In his first significant meeting with Muslim leaders, Pope Benedict has – in a circumspect way – urged Muslims to tackle the terrorism and intolerance within their own communities. But, again, Benedict has not mentioned terrorism against Israelis. According the BBC:

At a meeting with Germany's Muslim leaders in Cologne, the pontiff said heads of their community had a "great responsibility" to educate the young. …

...the Pope warned of "the darkness of a new barbarism" unless people from different religions worked together.

"I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism," he said.

It is significant for the pontiff to confront Muslims on terrorism, especially as Western leaders have continued to use politically correct language, describing Islamist terrorism as some type of nebulous concept having no clear source.

For example, President Bush’s comments soon after 9/11 were quite murky, according to Daniel Pipes:

…whenever President George W. Bush referred to enemies, he insisted they were neither Afghans nor even Muslims but rather people he called "evildoers" or "the evil ones." This odd and somewhat comical-sounding phrasing seems to have been chosen deliberately so as not to offend anyone, or any group. It also permitted Bush to lump a variety of events under a single rubric even before it was known who was responsible for which of them. Thus, when mysterious anthrax letters began appearing, he again blamed these same amorphous "evildoers" for "continuing to try to harm America and Americans."

What were the goals of these evildoers? Here, too, Bush was careful to speak in generalities. They were people "motivated by hate," or, somewhat more specifically, "people that [had] no country," or, on another occasion, "people that may try to take a country, parasites that may try to leech onto a host country." When it came to what the United States was planning to do about them, the President was once more cautious to a fault, speaking mostly of "hunting down the evildoers and bringing them to justice."

Benedict’s statement, “I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism,” is a clever didactic which places responsibility on the Muslim community – a community which has been at best reticent to accept responsibility.

Western leaders have gotten a little better, as Islamist atrocities have mounted since 9/11. Daniel Pipes has noted more recent examples “of individuals and institutions being willing to call a spade a spade, or at least take a step in that direction.”

Tony Blair, no wilting flower, but always diplomatic in his public utterances, seemd to see the light after the July London bombings:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, condemning the London bombings that killed at least 33 people on Thursday, said: "We know that these people act in the name of Islam."

In a statement from his London residence, a grim-faced Blair thanked The Muslim Council of Britain for roundly condemning the bombers who struck in the early morning rush hour.

"We know that these people act in the name of Islam but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims both here and abroad are decent and law abiding people who abhor this kind of terrorism every bit as much as we do," Blair said.

Maybe Blair was being overly diplomatic, but he also

…has outlined a raft of plans to extend powers to deport or exclude foreigners who encourage terrorism.

One of the Muslim leaders who met with Pope Benedict today uttered words I thought I would never hear:

The Islamic world also needs to recognize its historic guilt and prepare for a new constructive beginning.

On Friday, the Pope visited a synagogue in Cologne and “warned of rising anti-Semitism.” He recognized the Holocaust as an “unimaginable crime,” and his visit was noteworthy as

It was only the second time a Pope has visited a Jewish place of worship, following Pope John Paul II's visit to a Rome synagogue in 1986.

But Benedict has yet to directly condemn terrorist acts against Israelis, a sign of the Vatican’s overt side-taking in the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” As Allan Dershowitz points out:

Recently Pope Benedict XVI condemned terrorist attacks against civilians in Great Britain, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. In a pregnant omission – very pregnant in light of the Vatican’s long history of silence in the face of attacks against Jews – the Pope omitted any mention of the country that has suffered the largest number of terrorist attacks against civilians since 9/11, namely, Israel. When the Israeli government understandably protested the omission, the Vatican’s position became even more troubling. It singled out Israel for criticism, saying that that beleaguered nation’s responses to attacks against its civilians was “not always compatible with the rules of international law.” It then went on to say that the Vatican could not protest every Palestinian attack against Jewish civilians if Israel did not always follow international law.

Pope Benedict got off to a somewhat good start, vis-à-vis his early association with the Hitler Youth. His visit to a Jewish place of worship today was another positive. But his unwillingness to condemn terrorism against Israelis is no less than a sin of omission, to put it into ecclesiastical terms.