“If I were Pope Benedict, this is what I’d tell them in Berlin …”
Have you ever wanted to write a major speech for Pope Benedict to deliver? What would you say? How much leeway would you have if you were chosen to be the papal ghostwriter?
Benedict is not about to let outsiders write the landmark speech he will deliver to the German Bundestag in Berlin during his visit to his homeland on September 22-25. But the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), a think-tank affiliated with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wants to test out this idea before he leaves Rome for the visit.
The KAS office in the Italian capital has just announced a contest called “Ghost writer for the pope!” This is not an invitation to write anything heretical. The announcement on its website says KAS will only consider entries that reflect Pope Benedict’s thinking “in theology, form and content.” It suggests that papal speechwriters in spe should use his address in London’s Westminster Hall last September as a model. Maximum length 5 pages, deadline August 26. The winner will be invited to hear the pope’s actual speech in the Bundestag on September 22.
“The choice will be made by a jury of KAS staffers in Rome, Catholic theology professors, journalists (Radio Vatican and L’Osservatore Romano) and religious dignitaries,” it warned. “The choice is not subject to appeal.”
One last condition — all entries must be submitted in German. We’ll keep an eye out for the results to report how innovative — or imitative — the winning text may be.
.
Word clouds drift apart in Obama’s speeches to the Muslim world
Word clouds are graphic games that sometimes tell more than a plain text. Look at the results below for U.S. President Barack Obama’s “speech to the Muslim world” today in Jakarta and his first such address in Cairo last year. I’ve analysed the two in a report here, but word clouds tell the story a different way.
Judging by the frequency of the words, today’s speech was much more a speech about Indonesia than anything else. The message to the greater Muslim world — here’s what the world’s largest Muslim country can do! – only comes through between the lines. But it was clear enough when Obama strung these words into sentences.
Another point is how strong the focus is on secular concepts such as democracy, progress and development. “Muslim” and “Islam” are also-rans while “Koran” doesn’t appear at all.
Barack Obama in Jakarta, November 10, 2010
What a contrast to his speech in Cairo, a centre of the Arab and Muslim world. “Muslim” and “Muslims” are right up there, the third and sixth most frequent words he used. “Islam” is prominent, as are “religion” and “faith.” You can find “Koran” in there too.
The secular terms are much more specific to the Middle East — “Palestinian” and “Israelis”, “violence” and “peace.” Another contrast to today’s speech — last year’s host country, Egypt, merited only two mentions. It didn’t even make it into the word cloud. Cairo got four mentions, half the total that Jakarta merited today. But we can chalk a lot of that up to nostalgia. As a boy, Obama ran along paddy fields in Jakarta, not down the dusty alleys of Cairo.
Obama sets Muslim outreach for Indonesia trip
President Barack Obama will visit Indonesia’s largest mosque and make a major outdoor speech directed at the global Muslim community when he visits Indonesia next month, the White House said on Thursday.
Obama leaves on November 5 on a 10-day trip to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. On November 10 in Jakarta, Obama will visit the Istiqlal Mosque, and then make his speech from another, outdoor location, where there could be a large crowd.
“He’ll have a chance to talk about the partnership that we’re building with Indonesia, but also to talk about some of the themes of democracy and development and our outreach to Muslim communities around the world,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told a news conference.
Obama remains popular in the world’s most populous Muslim country, where he spent four years while growing up, even as confidence in him has dropped in other Muslim states since he made a major speech in Cairo in June 2009 seeking a new beginning with the Islamic world.
Does Pope Benedict sound different in a foreign language?
Does Pope Benedict sound different when he speaks a foreign language? I’m not referring to his German accent — anyone following his visit to Britain these days can attest to the fact that he has one in English. But does he say the same thing when he speaks in his native German — or in Italian or French, two languages he also speaks fluently (and better than English). Does he present his ideas with the same words? Does the message come across in the same way? How does it “feel” to the listener?
Benedict’s basic message is fundamentally the same, regardless of the language he speaks. But his speeches and sermons these past few days have sounded different from similar speeches delivered in other languages — and not just because they were in English. The speeches were shorter. The wording was at times more direct and the argument more succinct than in similar speeches on previous voyages to other countries. The speeches included several references to Britain and British history that his listeners would know and appreciate. He doesn’t usually nod that much in the direction of the local audience.
Having heard him speak in these different languages over the years, my first impression after listening to his speech to “representatives of British society” in Westminster Hall on Friday was how short it was. The main arguments in that speech — that religion has a role in public life and is not incompatible with reason — are central themes of Benedict’s papacy. He delivered a somewhat comparable showcase speech “to the world of culture” in Paris in September 2008. The Regensburg speech to “representatives from the field of the sciences” during his 2006 visit to Germany was also about faith and reason, although his use of a Byzantine emperor’s quote about Islam being an irrational and violent religion overshadowed the public perception of it.
Since these showcase speeches are meant as one of the highpoints of a visit, it’s interesting to make a few comparisons. The Regensburg speech was 3,521 words long in German, according to my word counter. The Paris speech was 4,181 words long in French, it said. By contrast, the London speech in English was much shorter — 1,805 words long. In Germany, any formal speech shorter than an hour is not considered complete. It can be like that in France as well. But length is not necessarily a virtue among English-speaking orators, as Abraham Lincoln showed when he delivered his 272-word Gettysburg Address.
Benedict planned to deliver a similar speech at Rome’s La Sapienza University in January 2008, but bowed out after students protested against it. The Italian text the Vatican later released ran to 3,304 words.
Brevity doesn’t always bring clarity, but the London speech also sounded more succinct than the others. Two examples are “The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?” and “Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.” In one section, he borrowed a common term from economic policy to highlight his message: “… the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed ‘too big to fail’. Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly ‘too big to fail’.”
There was also more formality in his speeches on the Continent. The Regensburg speech was a philosophical address delivered at the last university where Benedict taught before rising in the Church hierarchy. It was sprinkled with words and phrases in ancient Greek and Latin and started off quite formally, greeting “Your Eminences, Magnificences and Excellencies, honoured ladies and gentlemen!”
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
Rosemary, I have no idea what happened to your initial post, which I did not see. We would not have rejected it for the reasons you allege, so I can only assume it got automatically rejected on some technicality. If you want to resend it, please do so and we’ll post it.