Reader response

It has come to my attention via Site Meter and looking at those sites that are referring readers to this blog that there has been some hostility over my comments found here. It is important to remember for those who think that I am just being dramatic and over-generalizing that a book about assassinating the Pope is a bestseller in Turkey even before the Pope's lecture the other day.

As John Allen describes (thanks to Amy for the link):

In a little more than 300 pages, Kaya manages to weave the Turkish Secret Service, the infamous Masonic lodge P2, and (of course) Opus Dei into his plot line. Inevitably, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, also makes an appearance.

All this might seem comical were it not for the fact that in the last seven months, three Catholic priests have been attacked in Turkey, beginning with the murder of Italian missionary Fr. Andrea Santoro on February 5. Bishop Luigi Padovese, a 58-year-old Capuchin from Milan who serves as the region's apostolic vicar, and who was Santoro's superior, has warned of a "rising tide" of anti-Christian propaganda in Turkey.

"There's a strong current of religious extremism, and that climate can fuel this sort of hatred. It's passed along in families, in schools, in the newspapers," he said in a February interview with NCR.

And that is just Turkey, the most secularly governed Muslim state in the world.

If anyone would like to contact me and have a reasonable discussion with facts, figures and links to scholarly sources, the comment box is open 24/7.