly spoke about religious liberty, but made sure never to specifically cite Islam. He also made another Benedictine U-turn, backing Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.
In an interview in 2004 for Le Figaro magazine, Ratzinger said that Turkey, a Muslim country by heritage and population, but staunchly secularist by its state constitution, should seek its future in an association of Islamic nations, rather than in a European Union which has Christian roots.
But after meeting Benedict upon his arrival in Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the Pope told him that the Vatican desires Turkey’s membership in the EU.
The Jekyll and Hyde dichotomy between Benedictine inclusiveness and Ratzingerian rigidity could be the new Pope’s card in ensuring a place for the papacy as a no-nonsense interlocutor with Western secularism and Islam alike.
Starting from a position of firm doctrinal certainty, he is able to reach out by his intellectual consistency and clarity.
Locally the wind from Rome has so far favoured a refreshing change.
Riding high on a wave of a popularity, the new Archbishop Paul Cremona has managed to bridge the sharp divide between progressives and conservatives in the Maltese church.
Surprisingly, the Vatican’s closure on the subject of cohabiting couples in Italy contrasted with a timid opening made by the Maltese Archbishop. The canonization of the first Maltese saint Dun Gorg Preca shows that Malta has a place in the Pope’s agenda.
Preca, the miraculous mystic who preached the gospel to Dockyard workers, appeals to conservatives and progressives alike.
The real test for the Maltese church would come if a future government contemplates the introduction of divorce.
The signal coming from the Vatican will be crucial. Will Benedict send a sign of openness towards a changing society, or will Ratzinger insist on Malta remaining a pristine island of Catholic orthodoxy in a morally relativistic Europe? As the only European country immunised from the “non negotiable” sins of divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion, Malta defies a secular Europe with whom the new Pope is not in love.
What is definitely absent in Benedict’s papacy is Pope John Paul II keen sense of optimism for a politically united Europe, standing out as a beacon of peace in a world war and injustice.
Despite his conservatism on moral issues, Karol Woytila, who had witnessed the horrors of totalitarianism, was able to see the bigger political picture.
Fifty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which in 1957 brought into life what is today the European Union, Benedict XVI formulated a very severe diagnosis of the status of the continent.
He has even come to the point of stating that Europe is falling into a “remarkable form of apostasy.”
Pope John Paul II also managed to earn respect in the Islamic world by outrightly condemning US acts of aggression, something which the new Pope has done in altogether less clear terms.
By focusing on an abstract and philosophical battle against moral relativism, Pope Benedict risks compromising the common ground shared by many Roman Catholics, secularists and Muslims alike.
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