It is most peculiar how the entire Protestant response to the Pope's speech overlooks the fact that he called the Reformation "irrational". Even people like John Piper  seemed to like it, defending the Pope and suggesting similar ways to evangelize Muslims.

Yet conservative Catholics, such as Father Fessio, (head of Ave Maria College) all comment that this broadside from the Pope was addressed against Protestants too. The favorable Protestant response is intriguing.  Perhaps it recognizes, for the first time, a common enemy. That is, everyone, and their brother, has an opinion of "Why Islam is violent". The reasons span the field from Ralph Peters "The problem with Islam is the Middle East" (he argues that something in the water there drives them mad), to the racist "it's the Arabs", to the liberal  "they're victimized by Israel", to the religious "they're cursed infidels".

So the Pope takes a stab at it, and talks about Reason. Yet the Pope intends to address much more than Islam, he is addressing Post-Modernism  and Protestantism as well, he even numbers his points to prevent the listener from missing it. Point 0 was Islam (circa 1391), point 1 is the Reformation (circa 1530), point 2 is German liberalism (circa 1830), point 3 is Post-Modernism (circa now). (Pragmatically, there isn't much difference between 2 & 3, so I'd just lump them together, even if they use metaphysics slightly differently.)

So it was, after all, the Post-Modernist press that grabbed the speech, translated the juicy bits into English (or Arabic) and fed them to the sharks of Al-Jazeera. Think of it as Post-Modern outrage. (I mean, did you really expect them to try to rationally defend their own position?)

It was only then that the Muslim press took up the hue-and-cry, scenting blood, and everyone is talking about it. But I'm still awaiting the Protestant rage, given that the Pope said the Reformation was irrational. He couldn't have said a more inflammatory thing if he had called it adulterous or fascistic.

My understanding of the political (and psychological) dynamics of the conflict is that there is indeed a Culture War going on, but it is between the 3 categories that the Pope outlined:
 Secular Modern & PostModern vs. Religious "fundamentalist" Islam vs. Christianity

If I had better graphics, I would show these three views overlapping with a Venn diagram. So I will abbreviate. Overlap between Secular & Islam: SI, overlap Secular & Christianity (SC), etc. Here's a picture

    S       (SI)        I   
    (SC) {SCI} (IC)
                C

There is some skirmishing within Secularists between Modernists and Post-Modernists. However this should be seen as mere squabbling, because once the real threat of "theocracy" is raised, a united front is lifted. (First Things had a nice review of the spate of "theocracy-panic" in the MSM.) The best example of this is in the "evolution vs theism" debates, where the press would have you believe that evolutionists are happy scientists blithely working together under a unifying system of beliefs that explain everything of any importance. The significance of "Intelligent Design", as Dembski will gladly tell you, is not that it supports Christianity or Islam or even Theism, but rather that it demolishes this "united evolutionary front" that is like the Emperor's New Clothes, purely imaginary. Then we can begin to make some progress in biology again. Okay, that's why I lump Modernists with Post-Modernists, just like I lump yellow-dog Democrats with left-coast moonbats, though they have nothing in common but a hatred of Bush.

So in this three-way culture war, there are strange alliances and bed-fellows that perplex many. Why is it, for example, that S use gay-rights to beat up on C, yet ignore the subject when dealing with I? Back to Venn diagrams. There are 7 positions one can take, and 4 alliances one can make. Hence the political positions are neither binary nor one-dimensional. Keeping track of which position and which alliances a particular article supports or condemns is a useful tool, for one can also use these shifting alliances to probe the underlying assumptions and firmly held beliefs. For example, is gay-rights more or less important than free speech--would it be okay to gag a speaker who opposes gay-rights? How about free exercise of religious rage versus gay rights? How about free speech versus religious rage?

