Despite the initial attempt at levity, this one isn’t amusing. But here goes.

I often amuse myself by imagining putting one persona in a place where it doesn’t belong. Here’s a for example: back in the day, before I had kids, I could get a little wound up in basketball practice. And I confess that my taste in gym vocabulary tends toward Coach Krzyzewski. So some players and I would laugh about the way I might carpet f-bomb some poor sophomore who continued to use a comma where a semi-colon was necessary. “Didn’t we go over semi-colons? Every f-ing day we talk about semi-colons! And what do you do? You use a f-ing comma here and an f-ing comma there and there isn’t a single g-d-m semi-colon in the entire f-ing paper!” If you don’t know my voice, it’s not that funny, but if you do, I think it’s worth maybe more than a chuckle. Anyway, the diatribe continues, but you get the drift.

Today I imagined myself teaching Emma’s first grade CCD class. I would start by asking the little ragamuffins to draw a picture of evil. They’d most likely be befuddled, not having given much thought to evil, and expecting to sing something like “Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world. Red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” But homey don’t play that in my CCD class. Instead, I’d make the assignment a little more concrete. I’d tell them to think of the nice Muslim boy or girl in their public school class, and draw a picture of him or her. And then I’d explain that, according to the Pope (who said something in prepared remarks that required an apology – so much for papal infallibility), the ideas of Islam are evil and inhuman, so too must be those who practice it.

Of course, that’s a facile summary of Pope Benedict’s remarks, but most people, especially those who are looking for a reason to pick a fight with you, like facile summaries. And my little response to the problem is just as disproportionate as my response to the fictional semi-colon abuser. But can’t you deplore jihad without calling the ideas of a religion, one whose Abraham is your Abraham, whose Moses is your Moses, whose Allah is your Yhwh, “evil and inhuman”? Personally, I’m uncomfortable with the Vatican looking back to the Crusades for guidance on modern Christian – Muslim relations. And I wonder if such a view will be advanced the day the College of Cardinals looks beyond Europe for its spiritual leader.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was named Pope, I was nervous about the public face of the Church. In one of my first moments of religious consciousness, back in 1984, I identified Cardinal Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Inquisition, I was told), as a person to be feared. At that time, he was calling the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff to the carpet to explain Boff’s positions regarding the application of principles of faith to modern political circumstances. Boff and his kind, priests trying to establish Christian communities and encouraging the spread of literacy as a means of increasing the political power of the Latin American peasantry, were told to stop ministering as they were ministering. Some were excommunicated, because, and here’s another oversimplification, they had mixed politics with theology. The implications of such a mixture are understandably threatening: how can the eternal teachings of the church remain eternal if they are constantly interpreted through the lens of shifting political realities?

But then why would the Cardinal oppose Turkey’s entry into the European Union, on the grounds that such a move – inviting a Muslim country to join forces with the oldest Christian nations – would endanger Europe’s strength? If it’s wrong to oppose the use of Catholic Church resources to protect the political rights of the poor, then why is it right to use Church influence to support the economic interests of the powerful?

It would make my mother happier if I were less conflicted, but I’m not. Sorry, mom.