Vitamin B16

The November 27, 2006, deadtree issue of Time magazine has a cover story on Pope Benedict XVI’s confrontation with Islam, using the Pope’s impending trip to Turkey as a springboard. Here is the teaser for the article in the issue’s table of contents:

Pope Benedict has become as much a lightning rod as a moral leader. Now, on his visit to Turkey, will he press his case against Islamic violence — or, having seen the fury his words can spark, back away from the clash of civilizations? Whether he enrages or engages, this trip is likely to define his papacy.

Unlike the editors and writers of Time, B16 sees further into the future than his next trip abroad, and more deeply into the past than the latest round of Middle East violence. As Pope, he is much more than merely a moral leader — a safe, soft and shapeless category that he is unlikely to allow secular relativists to pin on him. As a scholar, teacher, preacher and priest, he has been thinking, reading, and writing about Christianity, and its relation to other religions and secular culture, for decades. A quick skimming for Islamic-related pull-quotes of the index of a book based on an extensive interview provides a distorted image of a subtle intellect capable of presenting dauntingly complex topics in clear prose.

(His writing in English translation is a pleasure. His writing in the original — German, I’m guessing — is likely also a pleasure. The felicitous style and clear exposition cannot be laid entirely at the feet of an extraordinary translator.)

The “helpful” time line running across the bottom of pages 42 and 43, labeled Christianity and Islam: A History of Interaction, omits huge chunks. Like, say, the conquest of Christian North Africa and the Holy Land. Instead, the time line blandly skates from Muhammad receiving the Qur’an to the Muslim conquest of (southern) Spain, painting the conquest as a blessing in disguise because the conquered territory “becomes [a] center of commerce and culture.”

The tag-on commentary by Father Richard John Neuhaus is much more aware of the depth of understanding possessed by B16. The complementary tag-on commentary by Tariq Ramadan swings and misses in Ramadan’s zeal to promote Muslim Europeans in history and the present day.

Time should be commended for noticing the Pope, but not for misunderstanding and misrepresenting him. A much better understanding can be had from his writings, both as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and as Pope Benedict XVI.