Without the slightest
reference to the papal inquisition and slaughtering in the name of God,
without the slightest reference to the Crusades against not only 'infidels'
but even
against Byzantium, the pope dares to use a byzantine Emperor in order to
talk about reasonable faith and the evil of the Prophet's sword. I wonder
what was his audience thinking at that time, but let's suppose that himself
has become so innocent, he does not even remember the evils of the
past, keeping only what is good, even being a byzantine now!
Why did he choose a
byzantine emperor to support his thinking, when he has an army of
theologians, present and past, devoted to reasoning with an exclusivity
Manuel never dreamt of? For the moment it suffices to notice that the course
of his speech more or less compares scientific atheism with Islam, as an
attitude contrary to reason. This way he tells to scientists that they are
not only 'wrong', but that their wrong equals Muslim brutality and
fanaticism. He tells them: to reject God as a scientific object, is equal to
slaughtering in the name of God.
This is not just an
absurdity, it is the pope's good intentions, it reveals how confident
he is, how frankly and passionately he believes that salvation is a
scientific matter, and it is not Benedict's characteristic; the same
frankness and passion can be found in the holy inquisition, good intentions
was not something that the pope ever lacked more than anyone else. To these
intentions, where faith and salvation are becoming a scientific object, we
owe also our current division of time in B.C. and A.D periods, a blasphemous invention, slandering all peoples who
lived 'before' Christ, an invention not accepted in
Byzantium.
