On December 13, two very interesting addresses were given at the Lateran University --with no less a luminary than the Vatican Sec. of State in attendance. I don't pretend to know what it means, but this is the most vigorous public defense of the Crusades I have seen coming from a Vatican official (although not speaking for the Vatican necessarily). That it comes at a time when the Pope is prioritizing ecumenism seems significant somehow. "Dialogue" that is fearless... And then an important Muslim scholar defended the U.S. view of Iraq, on highly unusual grounds (does even the Administration make the claim that we understood Iraqi society this well before the war?) Check it out.
Politics is the very strange art of living together: but to practice it, the Iraqis need to rediscover their liberty, which was taken from them in the name of the nation, eliminating what a society is, meaning its ethnic, religious, and cultural complexity. I maintain that the Americans saw things properly in considering the communitarian perspective an obligatory step for the reformulation of Iraqi society.
While you're at it, be sure to read Benedict's message for World Peace Day (January 1st, but it was released Dec. 13th). A blockbuster in which he ties peace to truth, expresses solidarity with coalition soldiers (not by name) and speaks at length about terrorism and religious fundamentalism --saying that at heart they share the same debased view of man. Here's an aperitif.
we must realize that peace cannot be reduced to the simple absence of armed conflict, but needs to be understood as ''the fruit of an order which has been planted in human society by its divine Founder'', an order ''which must be brought about by humanity in its thirst for ever more perfect justice''.(3) As the result of an order planned and willed by the love of God, peace has an intrinsic and invincible truth of its own, and corresponds ''to an irrepressible yearning and hope dwelling within us''.(4)
4. Seen in this way, peace appears as a heavenly gift and a divine grace which demands at every level the exercise of the highest responsibility: that of conforming human history—in truth, justice, freedom and love—to the divine order. Whenever there is a loss of fidelity to the transcendent order, and a loss of respect for that ''grammar'' of dialogue which is the universal moral law written on human hearts,(5) whenever the integral development of the person and the protection of his fundamental rights are hindered or denied, whenever countless people are forced to endure intolerable injustices and inequalities, how can we hope that the good of peace will be realized? The essential elements which make up the truth of that good are missing. Saint Augustine described peace as tranquillitas ordinis,(6) the tranquillity of order. By this, he meant a situation which ultimately enables the truth about man to be fully respected and realized.
