I find this description of what is going on at the Vatican to be simplistic and naive. The truth is that Islam is under assault by a death cult that claims the same name. This nihilistic death cult is a worldwide threat and probably the most direct and stark expression of "the culture of death" currently in existence on the planet. The Vatican has and hopefully will continue to work against this.

The pope has no armies any more. He cannot send troops but he can inspire us to fight this culture of death. The Vatican has been talking about this for decades, making clear that the culture of death is the great enemy and that all people need to unite against it. They have laid the groundwork for the defeat of this force long before we ever woke up and realized it even existed.

The Vatican naive? You've got to be kidding me.

As for Cardinal Martino, his sin was not in having humanitarian feelings for Saddam Hussein. He erred in that he did not balance that compassion with a like compassion for all of Saddam's victims who were humiliated daily into silence by their fear that Saddam would return. It is this hard hearted lack of compassion that Cardinal Martino was guilty of and for which he has been rightly condemned by other Catholics.

The appeasement by the Vatican has, within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, many opponents. Among them is Cardinal Biffi, who unlike Cardinal Martino spent many years in a Muslim country. There are many who realize that all the gestures -- the interfaith dialogues that become vehicles to express Muslim grievances and to acquire a kind of reflected legitimacy for Muslim clerics who may be suspect, the parroting of Arab Muslim views on Israel (promoting the false symmetry of Israel and "Palestine" when what is really going on is an endless Arab siege, based on the ideology of Islam which permits no non-Muslim sovereignty within dar al-Islam, of the Jewish, i.e. Infidel, state), and perhaps most significant, the refusal to deal with the Jihad within Europe, being pursued by immigration, high Muslim birthrates, and Muslim attempts at conversion. In centuries past Catholic missionaries endured torture, and were burned at the stake, in the wilds of Canada, and in China. But where are they now when right within Europe a growing population that is unalterably opposed to Christianity, and works to eliminate all other belief-systems from the face of the earth, grows not only unchecked, but is given foolish support in the vain hopes of some reciprocity. When, a decade ago, the famously pious President Pertini convinced the Italian government to donate 8 acres of precious land in Rome for the building of a mosque, and the Saudi- and Kuwaiti-funded mosque was built, with the triumphant opening ceremony, attended by Arab ambassadors, and ever since has been seen as virtually a military beachhead in the conquest_of Rome (the hadith in which Muhammad has a "vision" that Islam will conquer first Constantinople, and then Rome, has become a constantly-cited favorite of Qaradawi and other mainstream Muslim clerics with a wide following. For all of the koran-kissing in Damascus, and the outrageous license accorded "Bishop" Cappucci (a Muslim in Christian clothing, like a certain number of those Christian Arabs who, identifying more with Araberthum -- Arabness -- than with their putative religion, actually accept, and actively promote the Muslim agenda,the Jihad, and who objectively, then, can not be considered real Christians at all, but rather among those who pose a real danger to Christianity.

All of the interfaith dialogues, all the appeasement, is simply seen by Muslims as a sign of ultimate triumph. The result is there for all to see. No churches have opened in Saudi Arabia, as the Vatican naively hoped. Instead, there is persecution of Christians under Muslim rule everywhere: in the imposition of the shari'a on Christians in northern Nigeria (and the burning of churches), on the attacks by the Egyptian army and civilians on Christians in Egypt, in the attacks on Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and finally in the Sudan. The only time there has been any let-up is not through Vatican or other Christian appeasement but through the threat of economic or other Amreican pressure. Not the Vatican, nor the U.N., but the American governmnent's display of resolve, has concentrated the minds of Musharaf (who actually wished Pakistani Christians a merry Christmas -- but then, so did Khomeini, when he needed support, and so did Azzam Pasha in 1951, head of the Arab League and granduncle of Ayman al-Zawahiri), of the Sudanese government (which may be calling off the genocide against non-Muslims -- one will have to see), and so on. It is not the "culture of death" that is a perversion of Islam, but Islam itself--pace the previous comment -- that is the problem, and has been for 1350 years, for all non-Muslims. There is much to lament in the decadence of the Western world, but anger over that decadence should not confuse people, or distract them from the threat of those who fully subscribe to the ideology of Islam.

1. To say that any population is unalterably opposed to christianity is an aspect of dhimmitude.

2. To make no difference between classical Islam, which at the very minimum has a suicide prohibition, and this nihilist death cult that absolutely revels in death and exalts it, is to pass up the opportunity to gain an ally and to bind up two groups into one stronger whole. The nihilists are viewed as the paragons of Islam, the more pure. Perhaps they are impractical but they are truer to the ideals. When they are exposed as the hell bound deluded creatures that they are do you seriously think that this will have no effect? Islam is almost entirely fundamentalist and literalist. What will not bend will break when shown to be in error. The key is to show that these 'jihadi' are in error and in as many ways as possible. If you do not keep channels open to teach and spread this message, how do you expect to deal the death blow to the nihilists?

The battle will be won in mosque, school, and family in the end. The battlefield never cures the world of nihilism and death cults though it does have its role.

You do make a serious charge that some catholic prelates are involved in jihad. To my knowledge, fighting for political liberation is consistent with doctrine but suicide attacks and other exaltations of death are not. Do you know of any real examples of christians who have crossed that line?