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Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear in his Mass before Conclave in Rome that he wants to emphasize fighting “A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.” The day after, he was elected pope and took the name Benedict XVI. In his first homily as the pontiff, Benedict said,
… I turn to all, also to those who follow other religions or who simply seek an answer to the fundamental questions of life and have not yet found it. I turn to all with simplicity and affection, to assure them that the Church wishes to continue to engage with them in an open and sincere dialogue, in search of the true good of man and of society.
I invoke from God the peace and unity for the human family and declare the readiness of all Catholics to cooperate for a genuine social development, respectful of the dignity of every human being.
But as Joe Katzman observes, what does the Church do regarding Islam? Citing the WaPo:
Before they stopped speaking to the press on Saturday, several of the 115 cardinals who are in Rome to elect John Paul’s successor cited the spread of Islam as one of the major issues facing the church. Hanging over the church’s deliberations, Vatican officials said, was whether to view Islam as a collaborator in combating secularism or a religious rival.
It doesn’t help that a number of prominent Muslim leaders and cleric have said that, in one example,
We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims… will yet pay us the Jiziya [JK: poll tax paid by non-Muslim second-class citizens under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…
Says Joe,
Muslim behaviour toward Christians is no longer an incidental issue. Fro Aceh to Nigeria, many communities are experiencing violence and discrimination first hand. As competition between these fast-growing religions intensifies, the pressure on the Catholic Church to publicly defend the Christian faithful will grow. Shining a spotlight on the persecutions and grave lack of religious freedom in most Muslim countries is a good place to start.
Principled dialog with Muslim nations cannot any longer seek mere “understanding.” It must be made clear that religious oppression must stop. There are signs that the new papacy may move in that direction; Joe includes this quote (original cite unclear):
After two decades of contact and dialogue with the Islamic world under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican is rethinking an outreach program that critics say is diluting Catholicism and has brought almost no benefits to beleaguered Catholic minorities in Muslim countries.
…Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said the next pope might more emphatically demand rights for Christian minorities in Islamic countries and the freedom of all people to choose their faith. “There may be a greater insistence on religious liberty,” said Fitzgerald, the church’s point man on Islamic relations.”
I remember attending a panel discussion in the early 1990s in Springield, Va., about 15 miles south of Washington, DC. The panel consisted of three professors of religion from The George Washington University. One was Christian, one was Jewish and one was Muslim. They were all very collegial, both to one another and to we attendees. During the Q&A someone asked whether interreligious dialog among the three faiths was making a difference.
Their consensus was that it was not. As the Muslim professor pointed out, there had been so many groups holding so many dialogs for so many decades that there was no lack of understanding among the leaders of the faiths of what the other faith believed and stood for. So the three professors pretty much agreed that more dialog for the sake of dialog was mostly pointless.
I raised my hand and commented that the first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath was, “First, do no harm,” so if there was no evidence that positive good was arising from the dialogs, then at least they are doing no harm. And the three academics agreed.
I assume interreligious dialog conferences are still being held, if for no other reason than they provide funded vacations for their participants. If the dialogs shore up the status quo, then they are harmful. There are too many Christians being killed at Muslim hands (Darfur, anyone? how about Indonesia?) to pretend that interreligious dialog can do any good to end the oppression. Any outreach by the Vatican of “tolerance” or “understanding” of Islam will simply reinforce the status quo and will be actually harmful, not helpful. There are some in the Conclave who understand it. Time will tell whether they or the new pope will act on it.
Comments policy
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April 20th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
I think it is unfair to refer to
Benedict XVI as the “panzer Pope”-in
the old Third Reich, nobody told the
Hitlerjugend no when they had a
membership drive.
Having said that, Islam ought to thank
Allah all five times a day that the
civilised nations haven’t “reached out”
to them with anything more potent than
interfaith dialogues in the last four
years, say for example an SSBN or a
Peacekeeper. If it weren’t for the
prevailing winds, 500 million Muslims
would be easier to deal with than 1.5
billion.
The preceding was bloody-minded, and
shame on me for it, but if Rome
chooses to confront Islam, which I
believe it has no choice but to do,
at this point, the level of violence is
going to increase. Islam translates as
“submission”, after all, and Islam has
had nothing to offer the civilised
nations, except provocation, for quite
a while now. Will anything short of a
geopolitical boxing of their ears make
them mind their manners?
April 21st, 2005 at 9:12 am
Unfortunately, there is no one to outreach to . . ..
Who, with any religiou credibility, could have a meaningful dialogue with the Pope?
Patrick
April 21st, 2005 at 9:39 am
First I’ve heard the victims in Darfur are Christian! Surely you meant to say “fellow Muslims”; it’s the (perhaps) recently-(perhaps)concluded conflict in Southern Sudan where the opposing side where Christian. (So, did I put enough “perhaps’s” in there?)
April 21st, 2005 at 1:19 pm
It should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that people are not dying as a result of a failure of “outreach by the Vatican [or other Christian faiths] of ‘tolerance’ or ‘understanding’ of Islam,” but rather the reverse. I don’t have an answer for how to break this victim role Islam has adopted, but perhaps a start might be clear, unambiguous, frank dialog on the problems without worrying about how it may be misperceived. Any criticism could be construed as a threat by one wishing to do so. Reasonable men and dialog should not be held ransom by the whims of the unreasonable.
April 21st, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Kirk, while it may be a misstatement to imply the victims in Darfur are Christian, it still does not rebut that their status as victims is directly related to their being non-Muslim. While the Pope is obviously concerned with the welfare of the faithful, I believe his greater concern is with the “human family” on a whole.
April 21st, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Unfortunately it seems that we have ample evidence that the judeo-christian traditions and islam are incompatible. Dialogue seems to be only a device to be used to divert attention. At some point it’s going to become apparent that this planet isn’t big enough for the two of us.
April 21st, 2005 at 2:26 pm
We have two incompatible religions
One is quite willing, in the grand scheme of things, to co-exist with the other.
One is determined, in the grand scheme of things, to brutially destroy the other.
If the tolerant relign takes serious action to defend itselt, who wants to take
a guess as to where the most vapid criticism will come from?
April 21st, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Islam is not interested in sharing or conceding or living with, ANY other religion.
The good old Chamberlain philosophy of appeasement will do nothing except what it did to Mr. Hitler, embolden!
We must continually be on guard until either Islam changes (as Christianity changed from the days of the Crusade) or forces on a true war of religions.
April 21st, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Tsk. Tsk. And all this talk about the “spread of democracy”!
April 21st, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Democracy includes freedom of religion and no doubt as democracy is embraced more widely in the
world, such freedom will enhance the likelihood of more religious tolerance. We can only hope and pray.
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:14 pm
Islam and the Vatican
Here’s a tip….
April 23rd, 2005 at 1:59 pm
[…] by Donald Sensing @ 1:59 pm. Filed under Religion
I pointed out in “Islam and the Vatican” that interreligious dialogs between Christians and Muslims have been recognized […]