Nada. Zip. Near nonevent. Seriously.

This trip has been in the works forever. Benedict went to Turkey because Popes travel. That's what they do. JPII went to Damascus and had to listen to Assad explain how the Jews killed Christ and have to be punished for it. So B16 probably said no thanks to that and headed off to Turkey instead. Plus, he was hoping to embolden and strengthen Christianity for what he probably believes is civilizational conflict with Islam - in this case, by healing tension between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Most of the trip was set in stone way before September, when the Pope sparked riots by announcing that he thinks Catholicism - the religion he leads - is probably true. Now imagine that weeks of Muslim rioting and death threat'ing hadn't followed their realization that the Pope is Catholic. This visit would have gotten nothing more than some saccharine, unthinking statements about how the Pope is visiting his first Muslim country and isn't that great. Some people on the right might have pointed out that there is something significant in the Pope choosing Turkey, the most secular Muslim state. Maybe. But it wouldn't have been particularly interesting or newsworthy.

Then the riots happened. And suddenly the Pope had no choice but to go Turkey. Not because he had to "mend fences", as all of the news stories have been implying. Kind of the opposite: going was still not all that important, but not going would have sparked an international scandal. It would have been written that he was bowing to fear and pressure - or that he was intentionally snubbing Muslims - or that he was not committed to dialogue - or that he was fomenting tension. And so on. By making Turkey a likely location for an assassination attempt, the Pope was paradoxically forced into going to Turkey. And so he dutifully went, and dutifully did his interfaith duties. Truth be told: we're like 95percent sure he just went there to check out the old churches, and that the rest of the stuff was just filler.

But never let it be said that journalists are not intrepid little bricolage machines, able to take whatever's at hand and craft from it the perfect liberal story line.

Storyline 1: The Pope embraced the idea that Islam Is A Religion Of Peace

Yeah, kind of. Listen, no one ever said that this Pope hates Muslims. What people are saying is that he deeply distrusts Islam, for empirical and theoretical reasons that are frankly beyond the scope of well over 99percent of the people who criticize him. But being a gentle man, of course he wants Catholics and Muslims to live together in peace - the challenge, from his perspective, has been to find a way to minimize the antagonism introduced by rigorous adherence to Islamic literalism. Which explains why one of the the very first things he did was go and hope for peace - at the grave of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk! Oh you didn't hear that the Pope began his visit to Turkey by metaphorically linking peace between Catholics and Muslims to secular reform within Islam itself?

Storyline 2: The Pope said that Turkey should be part of the EU

We were kind of skeptical about this the first time that we read the celebratory liberal headlines. We take it as an article of faith that if something seems to confirm our ideological predispositions too much, the proper response is suspicion. We've never understood how people can fall for stories like "Wolfowitz admits US invaded Iraq for its oil" - the ideological confirmation is just too neat, and the things you have to believe to get there (that Wolfowitz would be that stupid, that he would slip up in this way, etc) are just too unbelievable. The other thing is, we expect that most reasonable people are like that too. So if you're a journalist and you get a story that's exactly what you wish it would be, you'd be suspicious - and triple and quadruple check it before you publish it. Both of these reasons are why we keep getting burned by things like the Killian memos and the pro-Hezbollah photoshopping scandals - they're just too close to what we would like to believe about the media, and they're so much what journalists want to believe that we can't imagine how they didn't verify their information.

The report about the Pope suddenly embracing 40 million Muslims streaming into old Europe is kind of like that - it's so absolute a multiculturalist moral victory that we just assumed that they'd never print it unless they had verified it. So our original post was going to be:

It's a weak post, average at best. But we really just couldn't think of anything coherent to say that would make sense of Benedict's clear and explicit belief in a Christian Europe and his support for Turkey's admission into the EU. Turns out, there's a reason for that:

The Pope offering Turkey admission into the EU if they respect the rights of religious minorities is exactly like Sharon saying that he's willing to make massive concessions to the Palestinians just as soon as they give up their Jew-killing fetish. It's something we can all agree with: if the people who we're opposing changed so that we would no longer have any reason to oppose them, we would be happy to stop opposing them.

Storyline 3: The Pope submitted to Islam and turned to Mecca to pray

Let's get the phrasing right - not exactly "submitted", just "complied":

We've read and reread this and see absolutely nothing objectionable at all. The Pope was in a mosque, he was told that it is respectful to turn to Mecca when praying in a mosque, and so he turned to Mecca while praying. The alternative was to have everyone else turn around and for him to face forward and look like an idiot. There's no violation of Catholic dogma, nothing smacking of dhimmitude. He wasn't even told to turn around - contra the absurd, wishful use of the verb "comply" in the story. He was told "this is how we do it" and he played along". It's not like he converted - or did anything contrary to any tenet of Catholicism. Do people think that, after turning around, he also started praying to Allah? What exactly is the controversy here?

When we go to Catholic weddings, we stand up when the priest asks the congregation to stand up. Not because we're engaging in Catholic prayer, but because that's the polite thing to do - and, critically, it doesn't cost us anything in terms of faith or dogma. Isn't that what everyone does? So the Pope turned around, prayed for world peace in the way he does every day, and then got to satisfy his inner nerd by walking around a magnificent building. We wish we had the same opportunity, but we're not allowed in mosques.

So here's the post-Turkey news roundup: the Pope was not killed, he did not convert to Islam, and he still thinks that Europe has a Christian legacy that must be embraced and fought for.

Previously: The Pope Understands Islam Better Than You, Juan Cole As a Study In Pro-Jihadist Faux Liberal Sophistication, Pope Declares Belief In God - Shock, Outrage Follow