The issue of whether or not the Pope should have apologized for his latest remarks about Muslims is certainly open to debate. However, it is undeniable that he chose to settle out the controversy in a rather peculiar way, namely by apologizing and not apologizing at the same time. As Jon Stewart puts it, instead of a “mea-culpa” he went for a “mea-kinda” (meaning: “Hey, I didn’t say anything wrong, but I’m kind enough to care about your feelings”).
Anyway, here you have the literal transcript and the video fragment from The Daily Show (personally, I find that the *fake?* quote attributed to Pope Innocent IV is just priceless ;-):
Anyway, here you have the literal transcript and the video fragment from The Daily Show (personally, I find that the *fake?* quote attributed to Pope Innocent IV is just priceless ;-):
"It's hard to say you're sorry, especially when you're infallible. But by last weekend, Benedict offered these words of apology. He's sorry that people felt bad. That's known in Vatican terminology as a 'me-a-kinda.' It's a time-honored tradition in the Catholic Church dating back to the Inquisition when Pope Innocent IV said, 'We deeply regret the fact that so many non-believers happen to be flammable'."(Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Sept. 19 2006)
Estimado Paco:
El "Daily Show" es buenísimo, pero eso no significa que haya que estar siempre de acuerdo con lo que dicen. Por desgracia éste es uno de esos casos.
¿Ahora resulta que cada vez que a alguien le siente mal algo que dices debes disculparte aunque no tenga razón para enfadarse? Es como si yo ahora te digo que me ha sentado fatal que hagas este post y te exijo una disculpa por haberlo publicado. Tú me responderías con toda lógica que sientes que me haya sentado mal, pero que no has dicho nada insultante, es tu opinión y no vas a dejar de pensar así porque yo me enfade. Es una respuesta lógica, no un "mea-kinda".
Podría decirse que es lo que ha pasado aquí. Pero no porque es incluso peor. Se ha sacado de contexto una frase y se le ha dado un sentido distinto al que tenía inicialmente, que era condenar la violencia ¡y encima hay que disculparse! Pues no, y el Papa tiene razón. Él había dicho esa frase en un contexto y sin la intención de ofender. Y es lo que ha recordado. Y no tiene porqué disculparse por decir que la violencia es irracional.
Besos desde España
PD1: Comparar un discurso, por muy crítico que pudiera ser, con la Inquisición me parece un poco fuera de lugar.
PD2: Éste es el fragmento del discurso papal y la frase sacada de contexto que ha ofendido a algunos fanáticos:
"En el séptimo coloquio (controversia) editado por el profesor Khoury, el emperador toca el tema de la "yihad" (guerra santa). Seguramente el emperador sabía que en la sura 2, 256 está escrito: "Ninguna constricción en las cosas de la fe". Es una de las suras del periodo inicial en el que Mahoma mismo aún no tenía poder y estaba amenazado. Pero, naturalmente, el emperador conocía también las disposiciones, desarrolladas sucesivamente y fijadas en el Corán, acerca de la guerra santa.
Sin detenerse en los particulares, como la diferencia de trato entre los que poseen el "Libro" y los "incrédulos", de manera sorprendentemente brusca se dirige a su interlocutor simplemente con la pregunta central sobre la relación entre religión y violencia, en general, diciendo: "Muéstrame también aquello que Mahoma ha traído de nuevo, y encontrarás solamente cosas malvadas e inhumanas, como su directiva de difundir por medio de la espada la fe que él predicaba".
El emperador explica así minuciosamente las razones por las cuales la difusión de la fe mediante la violencia es algo irracional. La violencia está en contraste con la naturaleza de Dios y la naturaleza del alma. "Dios no goza con la sangre; no actuar según la razón es contrario a la naturaleza de Dios. La fe es fruto del alma, no del cuerpo.
Por lo tanto, quien quiere llevar a otra persona a la fe necesita la capacidad de hablar bien y de razonar correctamente, y no recurrir a la violencia ni a las amenazas... Para convencer a un alma razonable no hay que recurrir a los músculos ni a instrumentos para golpear ni de ningún otro medio con el que se pueda amenazar a una persona de muerte..."."
Gema, it's good hearing from you.
I agree with you that the Daily Show is heavily biased in this case. But we don't have to forget that the current international "status quo" (even more since the reactions against the dutch newspaper las year) couldn't me more unfortunate.
I acknolwedge priests from Vatican as highly intelligent people, and
I can't believe that such statements about the most important figure in the muslim religion were included in the essay without an approximate "idea" about what could happen.
There are lots of examples in the history to illustrate the duality between violence and religion (starting with christian own history) so the whole idea of including something like that without expecting a harsh reaction from the muslims (moreover with the amount of fanatics than can get the statement out on context) is just naive. And i don't believe the Vatican to be naive.
