An interesting development from AFP, with thanks to Stephania.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI held a meeting at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, a strident critic of Islam, Vatican sources confirmed.The 76-year-old writer, who describes herself as an atheist Christian and was sued in Italy for insulting the Muslim faith in one of her books, asked to meet the pope, a source said.
The meeting on Saturday between Benedict XVI and the former war correspondent became public only after Fallaci's associates let slip that the meeting took place.
Based in the United States where she is being treated for cancer, Fallaci once said in a newspaper interview that she was comforted by the writings of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope after the death of John Paul II.
"Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense," Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal on June 23.
"Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty," she said.
"I feel less alone when I read Ratzinger's books," the journalist added...
Thanks for reporting it
Bravo, Benedicto! I knew he was on the ball!
Benedictus XVI has been very involved and is very aware of the jihad threat against Il Vaticano. The Iraq foreign minister, as reported here, has recently visted with Benedict XVI seeking His Holiness' help with the establishment of the Iraqi constitutional governement and protection of religious minorities. Zarqawi has declared any Iraqi Mulsim who participates in the Infidel government to be an apostate of Islam and that it is blasphemy to create laws through a representative government when Allah has given us all the law we need.
How encouraging! How very encouraging!
Miss Fallaci believes herself to be alone. She is incorrect.
Many Americans are with her, whether she knows it or not. I have been with her ever since reading "THE RAGE AND THE PRIDE".
Pythagoras
Is there a place in the Catholic Church next to Fallaci for atheist Protestants?
Yes, that's all good. But what can the pope really do?
In places like Lebanon, there are still some 45 % Christians. Even in Iraq and Pakistan there is but a tiny minority, but if he takes a stand on the issue, the slaughter begins...
The West has to get real about the Mohammedan infil-traitors. We have to start rounding them up, intern them and get them ready for deportation.
If in turn we have to take Egyptian copts or Iraqi Christians and Lebanese, so be it! Or should we leave them behind for the Mohammedan hordes to be annihilated?
If our politicians continue to pussyfoot around the issue, the bloodshed and the terror will only increase.
No Islam, no terror!
Deportations now!
This is very very good.
I have great respect for Oriana. Gobbled up 'The Rage and the Pride' with fascination. She gets a bit carried away in rhetorical excess sometimes, but that's small criticism for someone so courageous in calling a spade a spade.
I'm still scoping out Benedict, but the early signs are encouraging. One hopes he'll be much more inclined to publicly challenge Islamic intolerance than his predecessor was. I had great respect for the way John Paul challenged Communism in Europe and feel he contributed significantly to the fall of the Iron Curtain, but his "quiet diplomacy" in dealing with the persecution of Christians inside of Dar ul Islam was unquestionably ineffective.
By meeting with Oriana Fallaci, Benedict was most definitely sending a message.
Will Pope Benedict now be dragged into Ms. Fallaci's trial as a character witness?
Let's pray for it!
I've always put my trust into Benedict XVI. It turns out, this wasn't in vain. Bravo! Hopefully, other important steps will follow.
-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org
But what can the pope really do?
Well never underestimate the power of prayer.
But more than that his moral influence still counts. From where I am viewing things in leafy suburbia the biggest battle is persuading people of influence that islam is a vicious totalitarian ideology at it's very heart and soul ! ! and not a "religion of peace hijacked by extremists"
Once Islam is viewed correctly and we are all singing from the same hymnbook (pun unintended) then physical containment etc is much easier. The interest of the Pope, the remarks of Queen Margrate of Denmark cannot be easily dismissed.
This is a beautiful surprise, thank you for sharing, Oriana, you are a very brave woman, I pray to God gives you many years.
This is a beautiful surprise, thank you for sharing, Oriana, you are a very brave woman, I pray to God gives you many years.
This woman is a warrior. She told the truth about Islam, and the Muslims hate her for exposing them. I hope the Pope listened to every word she had to say.
>She gets a bit carried away in rhetorical excess sometimes,
Well, she is Italian. You should hear what goes on in arguments in my family.
Yes, Blue State....I'm half Italian myself, and I know what you mean about the arguments.......The grudges sometimes last for years.
Quite good news. Let us hope that the islamic world and the Christian one can get along as good neighbours often must -
With high fences.
