Occasonal Notes: Culture, High and Low
Jason Kuznicki on Sep 15th 2006
Is the Pope Catholic? From Reuters:
Muslims deplored on Friday remarks on Islam by pe Benedict and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologize in person to dispel the impression that he had joined a campaign against their religion.
First reaction: Well, yes. Pope Benedict XVI — of the Roman Catholic Church is engaged in a campaign against Islam. And against Hinduism, and Buddhism, and Presbyterianism. But then, a sentence later, the reason comes out:
In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
Early Muslims spread their religion by violence? What a horrible, unheard of smear! And surely, Catholics never, ever did likewise. Pot, meet kettle. Shake hands. Get to know one another.
Your Quick Guide to the Beatles Movies:
A Hard Day’s Night …sucked. Only a tenuous plot, lousy lip synchs, and an obviously amateurish production all around.
Help! …was hilarious. Clever slapstick and dialogue that would have done Monty Python proud. In this film, Ringo shows that he missed his true calling as a comic actor.
Yellow Submarine …sucked. Only a tenuous plot, lousy animation, and an obviously overwrought, self-consciously “artsy” production all around.
Any guesses which one isn’t available on Netflix? I love Netflix to death, but so far it’s let me down on this one. A rare exception to an otherwise excellent service.
Your Quick Guide to Middlemarch …by a guy who has read only the first hundred pages.
From all I can tell, Middlemarch shares the same plot with perhaps the majority of 19th-century novels: A young lady makes a bad marriage. (Somehow, the young ladies are always to blame here, even despite their total lack of power in society.) The young lady’s bad decisions lead straightaway to four hundred pages of unstinting misery. Six hundred if it’s an “epic.” Then the misery is interrupted — so unexpectedly! — by one of the following:
–the young lady’s tragic death;
–the young lady’s escape to circumstances still more dire;
–the French Revolution;
–all of the above.
In the meantime, the only real question is with which of several very willing and eligible young men she will commit adultery. And where and how often.
This is not to say that I’m finding Middlemarch a bad book. Quite on the contrary. Scott says that I am always too quick to pan literature that I write about in this space, and I think he may well be right. I should say, then, that I’m enjoying Middlemarch tremendously — much more, really, than you would imagine from a plot built along these lines. (And a plot that, barring anachronism unheard of in George Eliot’s time, will not turn upon the French Revolution.)
I could easily say many good things about Middlemarch. But I think it would be like praising Shakespeare — hardly necessary at all. Everyone knows that George Eliot is a great author and that her work is among the best that the English language has to offer.
The characters are excellently drawn. Their interactions are more than just believable; they are necessary, often down to the last painful detail. The author’s observations on life are both astute and entertaining. Why don’t modern authors talk about these things anymore? Why is a novel nowadays always just a fast-paced, flat, documentary presentation of “what happened as it happened?” Why not stretch out and think about the action along the way? For that alone, Middlemarch has been enormously entertaining and rewarding.
Job opportunities: From today’s e-mail, here’s one job I won’t be taking.
I am writing to see if you are currently available for a position in Crofton, MD. I am looking for a Lane Tester for a contract. If you or anyone you may know of is interested, please email me at your earliest convenience.Thank You,
[Name witheld]
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LOOKING FOR 3 PEOPLE TO WORK FOR A 1 MONTH + POSITION. MUST HAVE LICENSE AND VEHICLE.
POSITION INVOLVES THE TESTING OF THE EZPASS SYSTEM. INVOLVES DRIVING A VEHICLE THROUGH TOLL BOOTHS AT VARIOUS SPEEDS IN A SAFE DESIGNATED AREA.
HOURS WILL BE APPROX. 9 - 5 MONDAY - THURSDAY.
MAX PAY RATE IS $12/HR. + MILEAGE REIMBURSEMENT
NEED PEOPLE TO START WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH.
PLEASE CONTACT ME ASAP!!!
Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift. But I will have some good news to announce on the employment front very shortly. Stay tuned.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bistro, The Bookshelf
Jason,
I think you badly misread the Pope’s speach (text here). I don’t see your (or Reuters) interpretation as justified. It seems to me his message is one you’ve promoted yourself on this site, that reason and discussion are how we spread ideas not via violence. From the speach it seems more likely that he used the particular example (the text from the Byzantine Manuel II Paleologus) because it was translated recently by one of the professors in the audience and on the faculty of the locale of the speech.
