Kathleen Parker: Something Good This Way Comes

Over at NRO Kathleen Parker sub-titles and ends this editorial on Pope Benedict with these words: “The pope is a brave man.” She recounts how the pontiff has stirred up a few storms in the religious environment over the past few years, citing his baptism of an Italy-based Muslim journalist during the Easter vigil as the most recent. In response to this “insensitive” act, angry mobs attacked five Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza, shot and killed an Italian nun, and burned effigies of the pope, calling for his death. The journalist, Magdi Cristiano Allam, has also received several death threats and is traveling with a security detail while his family is in hiding.

Surprisingly, in the midst of all this, Saudi King Abdullah called for a Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders to begin a dialogue re: suffering the world over. On Easter Monday, Abdullah expressed “distress” over a global crisis that “has caused an imbalance in religion, in ethics, in all of humanity.” Elsewhere, the Riyadh government called for Saudi imams to discourage extremism and encourage a more moderate, peaceful interpretation of Islam. And in Indonesia, Christian and Muslim leaders recently gathered to discuss cooperative efforts while Islamic educators issued an appeal to begin educating young Muslim men without justifications for violence.

Does this mean there is hope for a world gone mad? Parker says maybe, but notes that Pope Benedict’s inflexible insistence on speaking out on human rights in addition to God’s universal love may pose a problem for some. She quotes Father Roger J. Landry, a priest in the Fall River, MA, diocese and editor of the diocesan newspaper The Anchor, who wrote in a recent editorial that Benedict has “insisted that the conversation tackle how such love becomes concrete in analyzing how each tradition handles the question of human rights.”

I am grateful that Pope Benedict insists our dialogue include an honest examination and candid discussions of human rights violations wherever and whyever (and by whomever) they occur. I am also grateful that he does so without apology or equivocation, even under threat of death.

During the pope’s trip to the U.S. later this month, he will address the United Nations (on Friday, April 18th).