Early in his papacy, the Pope ignited a storm of protest from the Muslim world by remarks on Islam in his lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany in 2006. This speech has been discussed widely, including by the On Faith panel, and many agree that these remarks were unnecessarily inflammatory—in a speech intended to tackle the “tough questions” in interfaith dialogue, the idea is not to burn bridges of dialogue but to create them. If that’s what you want to do, you need to give less inflammatory examples.

Now, on Easter Sunday, the Pope chose to baptize Italy’s most prominent Muslim, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic. In his homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism, the Pope’s expressed his views on what it meant that he had just baptized a Muslim into the Catholic faith. “We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” he said.

The Pope seems to think that he and Mr. Allam had previously been “in opposition to one another,” merely because they were not of the same faith. That “opposition” has disappeared, apparently, simply through the sacrament of baptism into the Catholic faith.

This is unexpectedly revealing. At a deep level, the Pope is saying that it is the faiths themselves that are in opposition, not individuals who may be of different faiths.

My husband and I were once in the Florida Keys and while we were driving back from Key West, one of the many bridges got stuck in the “up” position. Traffic built up for miles and miles while a new part was flown in from Miami.

The bridge between Pope Benedict and Islam, through not only this baptism on Easter Sunday, but also through the revealing homily as well, just got stuck in the “up” position. Fortunately, there are many, many Catholics working hard to build bridges to Islam and they may just have to carry the traffic along alternate routes in this papacy.