A Sorry Apology

He did it. He apologized. I guess His Holiness was not speaking ex cathedra.

Below is a Reuters Report on the Papal apology.

Pope Benedict told Muslims on Saturday he was sorry they had found his speech on Islam offensive, expressing his respect for their faith and hoping they would understand the "true sense" of his words.

"The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers,"

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said in a statement.
The statement came amid mounting anger from Muslims over remarks by the Pope in a speech in his native Germany on Tuesday that was seen as critical of their faith. Calls for him to apologize had spread beyond the Islamic world.

In that speech, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence. Islamic fury erupted on Thursday and has cast doubt on a visit the Pope plans to Turkey in November

But the Vatican statement said: "Confirming his respect and esteem for those who profess the Islamic faith, he (the Pope) hopes they will be helped to understand his words in their true sense."

Before the statement, the tide of Muslim criticism of the Roman Catholic leader swelled on Saturday.

Yemen's president became the first head of state publicly to denounce him and threatened to review ties with the Vatican unless he apologized. Ali Abdullah Saleh, campaigning for re-election, told voters at a rally Benedict had wronged Islam.
Two churches -- neither of them Catholic -- were fire-bombed in the
West Bank' , although no one was hurt.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German politicians defended his comments, saying he had been misunderstood.

"It was an invitation to dialogue between religions, she told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper in an interview. "What Benedict XVI emphasized was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion."

CALLS FOR APOLOGY
"He should apologize to Muslims," the president of the German Council of Muslims, Ayyub Axel Koehler, told the Neue Presse newspaper on Saturday. "That would be a contribution toward unwinding the tension and creating clarity."

Support for that view came from the New York Times, which said in an editorial on Saturday he must issue a "deep and persuasive" apology for quotes used in his speech.

"The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly," it said. "He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal."

The Pope on Tuesday repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The Pope, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, added "violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul."
Muslim figures continued to assail those comments.

"How can (the Pope) imply that Muslims are the creators of terrorism in the world while it is the followers of Christianity who have aggressed against every country of the Islamic world?" prominent Saudi cleric Salman al-Odeh said.
"Who attacked and who invaded Iraq? ... The Pope's statements are an attempt to put a religious cover on injustice and political aggression practiced by the American administration against Muslims."

Turkey's nationalist paper Vatan quoted Salih Kapusuz, head of the ruling Justice and Development Party's parliamentary group as saying: "The mentality of the Crusades has returned.

"(Benedict) will go down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."
But Turkey's English-language Daily News, while deploring the Pope's comments, said: "We just disagree with this vendetta-like approach of continuing to abuse the Pope after his spokesman made a statement saying that he respected Islam and did not intend to offend Muslims."

It looks like the New York Times and the Islamic media now have found something that they can agree about.

After all, we need to be careful not to make any bad statements about Islam or more churches will be burned.

Worse than that we might be viewed as being politically incorrect or intolerant of other faiths.

It is a sad day when truth takes a backseat to political expediency.

At least the Jesuits must have written the apology which in essence says : "I am sorry you misunderstood me."

HarleyDad