There seems to be little hope that islam can tolerate the co-existence of Christianity. Let's not forget that rejection of Jesus as God ("shirk" to that facist creed) is and always has been considered to be "one half to one third of islam". Ergo, since islam was "made to dominate", for islamists to be really happy all other religions must happily submit or die. Perhaps other muslims don't feel this way; then again, tribalism being what it is, I suspect it's a feeling more like "I don't like those radicals - but, if it makes us dominant, well, ok then - but I still won't like them. I suppose I'll weep later in my tea about how horribly we treat them as I watch the museums and art galleries burned in the name of Allah."
I foresee a great breaking of the ways, and, as you know, I am:
Prophet Geoff
Oriana Fallaci meets with the Pope. Great! Now the POTUS needs to meet with her and have the scales removed from his eyes.
Ms Fallaci is, in this writer's humble opinion, a legend.
However - and certainly not to criticise - I am having some trouble getting my head around the notion of an "atheist Christian".
That is certainly a new one for me!
Maybe now Joey the Rat, the chickensh*t former Hitler Youth will actually criticize the Islamic terror attacks against Israel.
Ha-ha.... Hitler Youth becomes Arafat Geezer.
GodDAM I'm glad my family escaped Catholicism before I was born. What a disgrace.
In places like Lebanon, there are still some 45 % Christians. Even in Iraq and Pakistan there is but a tiny minority, but if he takes a stand on the issue, the slaughter begins...
How about this: ARM, HEAVILY ARM the Christians of Ethiopia, Lebanon, etc. and THEN take a stand against the cult SWORN to destroy Chrisianity, Europe, and the whole damn world? Send the Chrisitans of Pakistan to India, let India deport an equal number of Mobots. India will have to take in the vestigial Hindus from Pakistan too, but big deal. They will all have to convert, be killed, or run for their lives to India eventually.
The correct thing to do would be to deport ALL Muslims from ALL non-Muslim majority nations and take in all the Non-Muslims from the Muslim majority nations.
Anthony,
My understanding is that while Oriana doesn't believe in deity, she embraces the cultural traditions of Christian (Western) civilization and believes that our scientific and material achievements are directly correlated to the tolerance promulgated by Christ in the gospel.
"My understanding is that while Oriana doesn't believe in deity, she embraces the cultural traditions of Christian (Western) civilization and believes that our scientific and material achievements are directly correlated to the tolerance promulgated by Christ in the gospel."
Like any intelligent person who has not been hoodwinked by modern Leftist revisionism, it doesn't matter if you're atheist or Christian or Jewish -- Oriana's fellow Italian, Camille Paglia, another atheist and screaming Leftist; yet one who knows that the modern secular West did not fall out of the blue sky or come out clean as a whistle from the vagina of the French Revolution, but derived its nutrients from the womb of the Judaeo-Christian civilization that preceded it -- including the pre-Christian Classical (Greek and Roman) nutrients which Christendom incubated, suckled and raised up (with marginal scribal assistance from Muslims who, during a brief "Golden" period when they took a break from massacring millions to spread the supremacy of Islam, happened to preserve and re-copy a few ancient texts here and there).
kj posted : The correct thing to do would be to deport ALL Muslims from ALL non-Muslim majority nations and take in all the Non-Muslims from the Muslim majority nations.
Sad to say, but I have mantained this position for years. "Exchange of populations" followed by containment, may be the only answer for civilisation to survive. If just deportations of muslims take place, one can be certain that Christians, Hindu and other moinority religions will be massacred outright.
Else we can look forward to decades of civil strife, dollowed by a massive war with countless million casualties, and a complete dislocation of the economy of the West.
I hate it that it has come to this, but eventually it will have to be a choice between the lesser of evils. All this is ofcourse of our own making ie of the political elite. They will retire on very comfortable pensions, leaving the general populace to face the consequences.
Bravo! What an encouraging and hope-giving development. This story made my day.
Cornelius and the Good Doctor
Grazi.
Dr Pepper said:
"with marginal scribal assistance from Muslims who, during a brief "Golden" period when they took a break from massacring millions to spread the supremacy of Islam, happened to preserve and re-copy a few ancient texts here and there"
Most - not to say all - the classic volumes were preserved either by the Byzantines (the majority) or by Irish monks. The Moors either bought copies from the Byzantines or they stole them after saking the Roman empire of the East.
