Martin Pope
The Pope and the Middle East: A Discussion on Religious Tensions
The article featured in CTV on May 11th is a compelling look into the deeply entrenched divides separating three of the world major religions. The close clustering of the Catholic, Jewish and Muslim holy lands is captured in an article the considers the arrival of the Pope to the region. The article's discussion of the cultural obstacles which he must overcome during this expedition helps to illustrate the tension that causes separation and even violence between the three faiths.
The article's discussion on the Pope's mission to Israel especially ties these three religions to a staunch nationalism which, for each, is in some state of duress or peril. Namely, the article highlights such conditions as the embattled state of Israeli statehood, the occupied disadvantage of the Islamic Palestinians and the population erosion of Israel's proportionally shrinking population. Each of these issues ties the respective faiths to a sense of connection and entitlement to a land and nation.
If I might make a point of disagreement with the author, it might be in failing to make greater reference to the Jewish perspective on the Pope's arrival. Though the article makes passing mention of the pope's connection to the Hitler Youth and to acts which he committed since his inception into the papacy, it fails to take in the perspective of the Jews who must tolerate the man's arrival to Yad Vashem and elsewhere.
I did learn that the Catholic's are experiencing something of a crisis in their efforts to remain affiliated with the population of Israel. The threat which this poses to the vitality of many historically crucial Christian cites in Israel would be relevant to my appreciation of the religion's close relationship to a region more generally associated with the conflict between Jews and Muslims.
Though I did not come across that which I would characterize as error in the article, it might have been useful for the article to engage more fully a discussion on the relationship between political claims to lands and biblical claims, which have in many ways helped to magnify political and military tensions between these three religions.
Works Cited:
Martin, P. (2009). Pope's pilgrimage to Holy Land fraught with political peril. CTV. Online at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090511.POPE11ART0035/TPStory/?query=religion
