Why Doesn't the Pope Talk About Christians?

Submitted by Ellyn (United States), Sep 22, 2006 at 11:41

To ask why the Pope doesn't talk about Christians (actually, maybe he does; I haven't read the whole text, have you?) is to miss the point. The point, in my view, is to highlight the vast difference between the morality as currently taught by the two religions (or as taught by Christianity as represented by the Pope and Islam as represented by fundamentalist Muslims) and to seek a meeting ground to head off nuclear holocaust -- and that meeting ground, the Pope hopes, will be reason.

One of the major differences would appear to be the willingness of Islamists--even the religious duty-- to attack and kill everyone on earth who does not believe the same way that their religion teaches them to believe.

Regardless of whether the Christian church at one time may or may not have moved in that same direction, it has since modernized, recognized that the world is composed of many good people of many different religions, and while it seeks to convert them to its own religion, it seeks to do so with love and teaching, not by the sword.

The United States, viewed by Islamists as the Great Satan, has clearly refrained from using the vast destructive power of its weapons of mass destruction. This nation has the power to attack, and annhilate, every Muslim nation on earth. That it has not done so ought to be a cause for reflection.

The same awesome power, placed in the hands of some current Muslim heads of state, would have a different outcome because of their belief that religious duty requires them to annhiliate all infidels.

In my view, it is the nighmare of immanent mutual destruction in the name of religion that the Pope is addressing, and hoping to head off -- through the application of reason.

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