Benedict on Benedict

At today's General Audience at St. Peter's Square, this is what Pope Benedict XVI said about his Regensburg remarks:

It was an especially beautiful experience for me that day to deliver a conference before a large auditorium of professors and students at the University of Regensburg, in which for many years I was professor. With joy I was able to meet once again with the university world which, during a long period of my life, was my spiritual homeland.

I had chosen as topic the question of the relationship between faith and reason. To introduce the auditorium to the dramatic and timely character of the argument, I quoted some words of a Christian-Islamic dialogue of the 14th century, in which the Christian interlocutor, the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, in an incomprehensibly brusque way for us, presented to the Islamic interlocutor the problem of the relationship between religion and violence.

Unfortunately, this quotation has given room to a misunderstanding. For the careful reader of my text it is clear that I did not wish at any time to make my own the negative words uttered by the medieval emperor in this dialogue and that its controversial content does not express my personal conviction. My intention was very different: Based on what Manuel II affirms afterward in a very positive way, with very beautiful words, about rationality in the transmission of the faith, I wished to explain that religion is not united to violence, but to reason.

The topic of my conference -- responding to the mission of the university -- was therefore the relationship between faith and reason: I wished to invite the Christian faith to dialogue with the modern world and to dialogue with all cultures and religions. I hope that on different occasions of my visit, as for example in Munich, where I underlined the importance of respecting what others consider sacred, my deep respect for the great religions, in particular for Muslims -- who 'adore the one God' and with whom we are engaged in "preserving and promoting together for all mankind social justice, moral values, peace and freedom" ("Nostra Aetate," No. 3) -- emerged clearly.

Therefore, I trust that, after the reactions of the first moment, my words at the University of Regensburg will represent an impulse and encouragement to a positive dialogue, including self-critical, both among religions, as well as between modern reason and Christians' faith.

Lisa