I think of it as a Cultural version of "rock, paper, scissors". If Islam is the rock, then Christianity is the paper, and Secularism the scissors. As a Church, we seem to have crumbled under the onslaught of secularism, yet know immediately the core problem with Islam. As a seculary society, we are happy with marginalizing Christianity, yet seemingly cannot marginalize Islam. An Islamic block of nations can easily outsmart the MSM (Danish cartoons, Lebanese war), yet lose territory in Nigeria to evangelicals.
A similar 2D approach to politics is on the web called "the shortest political quiz" (posted by a libertarian), which tries to classify American politics into two axes "big vs small government" and "social conservative vs liberal". See http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

So I would take these 3 different cultural views and rank them on two axes:  Rational vs Irrational, and Self vs God. The categories become:

 I + S = Post-Modernism
 R + S = Modernism (German liberalism, mainstream protestantism)
 I + G = Islam
 R + G = Christianity

Perhaps I should work this up into a Quiz and post it.

So the Pope's sermon is addressing these categories. He's telling both PostModerns and Muslims that they must be rational. Curiously, however, he's telling Modernists (which is what I take to be his audience for the Reformation slur) that they are irrational too. Why? Because to be selfish is to ignore outside advice, to ignore traditions, to promote one's own intellect even when, rationally speaking, there is no reason to suppose that it is superior.

Now this is where I get to my problem with the Pope's speech. The Reformation that I studied emphasized intellect almost too much. The Church I face today, (along with our society) worships the intellect. Thus we are told that Bill Clinton should be forgiven his many private failings because he is a brilliant man. We are told that George W Bush should be punished despite his many public successes because he is a stupid man. In other words, we are told to filter the data through a grid of "intelligence", so that the success of an idiot is not success, while the failure of genius is not a failure. I can give examples from science (Einstein) or theology (Schori) too, but I'm sure you can find some good examples in your experience. When you think about it, intelligence is a somewhat subjective (but not entirely, read "The Bell Curve"!) thing, so we are being told to subjectivize our objective data, to evaluate the content of a speech by the person who made the speech. In logic, this is known as the "ad hominem" argument, and is the principal way to tell a Democrat (or wannabe) from a Republican.

So having been exposed to decades of this sort of ad hominem subjectivity, it is a little scary to hear the Pope use "rationality" as his basis for attacking the Reformation. After all, wasn't that the whole reason the Reformation devolved into the atheistic Enlightenment? And supposing that we agree with the Pope and convert to Catholicism, might we not end up attacking Catholic theology for being "irrational" as well? Is the Pope's authority in the RCC based on his superior rationality or something else?

Well the Pope knows all this, and so he builds his argument around the Greek word "logos", the John 1:1 verse: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." Logos means a lot more than rationality, since the Stoics, following in Plato's steps, packed it all kinds of connotations of Reason, Meaning, Purpose, and Seed, and in fact, it is usually translated "Word". For words (and rationality) possess another thing besides "reason" they possess purpose, a certain "self-awareness", a certain "self-referentiality", a thing I've taken to calling "the sacred", "the holy", "the image of God". This is a deep subject, with a long history. In logic, it was the paradox that stopped Betrand Russell cold, for if I write "this statement is false" is that a true or false statement? In computer science it was the proof by Turing that a computer that allowed the output to modify the input was unpredictable. In electronics it is the question of stability of circuits with feedback. In physics it is the "Einstein non-locality" problem of quantum mechanics, that a particle can be in two places at the same time. In psychology it is the question of where "self-awareness" comes from. In math it is Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem showing that math itself is always incomplete. In style it is "retro chic". In biology it is the "apparent purpose" of random evolution. In religion it is the name that God gave Moses "I am the I am". As you can see, I'm having a hard time quantifying it, so you'll just have to let me use sloppy language for this whole thing, but I think this is what the Pope was going after. So if this is the direction of his criticism, what is he saying about the Reformation?