Regarding the original piece about Fallaci, I understand what she means when she says that after reading Ratzinger's opinions she feels that she is not alone. Very few people are aware of the troubles that lay before us. Most of the population of the West has gotten so used to freedom that they have forgotten how to cherish their citizenship.
In the days of the Romans, citizenship was something worth dying for. Nowadays, many "citizens" refuse to vote to choose their leader, let alone risk their lives defending their country.
Fallaci is an idealist. She fought in the Italian resistance along with her father. She knows the price of losing that freedom and the price one often has to pay to get it back. Most of us do not.
This pope is not perfect - far from it. Some of his views are completely out of touch with the world we live in, and yet he was the pope I would have chosen. In times of great danger, one needs a strong leader, and Ratzinger is indeed one of the strongest the Vatican has seen in many centuries.
cruzado,
Let's hope Ratzinger takes up the anti-Islamic cause as frontally as Wojtyla did the anti-Communist cause (in doing so, playing a pivotal role in the collapse of the U.S.S.R., by helping to galvanize a critical domino in the puzzle, Poland).
Terminator,
I thought that the percentage of Christians in Lebanon was 28% by now. I met an Italian that teaches in Beirut while visitng Qurtuba, sorry, Córdoba, one month ago.
He explained me that the greatest (the only) strength of the Lebanese Christians is CULTURAL.
Dont pass on any opportunity for expanding your knowledge in these issues. Be proud of your culture, belieber or not. Demography is NOT everything.
and yeah, i wrote believer with a "b". English is not my native tongue. Funny anyway.
I am very happy for this audience, a lot. I know that there are some anti-catholicism in some people who writes, but you have to know that the Church has been very hard against islam, centuries and centuries. In XX Century, many things changed and the relation of the church with other churches too. In 1965, you can´t think that islam, was making a great taquiya another time. Because we see the things many times with western eyes, and we are worried now.
But optimism, hope and a great future for all, christians and non-christians are saved, why? Because Christ protects us. Greetings
Anthony:
"having some trouble getting my head around the notion of an "atheist Christian" ...
The Judeo-Christian culture is our heritage. Christianity, whether you believe in it or not, made Europe what it is today.
And it was Christianity that united Europe to beat the Mohammedan hordes at the gates of Vienna!
Otherwise we would see all our churches and synagogues turned into mosques and we would be on our knees and fart towards Mekka 5 times a day!
Being an atheist Jew I can assure you that I treasure FREEDOM FROM RELIGION as much and more as others who have the freedom to believe in freedom of religion ...
Just one simple example:
"Thu shalt not kill" is one commandment that is deeply enshrined in our laws. Do I have to be religious to believe in that? No.
Mohammedan commandment:
"Kill infidels, kill Jews wherever you find them, until there is no religion other than the religion of Allah..."
Terminator:
When an adultress was about to be stoned, Jesus said,"He that hath no sin, cast the first stone". This is the shortest sentence and yet one of the most powerful sentences in history.
But if muhammed had been there instead of Jesus, he would have been the one rallying the crowd to ever greater barbarity.
While on the subject of the Pope and Orianna, here is a very good essay on the contemporary by Vaclav Klaus.
The Intellectuals and Socialism: As Seen from a Post-Communist Country Situated in Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe
Illiberal ideas are becoming to be formulated, spread and preached under the name of ideologies or “isms”, which have – at least formally and nominally – nothing in common with the old-styled, explicit socialism. These ideas are, however, in many respects similar to it. There is always a limiting (or constraining) of human freedom, there is always ambitious social engineering, there is always an immodest “enforcement of a good” by those who are anointed (T. Sowell) on others against their will, there is always the crowding out of standard democratic methods by alternative political procedures, and there is always the feeling of superiority of intellectuals and of their ambitions.
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6
A must read frankly.
"we would be on our knees and fart towards Mekka 5 times a day!"
Terminator, please - muslims fart away from Mukka. Only my sect farts TOWARDS it during our hourly worship of W'Allahwalla.
Indeed, our religion requires us to constantly aim farts at the city. Only those who are also particularly gassy in the after hours may be truly good believers; others must make up for the shirk with baked beans during the day.
Prophet Geoff
I'm pretty sure that Fallaci wasn't sued, she has been criminally charged. By the Italian state acting on an Islamist complaint, not by a private Islamist litigant.
A Hindu in India once told me that there were hidden sexual overtones to the Muslim method of prayer.
You do wonder - they do adopt an overtly sexual position.