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: Three

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

I was specifically indicating the "popular hatred" that manifested as you mentioned. The expulsion of Jews was preferable to pogroms, but it still constitutes an institutionalized discrimination on the part of some of the governments of that time, that we in the West would disapprove of today as being immoral. Let's not pretend that the governments of the middle ages (in Europe or elsewhere) were more benevolent, or even as benevolent, as those of modern Western ones (or even Eastern ones like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) in the final analysis.

Re: Three

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Will you please stop putting words in my mouth? And at least the so-not-benevolent governments of those barbarous tyrannical middle ages you try with every word to bring down did not butcher their children in the womb. Which our wonderful, benevolent and oh-so-moral governments, by whose moral light you would judge the past, do with gay abandon.

Re: Three

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

No time period is beyond criticism, but I'd still rather live now in the West than in the past, all things considered. It's a much more civilized time.