Charles Chaput, here.
It's always amusing to listen to fanatics have their cake and eat it too.
The pope can travel to Egypt and "speak eloquently against religious fanaticism" while these priests never consider that their own vows of celibacy just might be a sign of an extreme obsession of their own. Muslims who kill in the name of their religion are fanatics, they say, but Christian clergy who won't be fruitful, multiply and contribute new lives like normal people do somehow get a pass. There is active killing, but apparently not passive. Mortal and venial anyone?
Anyway, to the mind of Chaput the pope visiting Egypt suggests Athanasius, 4th century bishop of Alexandria, whom Chaput without the slightest whiff of embarrassment holds up as someone who zealously lived his faith, believed deeply, and courageously stood against the whole blasted heretical world. His name became attached to a creed which anathematized Arians, etc., condemning them to "everlasting fire". Wow. Nothing to see in the way of fanatical there, no sir. Move along.
Religious founders are by definition fanatics. They have to be in order to be successful at founding something. That's why we remember them and follow them. Some are worse than others (I'm talking about you, Muhammad), which is to say some are better than others (your choices are any, except Muhammad). The also-rans in the competition don't found whole new world religions. Typically they become "saints" or their equivalents. Like the rest of us, they have mixed human natures, with some admirable qualities and frankly, some not so admirable, either in their own lives or because the law of unintended consequences yielded something awful from what they taught or from an understandable misunderstanding of what they taught. You know, like jihad, or pacifism, communism or apocalypticism.
Generally speaking, the more fundamental they are, the more kinda mental they are.
So a Paul of Tarsus tamed the wild beast who was Jesus, and a Martin Luther tamed the wild beast that was Paul. And now the Western world, at least, is a sort of circus of tamers.
But there's no one yet to tame Muhammad.
