Dialog International

The Sad Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI

I'm afraid that historians (outside the Vatican) will look back on the papacy of Benedict XVI as a series of missed opportunities.  Here is a repeat of a post I did in 2010 concerning an open letter by Benedict's fellow theologian and one-time friend Hans Küng.  The letter is a catalogue of Benedict's missed opportunities: 

On Monday Pope Benedict XVI will mark five years at the helm of a Roman Catholic Church deep in crisis.  I looked at some of my blog posts from then and found this hopeful piece on a meeting between the pope and his former friend and collaborator Hans Küng.  I viewed this meeting at the time as a sign of reconciliation and change.  How these hopes have been dashed in the ensuing five years. 

Today Hans Küng published a devastating letter to the bishops of the church where he urged them to take action.  The Open Letter appeared in several major newspapers, including the Irish Times and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (deutsche Version hier):

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

Küng then cites the numerous "missed opportunities" of Benedict's tenure thus far:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.

Then comes the serious indictment of Ratzinger/Benedict with respect to the child sex abuse scandal that is destroying the church:

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

Under Benedict and his predecessor, the Church was little more than a criminal enterprise that did everying to cover up the massive epidemic of child rape by priests that continues around the world today.  Benedict offered only belated verbal apologies and ineffective symbolic gestures concerning the criminal behavior of a "few bad apples", refusing to acknowledge that the root of child rape by priests is the Church's distorted view of sexuality and the requirement of priestly celibacy.

Angela Merkel Believes in God

Is this a big deal? Here in the United States we are used to our politicians wearing their religion on their sleeves. And even though belief in God is diminishing among Americans - as it is everywhere else in the West - it would be nearly impossible for a confessed atheist to achieve higher office here. 

But things are different in Germany.  Germans are for the most part much more reserved about professing their faith, and Angela Merkel comes from eastern Germany - the most atheistic region on the planet (although her father was a Lutheran pastor).

In any event, here is Angela Merkel on her video podcast making an impassioned statement of faith:

 

For non-German speakers, here is a good article from Global Post on Angela Merkel and religion:         

But it was Merkel’s statements on a podcast broadcast on her website earlier this month that Resing said revealed the most about her personal views.

“I am a member of the Evangelical Church,” she told a young theology student. “I believe in God, and religion is also my constant companion, and actually has been my entire life.”

“I find it very liberating that as a Christian, one can make mistakes,” she added. “That one knows there is something higher than just human beings, and that we are also called on to shape the world in responsibility for others. This is a framework for my life, which I consider very important.”

Such statements from politicians may be commonplace in the United States, but not in Germany, where personal religious beliefs are largely kept under wraps.

The article also mentions a 2009 meeting between Angela Merkel and Barack Obama where the president and chancellor prayed together in the Dresden Frauenkirche.

Is the chancellor looking to put the "C" back in the CDU ahead of the national elections?

German reporter goes underground at Patrick Henry College - America's Madrassa

Amrai Coen, a writer for Die Zeit, wanted to visit Patrick Henry College, but the college administration refused her visit since the school had "bad experiences with foreign journalists."  Undeterred, Amrai posed as a prospective student and showed up on campus on "Visitor's Day".  Her piece on her experience that day provides a rare inside glimpse of life at America's Madrassa, 

Nearly all of the students at Patrick Henry College have been home-schooled by ultra-conservative evangelical Christian parents.  At Patrick Henry these young people can complete their christo-fascist indoctrination before joining right-wing think tanks and media groups in Washington.  Students are taught to kneel before images of Jesus and Ronald Reagan; they attend lecturess on how America can waterboard its way to global dominance. Professors are dismissed if they actually teach science, since students are taught that the earth is only 6000 years old and baby Jesus frolicked with dinosaurs. 

Das College hat eine Mission: Amerika vor dem Untergang retten. Vor dem Abgrund, dem entgegen Barack Obama das Land in ihren Augen in den vergangenen vier Jahren gelenkt hat. Junge, konservative Christen sind die Soldaten in diesem Krieg. Am Patrick Henry College werden sie ausgebildet, um eines Tages an der Front zu kämpfen – als Politiker, Filmemacher oder Unternehmer sollen sie die amerikanische Gesellschaft zurückerobern. Manche von ihnen haben Yale und Harvard verschmäht, um hier zu studieren.

(The college has one mission: to save America from its downfall, from the abyss into which Barack Obama has steered the country in the past four years. Young conservative Christians are the soldiers in this wa. At Patrick Henry College they will be trained to fight one day on the front - as politicians, filmmakers, or entrepreneurs they will win back American society.  Some have rejected Harvard or Yale in order to study here.) 

