The Pope's speech to the German Parliament

[fpb]

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_listening_heart
As ever, the man is worth listening to. But the responses in the comments thread just show how bloody useless it is to deliver intellectually distinguished and morally valuable speeches in a world where most people know no history but are stuffed full of out-of-context factoids and believe themselves entitled to judge.

Comments

Re: Four

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

That might be justified if they didn't kill noncombatant Cathars en masse for the death of one ambassador, especially since the majority of Cathars practiced pacifism. Even St. Dominic had to intervene to spare Cathar noncombatants from being killed by other Catholics. I'm not about to grant moral equivalence to war crimes by anyone, regardless of the initial causus belli.

Re: Four

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And here, without noticing, you have got yourself stuck on your own argument. As it happens, after a few years of crusade, the Pope declared the crusade over and ordered the crusaders home. They ignored him and kept up the war and the violence. You can blame the Pope for what was his part - which was strictly limited - but not for the war being continued against his express order; you can't blame him for the war, because you yourself recognized that the Albigensians started it with their treacherous murder of an unarmed emissary - something that has been a casus belli at any time and place in the world.

Re: Four

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

That would only be true if I was blaming the Papacy for this, but I'm not: the condemnation for massacres of noncombatant Cathars (or the mutilation of survivors) was entirely on the people who committed them on the battlefield. Surely you will agree that those specific actions still constitute behavior that we would find intolerable by soldiers today.