‘Christianity is the greatest revolution humanity has ever accomplished. By comparison all others seem limited’….without Christianity there would not have been the Renaissance, there would not have been the Enlightenment….[Emphasis added.] (Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason, p. 190)

It was only after 9/11 during our “War Against Terror” that I became aware of the remarkable Oriana Fallaci (who joined the underground resistance during WWII in her teens, and was a journalist, novelist, and political interviewer). At some point, I read about her writings warning Europe about the pending decline and fall. Before I could read more she passed away.

Shortly before her death, however, on September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict gave his remarkable lecture at Regensburg and there was the subsequent brouhaha over his call for “faith and reason” and not “faith and violence.” As I read more about the Pope’s lecture over the next few days, the news reported that Mrs. Fallaci had died. And as I read about her in the tributes, the remembrances, and the past interviews, I became more intrigued about her comments about the decline of Europe, her appreciation for Cardinal Ratzinger, and Christianity, as a “hymn to reason.” There was a striking similarity, in fact, to some of the same ideas raised by Pope Benedict in Regensburg.

I never appreciated fully, however, the import of her work until I found The My Hero Project - Oriana Fallaci, with a section devoted to Writer Heroes and this quote on Oriana Fallaci.

From the book, Immortality, author, Milan Kundera writes,

‘...[W] ho is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions--for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not--they were already on the floor of the ring, KO'ed.' [Emphasis added.]

In, Combative Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies, the Washington Post on September 15, 2006, reported that she died overnight. In her final years through her books and essays the Post notes that she challenged Italy and Europe about the loss of European culture and the lack of assimilation underway with immigrants:

….

Her next essay, ‘The Strength of Reason,’ accused Europe of having sold its soul to what Fallaci described as an Islamic invasion. It also took the Catholic Church to task for being what she considers too weak before the Muslim world.

Describing Europe as ‘Eurabia,’ Fallaci said the continent "has sold itself and sells itself to the enemy like a prostitute.’

‘Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam,’ she wrote.

The current invasion, Fallaci went on to say, is not carried out only by the ‘terrorists who blow up themselves along with skyscrapers or buses’ but also by ‘the immigrants who settle in our home, and who, with no respect for our laws, impose their ideas, their customs, their God.’ [Emphasis added.]

Tunku Varadarajan recounted reminiscences of time he spent working with Oriana Fallaci in: La Fallaci A prophet of decline passes from the scene. In her later years, he notes, she was focused on “Eurabia,” the willingness of European leaders to give up principles and values as a result of demands by a wave of immigrants unwilling to assimilate. She wrote vigorously about the pending decline of Europe.

‘La Fallaci,’ as she liked to call herself--yes, immodestly; but Italian divas don't do self-deprecation--became in her last years a fierce, even apocalyptic, critic of Islam. She feared the unassimilated--and, she believed, unassimilable--Muslim immigrants in the West, and she feared them to distraction. Above all, she despised Europe's political and cultural elites who were responsible--in her view--for turning Europe into "a colony of Islam." In a Spenglerian interview for this page last June, she told me: "The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period." [Emphasis added.]

Varadarajan did an earlier interview where she expressed her respect for Pope Benedict. In Prophet of Decline, An Interview with Oriana Fallaci she had this to say about Pope Benedict (Cardinal Ratzinger):

‘I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.’ I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. ‘I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.’ [Emphasis added.]

In her book, The Force of Reason, she explains that although an atheist there is much she respects in the message of Christianity:

… I like the discourse which stays at the roots of Christianity. Because it convinces me. It seduces me to such an extent that in it I do not find any contradiction with my atheism and my secularism. I mean the discourse conceived by Jesus of Nazareth….The discourse which transcending metaphysics, climbing over it, concentrates on Man. Which admitting free-will, claiming Man’s conscience, makes us responsible for our actions. Masters of our destiny. I see a hymn to Reason, a revival of clear thinking in that discourse. And given the fact that where there is clear thinking there is choice, where there is choice there is freedom, I see in it the rediscovery of freedom. The redemption of liberty…. [Emphasis added.] (pp. 186-187.)

Here is an understanding of Pope Benedict’s future lecture at Regensburg. A recognition that in the Christian message there can be found: “[a] hymn to reason” or as the Pope might say “faith and reason” not “violence and reason.” Also, she has an early warning, a critical message like a dagger for the secular West: “without Christianity there would not have been the Renaissance, there would not have been the Enlightenment.” And then there is that final reminder for the Regensburg skeptics to ponder: when “an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true.”