 Amrai Coen points out the irony of kids who grew up isolated from American society want to be come political activists.

Könnten diese Studenten wirklich eines Tages Amerika regieren, frage ich mich nach ein paar Stunden und vielen Gesprächen auf dem Campus. Die meisten von ihnen kennen nur ihr Wohnzimmer als Klassenraum, nur ihre Geschwister als Mitschüler. Ausgerechnet diese jungen Leute wollen in die Politik, wollen einen Beruf ergreifen, der mit sozialer Verantwortung zu tun hat, wollen Entscheidungen treffen, die das Leben von Millionen Menschen bestimmen.

(Could these students really govern America some day? I ask myself after a few hours and many conversations on campus.  Most of them have only experienced their own living rooms as their classroom and their siblings as classmates. And these are the students who want to into politics, to pursue a career that is involved in social responsibility, to make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people.) 

She sees the students as mostly naive or just misguided.  I see something rather more sinister: as the college puts on its Web site, the school is engaged in a war on secular society and seeks to overturn the separation of church and state which is at the core of the American experience:

"But when such a government 1) commands disobedience to God, 2) enjoins the right and duty of human beings to worship God, 3) denies other God-ordained rights by extreme oppression and tyranny, or 4) "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object (tyranny), evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism" it is the right and duty of godly men and women "to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." Importantly, this action must be taken in accordance with God's laws and in submission to other legitimate authorities, anarchy being as illegitimate as tyranny."

German Bishops: Pay up or burn in hell

In a famous passage about taxes, Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:13-17; the same passage appears, slightly modified, in Matthew 22:15-22 and Luke 20:20-26). For the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, God and Ceasar are inextricably linked, and the Church has become dependent on the German state for its financial well-being.

Registered Catholics in Germany must pay a "Church Tax" (Kirchensteuer) equal to 8% or 9% of their income tax, which the state then transfers to the Church.  The same tax is collected from registered Protestants and Jews. The New York Times points out the irony of an an increasingly secular Germany getting in the religion business in a fundamental way: 

It is a paradox of modern Germany that church and state remain so intimately tied. That bond persists more and more awkwardly, it seems, as the church’s relationship with followers continues to fray amid growing secularization.

The problem is, many Germans no longer want to pay the Church Tax and are opting out of registering as Catholics.  In 2010, more thany 200,000 left the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.  The reasons for defection range from outrage over the Church's cover-up of child rape, disappointment over the persistent inferior status of women in the Church, and anger at Pope Benedict's conservative course and reversal of the Vatican II reforms. But the anger and frustration is directed more at the Church hierarchy, not the institution.  Many of these same defectors would like to attend services, receive the sacraments, and participate in the spiritual life of the Church.

But the Bishops have other ideas:

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Germany issued a crystal clear, uncompromising edict, endorsed by the Vatican. It detailed that a member who refuses to pay taxes will no longer be allowed to receive communion or make confession, to serve as godparents or to hold any office in the church. Those who leave can also be refused a Christian burial, unless they “give some sign of repentance,” it read.

What does the RCC do with the $6 billion it collects every year through the German state?  Some, to be sure, is channeled to hospitals and other charities.  But most of the funds are used for maintenance and upkeep of the increasingly empty Church properties, and to pay exorbitant salaries and benefits to the clergy.  A large slice is also transferred to the Vatican, to maintain the opulance in Rome. 

The Church Tax has made the German Bishops fat and happy.  The last thing they want is for the gravy train to end.

Jesus said: "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!...It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."   Mark 10. 17-26

 

"Catholic" Hate Site Celebrates Killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens

This is really sick. The hate site kreuz.net, a forum of the Catholic Holocaust-denying Pius Brothers sect, has published a vile piece alleging that J.Christoper Stevens was killed because he was a "Sodomist", that he suffered from a "gay disorder" (Homo-Störung).

Arabische Medien berichteten, daß Stevens bei dem Angriff auf das US-Konsultat in der libyschen Stadt Benghazi geschlagen, von mehreren Männern vergewaltigt und getötet wurde.

(Arab media have reported that during the attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city Benghazi Stevens was beaten and raped by several men and then killed.)

In fact, an autopsy showed that the ambassador died of smoke inhalation and there was zero evidence that he had been violated.

The anonymous Web site operators furthermoe claim that the assignment of Stevens to Libya was a deliberate "provocation" of the Obama administration, which is seeking to advance a "homosexual agenda."

