c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) This is what Pope Benedict’s critics feared.

After he was elected last year to replace John Paul II, they worried the conservative, erudite pontiff would be too polarizing and insensitive to push interfaith dialogue forward as his popular predecessor had for 26 years.

The uneventful start to Benedict’s papacy seemed to refute those concerns. But now, Vatican observers worry his Sept. 12 word choice about Islam will hinder efforts on two crucial Vatican interests: securing religious rights of Catholics in Muslim countries, and prodding Islamic leaders to more forcefully condemn Muslim terrorists.

“Anytime a … speech like this gets distorted a bit, lifted up and made an international cause celebre, it can’t help, and it certainly hurts any other efforts to engage in dialogue,” said Scott Appleby, director of the Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

“It’s a setback for more discreet, behind-the-scenes, day-to-day dialogue.”

None of the experts interviewed for this story felt Benedict’s words _ quoting a 14th-century emperor that the teachings of Islam’s founder were “evil and inhuman” _ justified violent reactions like those unfolding in many parts of the world. And they were confident his attempts to apologize Sunday (Sept. 17) would reduce long-term fallout.

But most echoed concerns raised in 2005 that Benedict, with his esteemed background as a theologian and professor, lacks the diplomacy skills expected in the modern age from the head of a religion with more than a billion adherents.

The uproar also has reignited criticism that Benedict should not have transferred Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a top Vatican expert on Islam, to a posting in Egypt in February.

Over the weekend, the British Broadcasting Corp. posted on its Web site a 4-month-old interview with the Rev. Thomas Reese, former editor of the religiously progressive, Jesuit-run magazine America, in which Reese warned of consequences from Fitzgerald’s transfer.

“He was the smartest guy in the Vatican on relations with Muslims. You don’t exile someone like that, you listen to them,” the interview read, continuing:

“If the Vatican says something dumb about Muslims, people will die in parts of Africa and churches will be burned in Indonesia, let alone what happens in the Middle East,” said Reese, who is said to have lost his editor’s job, shortly after Benedict became pope, because of Vatican pressure on the Jesuits.

Even before he became pope in April 2005 and took the name Benedict, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had agitated many Muslims as chief of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

A document he co-wrote in 2000, reflecting Catholic orthodoxy, said non-Christians are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.” And in 2004, he publicly opposed the European Union membership of Turkey, a secular Muslim nation, telling the French magazine Le Figaro that “Europe is a cultural continent, not a geographical one,” and that “the roots that have formed it” are Christian.

Now, in the days after the controversial “evil and inhuman” comments made in a university setting in Regensburg, Germany, in a broader lecture on faith and reason, multiple churches in Palestinian areas have been attacked, a nun in Somalia was shot to death, and a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq called him a “worshipper of the cross” and predicted “doom” for him and the West.

Many influential Muslim clerics have criticized Benedict’s words non-violently. Others have accepted his apology and called for calm.

“The pope probably did not anticipate the depth and scope of the reaction, and he should and will learn a lesson from that,” Appleby said. “It’s partly the pope’s fault, the media’s fault, and the climate today _ the eagerness to jump on something and to be offended.”

To some, including the line at all reflected an innate lack of diplomatic skills, and confirmed the oft-voiced view that Benedict cares less about harmonious interfaith relations than John Paul.

John Allen Jr., author of a biography of Benedict, said the pope might never have made the speech had it been properly reviewed. But Fitzgerald was in Egypt, and the Vatican was in a transition period between secretaries of state.

“From a communications point of view, there’s no doubt it would’ve been helpful had this language been a little more nuanced,” Allen said. “There was a lack of sensitivity to the way this could be understood.”

(Jeff Diamant is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

KRE/JL END DIAMANT

Editors: A version of this story is also being transmitted by Newhouse News Service. See related story, RNS-VATICAN-ISLAM, transmitted Sept. 19.