EX SS soldier Pope Benedict XVI yesterday apologised in person for causing offence to Muslims in a speech in Bavaria last week.
In his speech at Regensburg University on Tuesday, the German-born Pope quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire saying that the ‘Prophet Muhammad brought to the the world only evil and inhuman things.’
This statement produced mass marches of condemnation throughout the Islamic world, and reports of attacks on Catholic Churches and a nun.
There is not the slightest doubt that the papacy knew what the results of such a speech were likely to be, made in the wake of the wars on Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. The remarks were made provocatively to secure a response, to divide people and not to unite them.
It is therefore a question of mission accomplished.
In fact, aides to the ‘holy father’ have made it clear that what the SS veteran is peddling is the notion that Christianity and in particular the blood soaked Catholic Church is a religion of peace, but that Islam is not. And by Catholic doctrine the Pope cannot err in matters of faith and morals.
One aide to Benedict said: ‘We do not believe that violence can be justified by religion’, meaning that this is the sin of Islam.
If it is, then it is not an original one, since the Catholic Church was practicing violent mass murder centuries before Islam appeared on the scene.
Indeed to claim Catholicism as a religion of peace is farcical. It is not just a question of the Borgias, or of the Crusades and the sacking of Jerusalem, and the slaughter of all of its inhabitants, or the mass murder of the ancient peoples of Mexico and Peru, or even the blood curdling deeds of the Holy Inquisition.
In the Western world, Catholicism has been and is the arch enemy of progress. It is backward and counter-revolutionary to the core, a form of black magic that changes wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ to be consumed by the faithful to make them stronger.
One of its axioms is that man is born evil, with the stain of original sin on his soul, so that human- kind will always need to be suppressed and oppressed by its ‘holy mother the Church’.
It peddles the notion of human limitation and that there are mysteries that human knowledge can never grasp, and which it is unreasonable, objectionable and even heretical to attempt to grasp.
Those that defied this ban on thought and the development of scientific thought in particular and overthrew the axioms of the Church, such as Galileo were threatened with torture and the fire and declared heretics, and many were burnt, by the religion of peace.
The Catholic Church is therefore ideal Crusader material, and it is only natural that as Bush pushes forward with his ‘battle of the civilisations’, that the Church should annoint it with the notion that there is a part of islam that must be criticised and rejected by all those who want to live alongside the imperialist powers, and that that is Islam’s alleged justification of violence.
It is the religious benediction for Blair’s contention that the Muslim community has the task of purging itself of the terrorists who are attracted by this achilles heal of the religion, which just happens to dominate the main oil producing regions in the planet.
The News Line calls for the unity of the working class of the world to fight and overthrow capitalism and imperialism, which the Catholic Church is seeking to provide with a doctrine for its struggle.
The major contradiction in the world is the class contradiction between the capitalist ruling classes and their agents and the working class.
In the recent war in the Lebanon it is well known that the devout Saudi Royal Family, plus the devout Jordanian monarchy, plus the equally devout Egyptian ruling class were supporting Israel against Hezbollah, the Muslim liberation organisation that millions of workers in the West were supporting against Israel.
The major differences are class not religious differences. The major struggle in the world is the struggle of the workers of the world to smash capitalism and imperialism and replace them with world socialism.