…And in other news, bears shit in the woods.

Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians and Muslims today to serve mankind with the “light of God’s truth” while warning that extremists in nations such as Iraq were exploiting religious differences for political and violent agendas.

Speaking at the Al Hussein bin Talal Mosque, the pontiff, whose three-day pilgrimage here is an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim world, said the “tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?”

Wasn’t the point of his Pontificating Preachiness’ harangue to condemn stuff like this? And this?Oh. Wait. That’s evidence of the ideological manipulation of christianity for political reasons, by the Vatican

In counterpoint, not everyone welcomes the Pope’s visit.

Jordanian clerics expressed disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI in an address to Muslim leaders on Saturday failed to offer a new apology for remarks seen as targeting Islam. …”What the pope said about the Prophet Mohammed is untrue. Islam did not spread through the power of sword. It’s a religion of tolerance and faith,” Hussein said. The pope had in 2006 quoted a medieval Christian emperor who criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as “evil and inhuman.”

Which is of course MASSIVELY different from the medieval clerics who justified the evil and inhuman actions of the Inquisition with the doctrine they claimed was inspired by the words of God and Jesus.

Reprinted with permission. deBeauxOs

Pope Benedict XVI began an 8 day visit through the Middle East Friday.

• Pope Benedict XVI has issued a statement of “sorrow” but not an apology, after meeting with First Nations leaders to discuss the residential school system. (h/t Dammit Janet!, Unrepentant Old Hippie)

• David MacDonald and 4 My Canada director Faytene Kryskow have presented a 18 222-signature petition to the Governor-General, demanding she revoke Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada (h/t SoCon or Bust)

• Martin Cohn of the Toronto Star reports on Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation, which recently brought him to speak in Toronto.

• The Liberal policy convention will apparently consider overturning the Harper government ban on organ donations from gay men (h/t Slap Upside the Head

• On the National Post blog Holy Post, John Stackhouse argues that evolution has taken an unacceptable turn and become “a religion, an all-encompassing wolrdview and a ‘myth’… – the governing story of a people.”

(A disturbing “women’s work” metaphor in any case, and particularly during a controversy such as this.)

That a major Canadian development NGO was in serious trouble – for funding pro-choice groups would be news in itself. However, as deBeauxOs of Dammit Janet! pointed out in her scathing commentary on SoCon United’s blog SoCon or Bust, the pro-life crowd’s attacks were seamlessly carrying over from the specific issue of abortion, to all groups advocating women’s rights in general. There was, she remarked, an ironic message – “according to SoCon, fundamentalist Islamist and Catholic men share the same agenda: return women to the control that religious political authority allows men to enjoy.”

The same position was taken by Unrepentant Old Hippie when SoCon or Bust revealed a similar disgust for D&P’s supporting the use of condoms for contraception.

Terrible Depths recently took a similar perspective, too, and filled in some of the blanks on SoCon or Bust, an ostensibly “social conservative” but in fact Roman Catholic project of religious right activist John Pacheco:

SoCon or Bust is actually a group blog co-written by Chris Beneteau, an anonymous priest, and the organization’s director, John Pacheco. I don’t know who the priest is, though I initially suspected (and on reflection I’m almost certainly wrong on this) that he might be Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and author (with Kate Shaidle) of a book attacking Canada’s human rights commissions – and with whom Beneteau and Pacheco have written before. Beneteau doesn’t seem particularly prominent either, though he is an also-ran with the Family Coalition Party, a socon political party founded by Campaign Life Coalition activists in the ’80s.

Pacheco, however, is more recognizable. He also directs the Catholic Legate in Ottawa, a right-wing Catholic apologist group whose mission is to “re-evangelize our paganized North American and western culture” and which explicitly says that it accepts without question all dogmas, doctrines and moral teachings promulgated by the Vatican. In 2003, he also founded the Rosarium of the Blessed Virgin Mary Life Centre to oppose condoms and birth control pills. He and Pete Vere also helped found a new Catholic private school, Maryvale Academy,

SoCon United’s mailing address also raises some questions. They invite you to contact them at P.O. Box 11400, Station H, in Ottawa. Oh, ho! That’s also, as it happens, the mailing box used by the Catholic Legate, Pacheco’s apostolate, and the Rosarium, his anti-birth control league.