That statement was not fortuite, I don't know which were the intentions of the Pope, but he did "kinda" implied that islam=violence and the reaction was to be expected.
I get my own opinion in the last pcomment effectively out of the scope of the post :P Hereby, Gema was also slighly out of it :)
The fact is that whether of not the pope should have apologysed is not in discussion, but the ways he choosed to do it.
It is clearly not enough for the ones who felt attacked and terribly funny for the ones who don't care.
Honestly it would have been better to keep his mouth closed and ask the "offended" to read the complete essay instead of acting like idiots.
Hola Gema,
Welcome to this forum. It is nice to see you around here too. :-)
Your reflections seem rather interesting to me. As I said at the beginning of the post, “The issue of whether or not the Pope should have apologized for his latest remarks about Muslims is certainly open to debate”. Your comment is a very good proof of that.
However, as David correctly points out, neither Jon Stewart nor me were actually criticizing the Pope for not apologizing, we were just pointing out the very peculiar character of “religious diplomacy”, who tries to make everybody happy by apologizing and yet not entirely apologizing at the same time (what in Spanish we usually call “nadar y guardar la ropa”).
Interestingly enough, it seems that this strategy is not exclusive to the Catholic Church. Yesterday, for example, Fabio Capello (the coach of Real Madrid soccer team, for those who don’t know who he is) publicly apologized (and not-apologized) for having said that Fernando Torres was a cheater: “I apologize if Torres was offended when I called him a ‘cheater’, but I didn’t want to insult him. I must have misinterpreted the meaning of the word ‘cheater’. What I actually wanted to say is that he obtained a clear advantage for his team by deliberately lying to the referee.” Uhmm… please correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems to be a pretty accurate definition of a ‘cheater’, doesn’t it? ;-)
By the way, David, I was thinking about it this morning and I think that you may actually be right: when J.S. spoke of ‘mea-kinda’, maybe the game on words was referring to ‘kind-of apologizing’ instead of ‘I’m not to blame but I’m kind enough to apologize’, as I suggested on my first post. I guess this remains open to interpretation…
Only three coments:
1) I have read several times Pope's words and he wasn't insulting anybody. But if words can be misunderstood by usual people, if you are dealing with fanatics they will respond as fanatics.
2) I hope radical musslims don't watch "The Daily Show" every day, because they could be very angry if they did.
3) It's ironic how radical musslims have behavied as they thought the Pope was saying (me entendeis, ¿no? :-)).
Kisses
I'm sorry, but some words of my last message were missing:
1) (...) if you are dealing with fanatics they will respond as fanatics, no matter what you said.
Comparing Capello with the Pope is one of the most disturbing images that a "colchonero" can stand...
Well, they have both lived in Italy for quite a while, right? And actually not too far from each other; one in Rome, the other in the Vatican. I wonder if they ever got together to discuss pseudoapologetic strategies intended to avoid truly apologizing over a couple of cappuccinos after a long day of work… ;-)
Anyway, Gema, I agree with the three points you mention in your last post.
That radical Muslims would get angry if they watched The Daily Show regularly is an understatement. In fact, this is actually one the reasons why I like it so much. The good thing is that the program makes openly critical parodies and remarks about Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, so there seems to be no clear bias at this respect. Take, for example, this other transcript - also from The Daily Show - which referred to the radical Muslim reactions to the Pope's words and actually can be seen as a rephrase of the third point that you mentioned in your last comment:
"In the West Bank a group calling itself the Lions of Monotheism fire bombed four churches, telling the Associated Press the attacks were carried out to protest the Pope's remarks linking Islam and violence. The irony of the statement, and this is often the case we find, was lost on them."
[Note to Gema, and other Spanish speakers who read the blog:
Por cierto, te entendemos perfectamente, así que no dudes en escribir en ingles siempre que quieras, que lo haces muy bien :-). Como le dije hace unos días a Samuel, no pasa nada por cometer faltas de ortografía y/o gramática. O si lo prefieres, escribe en Español, como más te apetezca. Estamos entre amigos. Yo procuro escribir en ingles siempre que puedo, no por nada en especial, sino simplemente por cortesía hacia los no hispanohablantes que puedan leer el blog, por si alguno quiere participar en la conversación, pero cada uno puede usar el idioma que más le apetezca o que más cómodo le haga sentirse.]
I meant that there are a lot of videos of "The Daily Show" that, out of their context, as has happened with the Pope's words, could be offensive. I remark: out of their context. Radical people don't mind if you critizise everybody: they only mind if you critizise them.