Every religion has a primary responsibility for naming the ideological, rhetorical, and physical violence of its own extremists. That must come first.

Every religion has also a secondary responsibility for naming the ideological, rhetorical, and physical violence of any other religion’s extremists. That must come second.

On September 12, 2006, at the University of Regensburg, the Pope’s speech touched on the terrible conjunction between religious faith and lethal violence. No subject could have been more appropriate or important. But instead of using his own Christian and especially his own Roman Catholic tradition as a primary example for that fatal conjunction, he cited – if not approvingly at least ambiguously and certainly unwisely – the Christian monarch Manuel II Paleologus' criticism of Muhammad and Islamic origins in – of all places – ancient Ankara, the capital of modern Turkey.

It is true that Christ practiced and commanded non-violence in a way that Muhammad never did. But granted that difference, history shows that Christianity used violence not only in just and unjust wars but also in direct and indirect conversions. Surely, then, the Pope should have exemplified, as his primary instance, the religious conjunction of faith and violence by citing, for example, the Inquisition or the Crusades. That would have earned him the right to criticize Islam or any other religion for similar faith-based violence.

Lest I sound too negative, I offer this modest proposal. Think about those four bronze horses from St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. If the Vatican returned them to Turkey, that graceful gesture could heal the more ancient wounds between Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions for the physical violence of the Fourth Crusade which took those bronzes from the ruins of Constantinople (Istanbul).

It might also heal the more recent wounds between Christian and Islamic traditions for the verbal violence of that Byzantine emperor's comment which - with stunning insensitivity and incredible mis-timing - the Pope cited in Germany two months before visiting Turkey.