In the lecture, Benedict quoted a 14th century Christian Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus: “Show me what Muhammad has brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Benedict’s lecture, reported in the news, sparked turbulent and violent reactions by some Muslims in some parts of the Muslim world. More than a few Western commentators suggested that this response disclosed not only hypersensitivity and paranoia among Muslims, but also confirmed Benedict’s statement: Some adherents of Islam responded to the charge that their religion is violent by acting violently.

But either Pope Benedict or his speechwriter should have known how inflammatory the quotation would be. If the lecture was written by a speech-writer, this does not get Benedict off the hook. Does Benedict read his speeches in advance? One would hope so. How could he not know that these words would be offensive?

To imagine an alternative scenario: imagine that the majority of Muslims had an official world-leader like the Pope (they do not, of course). And imagine that he characterized Christianity as evil, inhuman, and violent. There probably would not have been riots or violence in historically Christian lands; we have the luxury of being on top. But many Christians, as well as non-Christians, would consider such a statement to be offensive, and would see it as revelatory of a parochial and benighted mind. It would confirm their sense that most Muslims are provincial and plagued by lack of a larger awareness.

To contextualize the quotation from Manuel II Paleologus: He was the emperor of the Byzantine Empire that had been beleaguered by Muslims for centuries and shrunken to a miniscule size so that it was hardly an empire, but more of a city-state. Indeed, from 1394 to 1402, he and his capital city of Constantinople were besieged by a Muslim army. No wonder he saw Islam as evil, inhuman, and violent.

But a Muslim commentator in the same period of time could legitimately have said the same about Christianity. The most recent Muslim experience of Christianity had been the Crusades. Not only were the Crusades an invasion of the Muslim world, but they were marked by savage brutality to combatants and non-combatants alike. In the Muslim Middle East, the Crusades are still known as “the wars of the cross.” Christian history is at least as full of violence as Muslim history.

So what was the point of Pope Benedict including this offensive quotation in a lecture given in the 21st century? If he knew what he was doing, shame. If he didn’t know – how could he not know?

It would be good for a Pope to say, “I was wrong. I made a mistake.” It would be good for Christian-Muslim relations. And it would be good for the Catholic Christian world as well.