Thursday, February 4, 2010
Harry Knox: Pope Benedict is "hurting people in the name of Jesus"
Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is standing by a statement he made last March that Pope Benedict XVI is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.”
When asked on Tuesday whether he still holds that view that the pope "is hurting people in the name of Jesus," Knox said, “I do.”
More here. I assume (hermeneutic of charity and all that) that Mr. Knox means "by supporting policies that, in the Pope's view, are required by a commitment to the Truth revealed by and in Jesus, the Pope is, in fact, causing tangible harms to people." He does not mean, I assume, that "the Pope is using 'Jesus' as a way to facilitate the causing of harm." Let's go with my assumption. If Mr. Knox's charge is unfounded, it could be because (i) the harms to which he refers (primarily AIDS and HIV) are actually 'caused' by other things, not by the policies in question; or (ii) on balance, the harms to which he refers -- even assuming that the Pope is partially responsible for them -- are outweighed by the benefits caused by the policies in question. (Other possibilities?)
I assume that it is an essential premise of Mr. Knox's charge (charitably understood) that the Pope is mistaken in thinking that the policies in question are required by a commitment to the Truth revealed by and in Jesus. Is it? Or could Mr. Knox think that (a) the Pope is right in thinking this, but also that (b) he is causing harms (and so should (c) not support the policies, despite the fact that they are required etc., etc.?
Thoughts?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/02/harry-knox-pope-benedict-is-hurting-people-in-the-name-of-jesus.html
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Mr. Knox might be agnostic as to whether the Pope is right or wrong in his interpretation of what Jesus would require in terms of condom use in AIDS-plagued Africa, but my guess is that he believes that the Pope's interpretation is wrong. I'm more interested in whether you find Mr. Knox's statement to be objectionable -- not just whether you disagree with his conclusions, but whether you find it objectionable that he would make such a statement. For those of us who want the Church's witness in the public square to be taken seriously and engaged, shouldn't we welcome this sort of statement? Would it be similarly objectionable if Knox had said, "The Pope is compromising AIDS prevention in the name of Jesus?" If the Pope (and other scholars who have reached the same conclusion) prove to be wrong about the efficacy of condoms in battling AIDS, and if the Pope's statements have led at-risk individuals who would otherwise have used condoms to not use condoms, and if at least some of those people have contracted AIDS as a result, is Knox's statement still objectionable?