JO Magazine

What actually came of the Pope’s visit? Did his careful dialogue and subtle theology build any new bridges?

Words by John Lillywhite.

DECIPHERING POPE BENEDICT XVI's visit to Jordan and the Holy Land can seem daunting at times. The pilgrimage has been described as one of "raw nerve" by the BBC, a "tight-rope" by CNN, and a "minefield" by TIME magazine. Indeed, by moments the Pope has seemed less like the spiritual guide of 1.5 billion Catholics than a lightning rod for the various ideological, political and social tensions of the world around him.

To a great extent, self-inflicted wounds on the part of the Vatican have made the visit b

oth highly sensitive and highly necessary. Since his succession in 2005, Pope Benedict has managed to deeply offend both Muslim and Jewish communities. He outraged the former in 2006, when in a speech at the University of Regensburg, in Germany, he quoted from a text by a Byzantine Christian Emperor that appeared to link Islam to intolerance and violence.

And relations with the Jewish community have long been tense: Benedict presided over the reintroduction of a Latin mass that prays for the conversion of the Jews, and has strongly defended the record of World War II-era Pope Pius XII against claims that he could have done more to avert the Holocaust. The situation became truly strained early in 2009 with the reversal of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a bishop known to have denied the Holocaust. The Vatican was forced into an embarrassing climb-down, and it fell to a German Pope to condemn unequivocally "the brutal massacre of millions of Jews."

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It is not surprising then, that "interfaith relations" have been a key component of the Holy See's recent outreach. Since 2006 several initiatives aimed at effecting a rapprochement between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world have borne fruit, culminating in the unprecedented Islam-Vatican conference in November 2008 (see pg. 62, "Does Dialogue Matter?")

The Pope faced some small resistance in Jordan, in the form of criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood. Some Muslims are still waiting for an apology for the Regensburg address, and suspect that this Pope has not changed his views on their religion-only repackaged them. They may have found little to soothe their sense of outrage in Benedict's carefully-worded, subtle speeches. Indeed, what the Islamist newspaper Al Sabeel picked up on most was the embarrassing incident of the Pope wearing his shoes in the King Hussein bin Talal Mosque.

But it has been in relations with the Jewish community where he seems to be facing his greatest test. His speech at the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem drew a crescendo of reproach. The chairman of the memorial, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, described the Pope's words as "devoid of any compassion" and perceived "cosmopolitan phrasing." A Holocaust survivor himself, Rabbi Lau spoke of the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to join the Jews in the concentration camps, concluding "only that would have been enough." One member of the Knesset accused the Pope of "glazing over the Nazi genocide," while Haaretz suggested that Benedict would leave "indifference, if not hostility."

The opinion section of The New York Times questioned the validity of these criticisms, with one correspondent concluding "it seems clear that Benedict meant well." TIME magazine largely agreed, but painted Yad Vashem as a missed opportunity for a German Pope to atone for a German wrong.

Still, the most important question for this audience may be whether the Pope's hairsplitting on the Holocaust so alienated his Jewish audience that his remarks about the separation barrier and a Palestinian state fell on deaf ears.

Benedict also had his own agenda for the visit: the number of Christians in the Middle East has been falling sharply. Events in Iraq and Palestine have fueled Islamic extremism, and inter-religious conflict has been particularly heated in Egypt as well, leaving many Christians doing anything they can to get out of the region. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, Christians now make up 2.5 percent of the population, down from 20 percent in 1948 under the British mandate.

One of the Pope's most urgent priorities, as was clear from his speeches, has been to lend succor to this community: at Amman's international stadium he urged Christians to have "courage," "solidarity" and to "engage in dialogue." But even there the Vatican had to tread warily, lest Muslims draw comparisons to the European colonial era when the French and British elevated Christians to control mostly Muslim empires.

Many Christians in the occupied Palestinian territories even expressed anxiety: if anything went wrong, the Pope would return to Rome and they would be left with the consequences. Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, describes the situation thus: "One word for the Muslims and I'm in trouble; one word for the Jews and I'm in trouble."

And the Pope's presence in Israel has certainly highlighted, if not exacerbated, hostilities. TIME reported that Christians in Gaza were not granted visas by the Israeli authorities to see Benedict speak in the West Bank, while the BBC noted that the Palestinian press had been forbidden to open a media center in Jerusalem.

Interfaith dialogue was expected but the great unknown of this trip was what role the pontiff might play in the peace process, if indeed any at all. Certainly, it seemed many Muslims expected something of him, especially after the Regensburg debacle.

Questions as to whether the Pope would "dare" address the conflict were answered immediately on his arrival in Tel Aviv, where he impressed the need for the Palestinians to have "a homeland of their own with secure and internationally recognized borders" that reflect their "legitimate aspirations." (The fact that he was speaking at the airport also prevented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ducking out of the event entirely.) Although the phrase "two-state-solution" was not uttered, the Pope's remarks will be welcome across much of the Middle East-not least because they accord with Washington's.

ON THE FLIGHT TO Jordan the Pope stressed to reporters that the papacy was a "spiritual force, not a political institution." But while the ability of the Pope to ferment political change remains negligible, his power to shape consensus and debate remains significant, even in the Arab world, and Benedict did hope to make use of this.

In a speech at the King Hussein Bin Talal mosque, he suggested that Christians and Muslims have more in common than divides them, and called for both religions to work against those who seek to banish faith from the public sphere: "Where the opponents of religion seek not simply to silence its voice but to replace it with their own, the need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly."

The need for the Abrahamic religions to stand firm against a common secular threat remains perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Vatican interfaith outreach, and also one of the least publicized. But is there an opportunity here?

Looking beyond the slip-ups, this Pope does seem to understand some of Muslims' social and political concerns, particularly when it comes to distrust of Western "secular" values. But what about Islamic belief and theology? In Jordan, for example, his reflections on the dignity of women and the need for female empowerment may have drawn on Western assumptions about Islam rather than true theological insight. For whatever reason, all the major news networks were conspicuously quick in reporting that particular speech.

Less newsworthy, but perhaps more significant, was a speech before the diplomatic corps in Jordan, in which the pontiff drew a dichotomy between "creative" Christian reason, purified by thought, and a Muslim faith received directly from God: "Christians in fact describe God, among other ways, as creative reason, which orders and guides the world. And God endows us with the capacity to participate in his reason and thus to act in accordance with what is good. Muslims worship God, the creator of heaven and Earth, who has spoken to humanity."

Opinion remains split as to whether hinting at the distinctions between a Christian concept of logos and a Muslim tradition of direct revelation-eerily reminiscent of parts of the Regensburg address-would lead to increased understanding or a profounder sense of distance.

So the Pope has waded into a quagmire on his visit to the Holy Land. Not to say that his journey here was fruitless. It has put a spotlight on the plight of the Middle East's Christians, the significance of the peace process, and the tangled relationships that make this region at once fascinating and tragic.