"It is heartening to see that Pope Benedict XVI has already, in various speeches and writings before his accession to the papacy, dared to speak more clearly about the threat that Islam poses to Western civilization than his predecessor -- for all his many and remarkable gifts -- ever quite managed to do," writes the indispensable Robert Spencer in FrontPage [via Pope Benedict XVI blog, which we've added to the blogroll at right]:
The new Pope has criticized Europe’s reluctance to acknowledge its Christian roots for fear of offending Islam’s rapidly growing and increasingly influential presence in European countries -- a presence which, as historian Bat Ye’or demonstrates in her book Eurabia, has been actively encouraged and facilitated by European leaders for over three decades . . . He has criticized multiculturalism, "which is so constantly and passionately encouraged and supported," because it "sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our own."
He contrasts the modern-day resurgence of Islam with the enervation of Europe. In old Europe, he has said, "we are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one's own desires." Islam, on the other hand, is anything but relativistic: " The rebirth of Islam is due in part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the hands of old Europe."
A Europe newly defined as in some sense a Christian entity may outrage secularists, but a secular and relativist Europe has so far proved powerless against the Islamization of Europe -- despite the fact that Islamization threatens cherished Western notions of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.
Through jihad terrorism and demographics, Islam is threatening Europe's survival yet again -- and it looks as if now there is a Pope who has noticed. Maybe in Europe the resistance is just beginning.
No wonder the left doesn't like this pope.
As usual (this has been most notable in Supreme Court Justices because you see more of them over the years than you do Popes) you don't know exactly how a person will deal with the office they've been elected to fill until they are actually there. What they've done before may be some indication... but sometimes things change once they are in a position. It sounds encouraging - we'll have to give him some time and see how he handles things.
Posted by: Teresa | April 21, 2005 at 11:42 AM