Frau Clinton ist eine aggressive Unterstützerin von Homo-Aufmärschen außerhalb der USA.
Im letzten Jahr beschloß US-Präsident Barack Obama, weltweit Homo-Gruppierungen zu finanzieren.

(Mrs. Clinton is an agressive supporter of gay demonstrations outside the US. This past year US President Barack Obama decided to finance gay groups globally.)

German authorities (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) have been investigating kreuz.net for violating Germany's incitement laws.  The site is hosted by the San Francisco Web hosting company CloudFlare.

Did Jesus have a wife?

Recently I wrote about German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann and her breakthrough study on the oppression of women and supression of sexuality in the Roman Catholic Church.  In her book, Ranke-Heinemann documents that the doctrine of priestly celibacy is based on a wilful distortion of the Gospels and what we know of the historical Jesus.  There is absoutely no evidence that Jesus himself was celibate, and Ranke-Heinemann speculates that Jesus may have even had a wife.  Ranke-Heinmeann was hounded out of the Church for her blasphemous views.  Now, based on a newly -discovered papyrus fragment, it appears that Ranke-Heinemann was correct.  Not only is there evidence that Jesus may have married, but he may also have had a female disciple:

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The discovery has implications for the Catholic Church, calling into question not only the insistence on priestly celibacy, but also the prohibition on ordaining women as priests.  Celibacy, in particular, has had devastating consequences for clergy and is at the heart of the child rape scandal that has ravaged the Church for decades. 

Eugen Drewermann, the German theologian and psychologist who was expelled from the priesthood by Josef Ratzinger, has written extensively on the terrible spiritual consequences from the Church's opposition placed between the love of God and love of humans.  He writes in his 1991 book Kleriker - Psychogramm eines Ideals:

"Celibacy as anticipation of death - what kind of life could follow from that! Earthly life is no hurdle to jump on the way to heaven. It is the mirror of eternity into which one has to look as intensely as possible because all we can ever know of God on earth is reflected in it.  Only one who has lived well will die with ease."

Will new insight into the historical Jesus lead to any changes in Church doctrine?  Sadly, no.

Mosebach: Make Blasphemy Punishable Under Law

The Roman Catholic novelist and essayist Martin Mosebach cheered when then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expelled or excommunicated theologians and activists from the Church for blasphemous or heretical ideas.  But what to do about non-Catholics who insult the Church?  Recently the humor magazine Titanic caused a mini-scandal by having an incontinent Pope Benedict XIV on its cover.  That was too much for Mosebach, who in a recent essay writes that blasphemy should be punishable under German law. Mosebach is full of admiration for Muslim clerics who issue fatwas when a blogger or artist commit blasphemy:

 In diesem Zusammenhang will ich nicht verhehlen, dass ich unfähig bin, mich zu empören, wenn in ihrem Glauben beleidigte Muslime blasphemischen Künstlern – wenn wir sie einmal so nennen wollen – einen gewaltigen Schrecken einjagen. Ich begrüße es, wenn es in unserer Welt wieder Menschen wie Jean Jacques Rousseau gibt, für die Gott anwesend ist. Es wird das soziale Klima fördern, wenn Blasphemie wieder gefährlich wird.

(In this connection I must confess that I am unable to muster much outrage when Muslims whose faith has been insulted put a terrible fear in the hearts of blasphemous artists - if you can call them such.  I would be happy if there were more people today like Jean Jacques Rousseau who feel the presence of God.  Society would be much improved if blasphemy were dangerous again.)

Mosebach attempts to make a case under German law that blasphemy is unconstitutional, pointing out that the Preamble of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) makes specific reference to God:

Betrachtet man das Grundgesetz, so ist die Antwort einfach: Das Grundgesetz ist seiner Präambel nach „im Bewusstsein der Verantwortung vor Gott und den Menschen“ formuliert worden – die Frage, an welchen Gott die Väter und Mütter dieses Verfassungswerks gedacht haben mögen, ist ebenfalls leicht zu beantworten: Es war der Gott des Christentums, an einen anderen dürfte man Ende der 1940er Jahre schwerlich gedacht haben.

(The answer is simple if one just reads the Grundgesetz.  In the Peamble it clearly states that the drafters are "conscious of their responsibility before God and man." There can also be no doubt concerning to which God the mothers and fathers of the constitution were referring. It was the God of Christianity - it would have been difficult to conceive of any other at the end of the 1940s.) 

