By Jonathan Tobin
Jewish World Review
Pope Benedict XVI got in more trouble than he could have imagined last week when, in the course of a lecture at a German university, he quoted from a debate in which one of the last of the Byzantine emperors disparaged the link between Islam and violence.
The speech, which sought to denounce religiously-inspired violence, provoked a response that was reminiscent of last fall's Danish cartoons controversy. Then, as now, the perception of an insult to Islam resulted in Muslim violence. A nun in Somalia was murdered and churches across the West Bank were torched. More horrors were promised and, in the face of intolerable international pressure, the Vatican did the unthinkable: make a public and tacit admission that the Pope was wrong about something.
This defeat for the principle of Papal infallibility may not mean much to non-Catholics but it should. For over six decades the Vatican has refused to admit that a former Pope might have erred by his inaction during the Holocaust. The fact that it took them all of five days to cave in to the demands of Muslim censors speaks volumes about the fear of Islamist terror and the West's lack of self-confidence is speaking in defense of its basic values.
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