Well, let's try to force everything into this Procrustean bed and see if we learn anything. If "logos" is the wisdom that comes  through self-awareness or God-awareness, then the axis marked "Self <--> God" is really the difference between "Linear vs Feedback", "objective vs subjective", "Determined vs Designed". The selfish man is incapable of thinking about others, or taking their point of view. The selfish scholar is incapable of understanding his opponents objections. The selfish historian thinks his century is the smartest, what CS Lewis calls "chronological snobbery". The selfish scientist believes that he can control all the factors in his theory or experiment so that the outcome is entirely predictable, so for example, global warming is not only obviously true, but obviously preventable.

On the other hand, the self-aware scientist, the scientist that knows he is part of a feedback loop, the scientist that knows  God, will never assume he is infallibly correct, or that the future is predictable, or that his century knows best. Rather he has a certain humility not only about his abilities and technologies, but about certainty and methodology itself. The God-aware scientist knows that God doesn't lie, and that there is a reality that exists external to himself, so that when experiment and theory don't line up, he neither dismisses the experiment nor the theory, but allows both to be redefined in a self-aware, self-consistent, God-aware, God-consistent manner.

The critique of the Pope, then, is that the Reformers thought they could "purify" the theology of the church by using the methodology "sola scriptura", seemingly unaware that their methodology assumed a linear transition from scripture to Church theology with no feedback involved. Yet because there was feedback involved, the Protestant church today would be unrecognizable to any of the Reformers of the 16th century. They assumed that "semper reformata" would iteratively correct any sinful deviations from orthodoxy, seemingly unaware that their own reforming technique might need reforming. They claimed "sola fide" which expressed a faith in faith, without recognizing that there might be a response from the object of that faith that affected the faith itself. Or to say it equally opaquely, that naming a feedback loop, recognizing a self-reference in no way removes its primary function even upon the person naming it. This is the Catch-22 of life, and recognizing it is a Catch-22 does not diminish its impact, as Yossarian found to his dismay.

Here are some stories that might help illustrate the problem. Two philosophers are going to a conference. They rented a car at the airport, and one of them is reading the rental papers that say they will be charged if any of the lights are not working. So the driver says to the passenger, "check the turn signals, will you?", and the passenger walks around to the back of the car. "Are they working?", asks the driver. The passenger says, "Yes, No, Yes, No..."

Here's another one from my freshman year as I stood in my college mailroom watching a classmate drop a letter from a former highschool sweetheart in the trashcan, unread. How does one delicately communicate a "get lost"  message to a girl, I wondered, for if you deadpan it, the girl will say "He's taking me so seriously, he must be interested", but if you say it lightheartedly, she will say "but he's joking about it, he must be interested." Is there no other way than just willful avoidance?

Or one more. Conspiracy theory suggests that my enemy knows I will identify him and anticipate his destructive actions, so if he is desirous of going undetected, he will attempt to accommodate my knowledge of his behavior by modifying his actions. But if I am aware of his deception, then I will not fall for it, and will modify my own actions... This can obviously be continued ad infinitum, which makes it easy to prove everyone or anyone is my enemy. Are all conspiracy theories false then?  No, for just because I am paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me. So then all conspiracy theories are equally true and equally false, which is again a conspiracy to paralyze me into inaction. How can I escape this mental illness, this body of death? (Romans 8).

So you see, humility is seeing all the many ways that we interact with ourselves, and with God. It is never one way, it is never deterministic, it is never black-and-white. Objectivity is always approximate, knowledge always limited, certainty always qualified. Note that this is not Post-Modernism, which states that Reality is never knowable, that Certainty is never obtainable. On the contrary, the God-aware person knows that there is Certainty, there is Reality, there is Truth, it just isn't within ourselves or within our grasp. We don't possess the Truth, any more than we possess Certainty or possess Reality, rather we dialogue with it, we befriend it, we acknowledge it, and we submit to it.

This, I think, is what the Pope meant by Logos. Now I would respond to the Pope, does the Catholic Church befriend the Truth, or possess it? Does the RCC acknowledge Redemption or mete it out? Does the Church define her Groom, or the Lord His Bride?