But the Grundgesetz also protects freedom of artistic expression.  And the Criminal Code of Germany (Strafgesetzbuch) explicitly deals with religious tolerance (Paragraph 166):

Any person who insults, publicly or by distribution of written material (§ 11 Abs. 3), the tenets of the religious or ideological denomination of other persons in such a way as to disturb the public peace is liable to punishment by imprisonment for up to three years or by a fine.

The key phrase is "disturb the public peace" ( den öffentlichen Frieden ... stören).  Germany today is a secular society, and people are not inclined to riot in the streets every time the pope is criticized or Jesus is mocked.

On the other hand, one could argue that Mosebach's beloved Church has violated Article 1 of the Grundgesetz in its systematic cover-up of massive child rape by priests and therefore deserves all the scorn it reaps today:

(1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.

((1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority)

German Court: Circumcision Causes "Bodily Harm"

A doctor in Cologne botched the circumcision of a 4-year old Muslim boy.  When the boy was treated at a local hospital the district court got involved and issued a ruling that has ignited an international firestorm:

The regional court upheld the original charge of grievous bodily harm but also ruled that the doctor was innocent as there was too much confusion on the legal situation around circumcision.

The court came down firmly against parents' right to have the ritual performed on young children.

"The body of the child is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision," the court said. "This change contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs."

The official reaction of the both the mainstream German and international press has been to condemn the German court for infringing religious freedom.  The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) - the official voice of the American Taliban - speculates that the ruling was rooted in German anti-Semitism. 

While the mainstream press expresses "outrage" the reaction among ordinary readers is decidedly mixed.  I've been reading the reader comments in the Frankfurter Rundschau and about half the readers find the verdict stupid, but there are many comments such as this:

Das Recht auf körperliche Unversehrtheit muß für jeden Menschen gelten,
für wehrlose Kinder insbesondere.

 (The right to preservation of physical integrity must apply to all people, but especailly to innocent children).

Circumcision of boys - while not as serious as female circumcision - is a barbaric practice, rooted in religious superstition.  I commend the court for not giving into religious pressures and standing for the well-being of the child. 

Review: Uta Ranke-Heinemann's Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

Recently two more controversies have rocked the Catholic Church in the United States.  First, the Vatican has attacked American nuns for caring too much about social justice and feminism, and not spending enough energy fighting to abolish women's reproductive rights or spreading hate against gays and lesbians.  Second, it was reported that Cardinal Timothy Dolan paid off priests accused of raping children while heading up the Church in Milwaukee.  In my mind, the efforts to rein in Catholic women while covering up the massive scope of child rape by priests have their roots in the Church's twisted views on human sexuality. 

To better understand the issue of sexuality in Church history I turned to German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann's best-selling 1990 book Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church (Peter Heinegg's translation of Eunuchen für das Himmelreich).  In this study Dr. Ranke-Heinemann displays her vast knowledge and meticulous scholarship in examining the origins of Church doctrine concerning priestly celibacy, the cult of female virginity, and the Church's war on women with respect to contraception, abortion rights, and prohibition of ordination to the priesthood for women.

The Church doctrine of priestly celibacy is founded on the notion that Jesus himself was celibate and valued sexual abstinence among his followers.  Dr. Ranke-Heinemann debunks this as a willful distortion of the Gospels.  Nowhere does Jesus mention celibacy, and he was hardly an ascetic when it came to human relations. In fact, there is some evidence that Jesus may have married.  In any event, the apostles had wives, which the Church conveniently transformed to sisters and cousins as the doctrine of celibacy took hold, just as Jesus' brothers and sisters - mentioned in Matthew and Luke - were transformed by the Church into cousins in order to uphold the myth of Mary's perpetual virginity. 

Jesus was surrounded by women; indeed his dealings with women were deemed scandalous and inappropriate for the time.  To Ranke-Heinemann Jesus was "the first and practically the last friend women had in the Church":

"His openness to women, the respect he showed them, was replaced after his death, on the part of male church officials, by a peculiar mixture of repressed fear, mistrust, and arrogance."

Even so, marriage among priests was common and tolerated until 1139 AD, when the Church imposed celibacy. One of the things the Catholic Church did in their attempt to enforce celibacy onto their clergy was to label the wives of priests as 'concubines', 'whores' and 'adulteresses'. One archbishop had the priest's wives thrown into prison or deported. Another bishop instructed the law to 'thrust its way into the rectories, fetch out the concubines, publicly whip them, and place them under arrest'. And things only got worse. If women were found in the house of a priest who weren't relatives, and this could be as innocent as a housekeeper or cook, they were to be sold into slavery by the bishop. (There was a sick echo of this in the 1950s, when the Catholic Church in the Netherlands ordered the castration of the young male victims of rape by priests - for having "tempted" them into sin.) 