Thus your pot/kettle analogy is misplaced snark. You might instead wonder (or stand against) the effect of Muslim violent reaction on Academic inquiry and discourse.
I do agree with Jason. You seemed to have misjudged the Pope as some sort of an evil man. This is the not the first time I’ve read an article that misquoted the Pope.
Mark, and kat –
I fear I’ve been misunderstood, and that I should have been clearer at the expense of brevity and snark. Benedict quoted with approval the following lines:
And this seems to me quite clearly to endorse the view that early Islam was spread through violence, at Mohammed’s command.
This is also a factually correct description of early Islamic history. Early Islam — heck, even recent Islam — was spread through violence.
Do I think the pope is evil for saying this? Absolutely not. He is telling the truth, fearlessly and openly. Good for him. And good for Reuters, which I think described his remarks accurately.
But… It should be remembered, and remembered with humility, that Christian faith has also been spread through the sword, and that compulsion in matters of conscience is wrong, no matter what faith or ideology it comes from. What irked me in the pope’s speech was his apparent assumption that Islam alone meant compulsion in matters of faith, whereas Christianity was, apparently, free from such things.
But at the dawn of the fifteenth century, when the dialogues in question were composed, the position of tolerance that they took was distinctly in the minority: The overwhelming majority of Christians would have agreed, back then, that compulsion in matters of faith was both good and necessary. Scholars of that time were fond of citing passages from the Bible that demanded exactly this sort of compulsion, even if today we are more fond of citing their cousins in the Koran. This was why the speech bothered me.
Jason,
I’ve responded in more depth over at Pseudo-Polymath … bt I think you’re misreading Benedict. He cites Khoury’s research specifically which indicates that for Manuel II it was self-evident and obvious that violence to spread Logos was very wrong. That he had to cite this indicates he knows and feels that this is and was an unusual conclusion. So he knows and tacitly admits “that which bothers you” and is looking for reasons why.
But, on my first reading of his lecuture I’ve also misread the lecture which is less about violence and the spread of faith than the place for theology in the Academy and reasons why it has dimished of late.
I suspect still, that you didn’t actually read the lecture and that if you did you would no longer be offended.
Oops., the link is here.
Jason, your argument works only if the early Christians as well spread Christianity through violence. Since the exact opposite is true, the analogy simply does not stand up. The foundations of Christianity and the foundations of Islam are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how they win converts. Since Christians and Muslims alike seek to ground their religions in how the religions were founded, Christians can easily say that the Christian-inspired violence was not grounded in Christian views. Islam cannot say the same sort of thing. I really doubt the pope has never said anything critical of Christians who have used violence. The guy’s practically a pacifist, after all (and when I say practically, I mean it literally; he isn’t a pacifist in principle, but he thinks it’s the only practical way to act on Christian principles given the current state of the world). In his immense writings, he’s sure to have said exactly what you’re saying he should have said, and he’s sure to have said it over and over again. Why does he have to make every possible point that he could make in every speech he makes? This speech was not about Christianity or Christian history. It was about Islam and Islamic history.
Of course, all of this misses the most important thing about all of this. The people who seemed most upset at his portrayal of Islam as violent were the ones who decided they also wanted to confirm what he was saying by using violence in retaliation. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t read his speech. I’m sure they wouldn’t have been able to understand it if they had. The inability to grasp the basic nature of a contradiction generally makes intellectual discussion impossible, and that’s the kind of people who have taken it on themselves to represent Islam to the world.
Jeremy –
your argument works only if the early Christians as well spread Christianity through violence. Since the exact opposite is true, the analogy simply does not stand up. The foundations of Christianity and the foundations of Islam are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how they win converts.
I’m not sure I agree here. There are strong traditions in both faiths that privilege the early period, that look to these respective eras as the most important or the most pure expressions of the religions in question. But I am not convinced by the praise for either the primitive Church or the companions of the Prophet. As von Ranke said, every age is immediate to God, and while I have no religious faith, I do think I understand what he meant, and I believe it, too.
As to your second paragraph, I fully agree. Killing people and burning churches is hardly the way to prove your religion a nonviolent one.