THE PARABLE OF THE EMPEROR AND THE PERSIAN
THE PARABLE OF THE EMPEROR AND THE PERSIAN
As tempting as it is to focus on Benedict XVI's September 12 "mis-speak" about Islam there is a danger of missing its wider context. He knew exactly what he was saying, to whom and why. If one reads the entire document it seems to capsulize his "behind the scenes" role with his predecessor and articulates in a very compact form his perspective on the world, the church, contemporary society, history, the basis for his positions on topical issues, and where he intends to lead "his" Roman Catholic Church.
The Pope is an extremely intelligent man who has haunted the ecclesiastical corridors for a long time. He knows the papal traditions and enjoys a plethora of advisors and intimates both personal and professional who helped prepare his remarks and who vetted them. Whether he heeded or ignored their advice or, as one writer contends, his special advisor on Islam was on a business trip, it is obvious that a public oration to an elite group by a person in his position would be finely directed with an anticipation of being dissected and analyzed for all possible messages and news bites.
What is admirably right about the speech is the recognition that violence is antithetical to religion, conversion and mission. The theoretical and dramatic crux for the speech though does lie in the "parable" of Emperor Paleologus and the "educated" Persian. Its moral is the inevitable degradation of religion without "reason", seemingly defined as a central authority imposing a complete structure of belief, theological and philosophical. In the parable what does Mohammed bring into the human equation and the history of religion? "Ir-reason" or more graphically "things only evil and inhuman" as opposed to the Greco-Christian contribution defined as "reason" idealized and divinized in "Logos", the "Word". The systematic application of Logos in the real world is where the third element in Benedict's trinity emerges: Roman institutional order and empire (i.e., the one, true universal and apostolic church).
The major flaws in his system seem to be: (a) even Christians, adherents of "Logos" have been known to indulge in violence; (b) he assumes compliance to the system by humans to equate with Newton's apple; (c) his equating "word" with "law" portends an authoritarian regime; (d) imposition of law without retribution for dissent or deviance is either irrational or contradicts his theory;(e) expecting respect for theology and philosophy equivalent to that of science seems exclusively directed to that of the Roman Catholic type. (f) Expecting Catholic first principles (dogma) and corollaries disguising themselves as reason and posing as the single entry to dialogue cannot withstand scrutiny of interdisciplinary openness.
Finally he seems to have moved the constitution of the Church from the incarnate Christ to the stoa of Plato and Aristotle, the empire of Constantine and world pessimism of Augustine. He appears to reposition the Church by distancing himself from, if not dismissing, the humane dimensions of the Vatican Councils. Benedict returns again and again to the central validation of his system in the quote from John, Chapter 1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". The document has many flaws but the greatest seems to be that he has forgotten that the Word became flesh.
