A friend passes along the link to this column by George Weigel on what Pope Benedict was saying in his now famous Regensburg speech. Weigel writes that:
In a brilliant lecture at the University of Regensburg last week, Pope Benedict XVI made three crucial points that are now in danger of being lost in the polemics about his supposedly offensive comments about Islam.
The three points, according to Weigel, were these:
1) All the great questions of life, including social and political questions, are ultimately theological.
2) Irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children "is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul."
3) If the West's high culture keeps playing in the sandbox of postmodern irrationalism -- in which there is "your truth" and "my truth" but nothing such as "the truth" -- the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because the West won't be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending.
Benedict is right, of course, on all three counts. Read the full column at the link.