Much of Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven documents the suppression of women by the celibate Church hierarchy. Dr. Ranke-Heinemann finally reaches the sad conclusion:

"Recently Catholic moral theology has lost much of its prestige.  With its contrived elaborations it stands today, practically speaking, facing the ash-heap.  It is a folly that poses as religion and invokes the name of God, but has distorted the consciences of countless people. It has burdened them with hairsplitting nonsense and has tired to train them to be moral acrobats, instead of making them more human and kinder to their fellow men and women. In the name of a supernatural world that is alien and hostile to humanity it has oppressed the nature and naturalness of people, which like an overstretched bow, inevitably had to break. Its theology is no theology, and its morality is no morality.  It has come to grief on its own stupidity. "

I do disagree that that the Church is entirely hostile to human sexuality.  In his First Encyclical Deus Caritas est Pope Benedict XVI movingly wrote about the centrality of eros in human experience, although it is a tragedy that he would deny this experience to the clergy.  Also, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven was published before the full, global,  scope of the Church child sex abuse scandal was known.  A sequel would trace the origins of the child rape epidemic among priests back to doctirne of priestly celibacy. The pyschologist and former priest Eugen Drewermann touches on this in his 1989 book Kleriker:Psychogramm eines Ideals (a book that should be also be translated into English).  To me, the child rape scandal, and its systematic coverup that persists even today, exposes the Catholic Church as a criminal enterprise, and its doctrines as harmful to all of humanity.  It is therefore baffling and depressing that the Church - though diminished and discredited - still has power in the United States to influence public policy. 

Sympathy for the Devil: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Anders Breivik

(HT Politblogger) Darling of the Islamophobic right, fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute and serial liar Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in Berlin last week to receive the Axel Springer Honorary Prize.  In her acceptance speech, which was delivered in English, she attacked the "advocates of silence" who censor the truth about Islam and the Muslim extremists who are destroying Europe:

The advocates of silence warn us that publishing these facts or debating them in the media and in parliament will transform the existing resentment towards Muslims into violent behavior. Censorship and silence, we are told, are the best preventive remedies against hatred and violence.

I believe that the advocates of silence are wrong, profoundly and dangerously wrong.

Just who these "advocates of silence" are Ayaan Hirsi Ali never says, but presumably they are anyone who rejects hate speech against Muslims or anyone who proposes peaceful dialogue and reconciliation among different faiths.

But Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a great deal of understanding for mass murder Anders Behring Breivik, who was forced to kill 77 mostly young people because of the treachery of the "advocates of silence":

Fourthly and finally, that one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.

Yes, the "advocates of silence" left Breivik with no other choice than to hunt down teenagers systematically.  Who wouldn't be driven to desperate acts by this terrible "leftist" conspiracy?

Maybe because Ayaan Hirsi Ali was speaking English her words didn't provoke outrage among the German listeners.  On the contrary, her speech was met with a prolonged standing ovation.  The first to leap to his feet and clap was the writer Henryk Broder - cited by Anders Behring Breivik numerous times in his manifesto as an inspiration. 

Fortunately for us, however, a voice of reason was in the audience, and his reaction was reported in Cicero: 

„Träume ich oder passiert das gerade wirklich?“, fragt raunend Daniel Gerlach, Chefredakteur der Zeitschrift Zenith, der im Publikum sitzt. „So reden rechtsradikale Verschwörungstheoretiker. Das ist der Gipfel, den Massenmord durch Breivik damit zu erklären, dass die islamische Gefahr in Europa von dunklen Mächten verschwiegen worden sei.“ Gerlach scheint einer der wenigen Zuhörer im vollbesetzten Festsaal zu sein, die über die Rede entsetzt sind.

(Am I dreaming, or did this really just happen?" asked an astonished Daniel Gerlach, editor-in-chief for the magazine Zenith, who was sitting in the audience."This is how right-wing conspiracy theory believers talk.  This really takes the cake, explaining Breivik's murderous rampage as the result of mysterious dark powers keeping quiet about the dangers of Islam in Europe."  Gerlach seems to be one of the few listeners in the packed hall who is shocked by the speech.) 

In his 1500-page manifesto, Breivik expresses his deep admiration for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writing that she deserves the Nobel Prize.  For the time being, she will have to make do with the Axel Springer Bild-Zeitung Prize.