Madam, - In offering a defence for the Pope (Opinion, September 23rd), Breda O'Brien bravely attempts what few others have dared during the controversy surrounding Benedict XVI and his volatile references to Islam during a lecture at Regensburg University.
Her courage notwithstanding, I think she underestimates the task. She begins by criticising the public because we settle "for soundbites quoted out of context".
This opening shot then requires her to supply some context for the pontiff's words, something she tries to do by expanding at length on the main themes of his lecture: religion and reason, religion and science, theology at university.
None of which is the slightest bit relevant once the Pope included a quotation from someone - anyone, any time - who declared that if you search Muhammad for what he brought that was new, "you will find things only evil and inhuman".
The Pope, according to the context provided by Ms O'Brien, condemned the source - a 14th-century Byzantine emperor - for his "brusqueness". So there.
Some of the context that Ms O'Brien did not deem necessary for inclusion shows how the emperor, though "brusque", was both "erudite" and had a name, Manuel II Paleogos. The Muslim with whom he was in "dialogue", meanwhile, is merely a nameless though "learned" Persian.
And "dialogue" seems a bit euphemistic, given that the exchange - as quoted by the Pope - comprises a one-way harangue in which the Emperor berates the silent Muslim about the evil of conversion via violence, concluding that "to convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..." (No, Christians would never do that.)
To this the silent Persian gives no response, and the Pope carries on with his argument, thereby conveying a very strong impression - rightly or wrongly - of tacit agreement, i.e. that this was a point upon which Muslims needed to be convinced. As for those well-known words from the Koran that "there is no compulsion in religion", the Pope himself dismisses them as being from "the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat".
Does the Pope agree with the emperor? Was the inclusion of that quotation purely and innocently academic? Or does it speak of the Pope's real views? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is that when you speak or write in public, you are responsible not only for what you intend to say but also for what you say by accident.
As a writer, Ms O'Brien knows this well. So, surely, does the Pope.
Whether he intended it or not, the words the Pope quoted go beyond offensive. They constitute an appalling denigration, a profoundly un-Christian assault on the founder of the Muslim faith, an attack not merely to set off the extremists but to hurt the hearts of ordinary, faithful Muslims. That includes Muslims living here in Ireland and reading The Irish Times, where Breda O'Brien tut-tuts in a prickly, indignant way about "the crime of quoting a source critical of Islam".
"Evil and inhuman." Ask yourself: if Arthur C. Clarke or Bob Geldof or the Iranian president or Stephen Hawking were to quote a medieval source that declared Jesus of Nazareth to have brought nothing new to the world except things that were "evil and inhuman", just how different would this column have been? - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DUNGAN, Lutterell Hall, Dunboyne, Co Meath.