A friend recently emailed me regarding the following MSM translation of Pope Benedict's response to Muslim outrage, regarding his reference to a Christian emperor's challenge that Islam provide some example of Muhammed's uniquely benevolent contribution:
He said: "I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims."
Actually, he said ''sono rammaricato'', which means something more like 'I'm disappointed', than 'I'm sorry', & with no hint of 'deeply' anywhere in there at all.
Checking, I went to my Italian dictionary, which translates,
rammaricarsi: To grieve, to regret; to complain; to fret.
rammarico: Grief, sorrow, regret; groan. Con profondo--, with profound regret.
I can't find a direct translation of sono although my friend tells me that it's the first-person singular, present tense of the verb "to be". It may not be relevant, but the word sonoro means sonorous or resonant.
The Pope's response seems to imply grave disappointment but it's not clear with whom. It's also probably sufficiently vague that it allows people who want to see the words as apologetic to do so.
It would be undignified for the Pope to be flagrantly defiant of the Ummah, but he seems to have crafted a response that is both profoundly respectful, and deeply resonant with Manuel II Paleologus' original challenge.
Yes, (io) sono means "I am". No, it's not related to sonoro. Long story tho.
Sono rammaricato does mean that one is regretting that things went sour despite his best intentions - as an example, if your girlfriend gets mad about an innocent but misplaced remark.
However, it also means that you consider yourself in the right and not in need to retract your statement or give further apologies.
Sono rammaricato is anyway a formal expression; colloquially one would say mi dispiace, which can also mean "I am sorry". The difference is in the context; sincere apologies do not contain "but" statements.
From a fascinating interview with Bernard Lewis (hat tip Martin Kramer):
Most religions have a sort of "relativist approach." That's the term that is used by the Catholic Church to indicate disapproval, but I'm using it to indicate approval. The relativist view would be something like this: Just as men have invented different languages to talk to each other, so they've invented different religions to talk to God, and God understands all of them. Perhaps not all equally well, but he understands all of them.
There is an interesting passage in one of the sermons of Saint John Capistrano, a Franciscan. In one of his collected sermons, he says the Jews propagate this monstrous and absurd idea that everyone can be saved in his own religion. Now, Saint John Capistrano says many things about the Jews and the Muslims--both of whom he disliked intensely--but on that particular one he's right. The Talmud says the righteous of all faiths have a place in heaven. That's not the Christian or the Muslim point of view.
We--whichever the "we" may be--we are the fortunate recipients of God's final message to mankind. If you accept that message, you will be saved. If you don't accept it, then your religion is either incomplete and superseded or false-incomplete and superseded if it's previous, false if it's subsequent. Where you have two religions making the same claim with the same self-perception and the same geographical area, you get this uninterrupted sequence of jihad and crusade. But that, I think, is also some ground for hope. I tried to make this point at a conference in Morocco. The theme of the conference was: Is a dialog of civilizations possible? I tried to make the point that the conflicts have arisen from resemblances rather than from differences, and this should, with goodwill on both sides, make a dialog possible.
Read it all...