Irony: The tribute Religion pays to Reason

Atheist gifts pontifical school in will

ROME (AP) - An Italian journalist and self-described atheist who died last month has left most of her books and notes to a pontifical university in Rome because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, a school official said Saturday.

Oriana Fallaci had described the pontiff as an ally in her campaign to rally Christians in Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West. As she battled breast cancer last year, she had a private audience with Benedict, who was elected only a few months earlier, at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal: "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true."

...

"God is the ultimate truth to which all reason naturally gravitates," the pontiff told an audience of students and faculty.

Religion, however, is not. How do we know?

Because Pope Benedict XVI said so.

Dhimmi Bulb

The conventional wisdom for American religious conservatives has secular Europe succumbing to a resurgent Islam for want of a strong belief system (ie. religion). But while atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is hounded out of the Netherlands for her strident anti-Islamic rhetoric, and the late atheist writer Oriana Fallaci was put on trial for offending Islam with her impassioned defense of Western values, what have the Christian religious authorities on the Continent been doing, for their part? Why they've been rolling out the red carpet:

Roman Catholic Bishop Wants Everyone to Call God 'Allah'
proposal by a Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands that people of all faiths refer to God as "Allah" is not sitting well with the Catholic community.

Tiny Muskens, an outgoing bishop who is retiring in a few weeks from the southern diocese of Breda, said God doesn't care what he is called.

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem," Muskens told Dutch television.

"I'm sure his intentions are good but his theology needs a little fine-tuning," said Father Jonathan Morris, a Roman Catholic priest based in Rome. Morris, a news analyst for FOX News Channel, also called the idea impractical.

"Words and names mean things," Morris said. "Referring to God as Allah means something."

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Islamic civil liberties and advocacy group, backs the idea as a way to help interfaith understanding.

"It reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God," Hooper told FOXNews.com. "I don't think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God's moral principles. I think that's true for all faiths."

I'm glad I don't have to make this stuff up. I'm not that creative.