Our friend Fr. Gerry Murray sends his translation from the Italian of what the pope said today at his General Audience regarding his remarks at the University of Regensburg:
A particularly beautiful experience for me was to give a lecture that day before a large audience of professors and students at the University of Regensburg, where I taught as a professor for many years. With joy I was able once again to come into contact with the university world, which for a long period of my life was my spiritual homeland. As my theme I chose the question of the relationship between faith and reason. To introduce the audience to the dramatic nature and timeliness of the topic, I cited some words of a Christian-Islamic dialogue of the 14th century, in which the Christian interlocutor –the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus – in a manner that for us is incomprehensibly blunt – presented to his Islamic interlocutor the problem of the relationship between religion and violence. This citation, alas, was such as to lend itself to be misunderstood. For the attentive reader of my text, however, it is clear that I did not wish in any way to make my own the negative words spoken by the medieval emperor in this dialogue and that their polemical content does not express my personal conviction. My intention was quite different: starting from what Manuel II subsequently said in a positive manner, with very beautiful words, about the reasonableness which must be the guide in the transmission of the faith, I wanted to explain that not religion and violence, but rather religion and reason go together. The theme of my conference – corresponding to the mission of the University – was thus the relationship between faith and reason: I wanted to extend an invitation to a dialogue of Christian faith with the modern world and to a dialogue of all cultures and religions. I hope that on different occasions during my visit – for instance, in Munich when I stressed how important it is to respect that which is sacred to others – my profound respect for the great religions, and in particular for the Moslems, who “adore the one God” and with whom we are engaged in “defending and promoting together, for all men, social justice, moral values, peace and freedom” (Nostra Aetate, 3) was clearly apparent. I therefore trust that, after the reactions of the first moment, my words at the University of Regensburg can constitute an impulse and an encouragement for a positive, even self-critical, dialogue, both between the various religions and between modern reason and the faith of Christians.