As Muslim leaders blast the Pope’s comments and the countdown proceeds inexorably towards violent demonstrations in favor of the proposition that Islam is the religion of peace, I thought I’d go and seek out the Vatican’s comments on the Danish cartoon controversy from earlier this year. I found them here:

“The freedom of thought and expression, confirmed in the Declaration of Human Rights, can not include the right to offend religious feelings of the faithful. That principle obviously applies to any religion.”

“This principle applies obviously to any religion,” the Vatican said in response to several requests for the Church’s position.

…

Coexistence, the statement continued, calls for “a climate of mutual respect to favor peace among men and nations.”

The statement continued: “Moreover, these forms of exasperated criticism or derision of others manifest a lack of human sensitivity and may constitute in some cases an inadmissible provocation.

“A reading of history shows that wounds that exist in the life of peoples are not cured this way.”

The Vatican clarified that the government cannot be held responsible for the actions of the press in its country, but the “authorities might and should intervene eventually according to the principles of national legislation.”

The statement also acknowledges that “violent actions of protest are equally deplorable.”

Think about that last line. “Violent actions of protest” are only “equally deplorable” to some satirical cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

Anyhow, I guess that we can shortly expect the Vatican to request that Germany now pass a law prohibiting Pope Benedict from quoting Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’ theories about Mohammed on any future visits. Perhaps the Vatican itself, being a sovereign state, can pass similar legislation restricting what Benedict may say regarding Islam while within its confines, and the government of Italy can be petitioned to do likewise, for those frequent occasions on which the Pope is actually in Italian territory.

One way or another, this Pope must be prevented from ever again offending — in the Vatican’s words — the “religious feelings of the faithful.”

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