Robert Spencer says the new Pope may be Europe’s last, best hope: Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad.

In line with his call to Europeans to recover their own spiritual heritage, the new Pope opposes Turkey’s proposed entrance into the European Union: “Turkey,” he has declared, “has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe.” But his objection is not simply geographical — in fact, he opposes the geographical oversimplifications that underlie Turkey’s EU bid: “Europe,” he has explained, “was founded not on a geography, but on a common faith. We have to redefine what Europe is, and we cannot stop at positivism.” A Europe newly defined as in some sense a Christian entity may outrage secularists, but a secular and relativist Europe has so far proved powerless against the Islamization of Europe — despite the fact that that Islamization threatens cherished Western notions of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.
 
Europe, the new Pope has written, “appears to be at the start of its decline and fall.”
 
It may be too late, as Bat Ye’or believes, to arrest that decline and fall. However, the first thing a physician does when he treats a disease is identify the problem. No healing can proceed from a misdiagnosis. It is heartening to see that Pope Benedict XVI has already, in various speeches and writings before his accession to the papacy, dared to speak more clearly about the threat that Islam poses to Western civilization than his predecessor — for all his many and remarkable gifts — ever quite managed to do.
 
Late in 2003 the semi-official Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica departed from John Paul II’s policy toward Islam and published a scathing criticism of the mistreatment that Christians suffer in Islamic societies. It represented the first indication that any Catholic officials recognized the dimensions of the religious conflict that jihadists are waging against Christians and others around the world. La Civiltà Cattolica pointed out that “for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger.” Now, through jihad terrorism and demographics Islam is threatening Europe’s survival yet again — and it looks as if now there is a Pope who has noticed.

UPDATE at 4/20/05 1:11:52 pm:

Here’s a very interesting post on the new Pope by LGF reader True German Ally.