generalspeaking

A Journey of Faith

Pope Benedict undertook to take his personal journey of faith, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He would, just incidentally, and entirely outside of politics, extend his vision of faith to all within that land. The crucible of three great world religions, the 'Abrahamic' religions: the genius of Judaic monotheism leading to Christianity, breeding tribal Islam. As though their common root of geographic heritage would meld them finally into a comprehensive and co-operative multi-faith tool of global harmony.

As though human nature in all its grievance-laden complexities, its propensity toward coarse jealousies, conspiracies, tribalism and loathing would lend itself to such a journey of spiritual one-ness. Did this modestly infallible man of God ever imagine that the mischief of Beelzebub would precede him in his journey, casting malicious whispers into one ear after another of destabilizing, bitter discord with which to greet him and unsettle his purpose?

Is he totally and blissfully oblivious that his own past would be held up to scrutiny, and his present held to account by injudicious decisions that could do nothing but foment problems and create further schisms in his obligatory trajectory toward making common cause with other religious of fundamental faith to counteract the growing scourge of secularism? History does not lie; it recounts past events of undeniable occurrence.

The Holocaust, where six million Jews were systematically exterminated by a racist regime of war-mongering 'perfect human specimens', allowing their Aryan designation to be shared by nations quite obviously un-Aryan, was a traumatic event for the world at large, and a near-perishing one for the world's Jews. This pope, who as a young boy was enlisted in the Nazi Youth, was of a nation that conspired to and succeeded in murdering six million Jews.

The country to which he arrived as an honoured guest, and where he specifically requested that no national flags nor anthems make their appearance, reflects an equal number of Jews, a kind of symbolic symmetry that begs to be noticed. Like his honoured predecessor, Pope Benedict stood at the Western Wall and placed his handwritten prayer in one of its historical crevices. And he also visited the Dome of the Rock, which is in actual fact, the site of the Temple Mount; third-sacred to Islam, first to Judaism.

Israel, the slighted nation, protects the Dome of the Rock which covers Judaism's most sacred site, as a courtesy that no Muslim nation would ever reciprocate. The pope's prayer at the Wailing Wall asked that the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" send "Your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family". Speaking from Jerusalem, he said of the ancient stones "...where there should be no place within these walls for narrowness, discrimination, violence and injustice".

God of our Fathers, are you listening?

Labels: Human Relations, Israel, Political Realities, Realities, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 13, 2009