Benedict's Rule?

No, not St. Benedict's Rule, but a potential new principal for Christendom in approaching relations with the Muslim world.

Meeting with Muslim diplomats today, the Pope quoted John Paul II, the first pope to have positive relations with Islam, saying "'Respect and dialogue require reciprocity in all spheres,' particularly religious freedom," according to the NYTimes. This strikes me as a reasonable principal, and one that allows the Vatican and other political forms of Christianity to have good relations with reasonable Muslims without turning a blind eye to persecution and extremism.

Some use the Crusades and Inquisition to shrug off violence today. Some say that religions should reduce to goopy lowest-common-denominators. Some say Christians and Muslims can never - or should never - get along. "Benedict's Rule" would give us a reasonable, attainable basis for building religio-political relationships across a stark divide.