Ex-Archbishop of Canterbury: The pope is right!

The London Times reports:

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech [of Sept. 12]. …

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a “clash of civilisations”.

Arguing that Huntington’s thesis has some “validity”, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

Lord Carey went on to argue that a “deep-seated Westophobia” has developed in recent years in the Muslim world.

It’s London and Rome together. See how these Christians love one another.

Frank Warner

Comments

[jj mollo]

The Gypsy Scholar has a whole series of posts on misinterpretations of the Pope's speech. He even got the Vatican to change their official English translation (he thinks).

pope-benedict-xvi-need-not-apologize
new-york-times-insults-pope
what-pope-really-actually-said
what-pope-didnt-quote
gypsy-scholar-hits-bigtime

[Frank Warner]

I noticed that Hitchens doesn't think much of what the pope said. Hitch focuses on Benedict's factual error and interprets the pope's words generally as a rejection of reason.

I'll have to reread the pope's lecture, but on first reading it sure looked as if he was promoting reason over violence.