|
New York Times - April 25, 2005
Pope Benedict reaches out to Muslims
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
ROME, April 25 - On his first official full day as pope, Benedict XVI on Monday reached out for the first time to Muslims, saying he was "grateful" for their presence at his investiture ceremony and hoped for a "growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians" at local and international levels.
Benedict, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has been a conservative fixture of Vatican life for more than two decades as chief of the church's office for doctrine, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Many liberal-leaning Catholics have worried about what his reign would be like. But as has become increasingly clear in the days since his election last Tuesday, his priorities as pope are likely to be broader and more outward looking than those of the cardinal he was.
"The first stage of his life, in Germany, he was an immensely gifted theologian, and then he got a job at the Vatican, which was to clarify expressions of Catholic faith," said the Rev. Roderick Strange, rector of Beda College in Rome. "Now it's Chapter 3 of his life, and in this new atmosphere, we see a new man emerging."
In his first official homily as pope, Benedict mentioned the need to build bridges with other Christians and with Jews, but did not mention Muslims. On Monday, he seemed purposefully to be correcting that omission.
"I am particularly grateful for the presence in our midst of members of the Muslim community," he said. "I assure you that the church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/international/worldspecial2/26pope.html
Pope pays homage to Jews, ignores Muslims
VATICAN CITY, April 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In a homily marking his inauguration, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday, April 24, paid homage to “my brothers and sisters” of the Jewish people, but failed to make any reference to Islam or Muslims.
Greeting representatives of other faiths attending the ceremony, the pontiff extended a message of welcome to “the Jewish people, to whom we are joined by a great shared spiritual heritage, one rooted in God's irrevocable promises,” reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
A few days following his election, Pope Benedict XVI sent a message to Rome's chief rabbi vowing to foster and strengthen dialogue with Jews.
His immediate predecessor John Paul II, who died on April 2, won widespread admiration in Israel not only for being the first pope in history to visit a synagogue but also for his work in reconciling the Roman Catholic Church with the Jewish people.
Some observers fear that Jewish lobbies might blackmail the new pope for his wartime membership – which he confirms was enforced -- in Nazi Germany's Hitler Youth.
Jewish leaders have already showered Pope Benedict XVI with praise over his swift and firm commitment to follow in his predecessor's path of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation, saying it was “a very powerful signal” for the future.
The new pontiff’s known opposition to an EU membership for Muslim Turkey has also raised many question marks.
In an interview last year with France's Le Figaro magazine, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said Ankara should seek its future in an association of Islamic nations, not with the EU, which has Christian roots.
He said Turkey had always been “in permanent contrast to Europe” and that linking it to Europe would be “an enormous mistake.”
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-04/24/article04.shtml
CNN – April 20, 2005
Tumult in Turkey over new pope
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In Istanbul and Ankara, on newsstands and on the Internet, headlines scream displeasure over Joseph Ratzinger's ascendance to the papacy. "He was Turkey's last choice," reads one.
Pope Benedict XVI has seemingly lost hearts and minds in predominantly Muslim Turkey, over remarks he made last August. In an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro, then-Cardinal Ratzinger was asked about Turkey's effort to join the European Union. Literally translated from French, Ratzinger answered, "Turkey always represented another continent during history, always in contrast with Europe."
He later said, "... To identify both continents as one would be a mistake. It would be about a loss of richness and cultural disparity in order to justify an economic motive."
The editor of Ignatius Press, which has translated Ratzinger's writings, points out that the new pope, like John Paul II, has reached out to other faiths, including Islam.
But on the question of Turkey, the Rev. Joseph Fessio says, "Turkey does not have a bridge through tradition with Christian Europe, and therefore it should be part of the Arabian bloc ... What has made Europe great has been Jesus Christ."
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan downplays any controversy, and says it's possible that Pope Benedict XVI's statements about Turkey will be very different.
But in this era of fragile relations between Islam and the West, how will Muslim advocates receive a pope who spoke in controversial terms about a cultural divide?
"If he has some concerns about Turkey entering the EU, perhaps Muslim leaders from around the world can sit with him and try and allay some of his concerns. But I think the attitude, the basic attitude of respect and tolerance is one that we hope to see from the new pope," says Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations…..
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/20/turkey.pope/index.html
Tribune-Review – April 7, 2005
Islam presents key challenge for pope, scholars say
By Betsy Hiel
ROME -- While Catholic faithful speculate on how cardinals will vote in their secretive conclave starting Monday, church scholars ponder the issues facing the next pope.
A central concern -- how Christians and Muslims deal with each other post-Sept. 11 -- will shape not only the Roman Catholic Church, but also the larger world in the near future.
Dr. Fransesco Cesareo, dean of McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, calls it "an issue that the cardinals will be considering."
"It will be a question of whether they want to keep the dialogue open and keep engaging Islam," he said, "or take a hard-line stance, a line in the sand."
Nearly half of the 115 cardinals eligible to vote come from Europe, and European issues -- including relations with Islam -- will weigh heavily on them. Europe's birth rates and Mass attendance are falling, and more clergy posts remain open; yet Europe's Muslim population is rising, creating new political forces and social conflicts.
Christianity in the Holy Land has declined for years, while Christian-Muslim clashes in Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere have killed tens of thousands. More than a million have died in a brutal civil war between Sudan's northern Arab Muslims and southern black Christians.
Experts credit the late Pope John Paul II for opening up to the Muslim world. He visited Syria in 2000, meeting with Islamic leaders inside the 8th-century Umayyad Mosque -- the first pope to take such a step. He visited Lebanon, Egypt and Israel, where he apologized for past misdeeds of the Catholic Church, widely interpreted to mean the Crusades.
"He was the master of the significant act," said the Rev. Daniel Madigan, who directs the Institute for Religion and Culture at Rome's Pontifical Gregoriana University. "Going to that mosque in Damascus, it was a great photo opportunity and it had an enormous and significant effect."
"John Paul II brought the papacy on the road, like a caravan," said the Rev. Justo Lacunza-Balda, rector at Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome. "(He) built bridges across civilizations, across countries."
According to Madigan, John Paul distanced himself and the Catholic Church from the war in Iraq, and his Vatican was seen as reasonably pro-Palestinian. Madigan himself was a member of the Pontifical Political Council for Religious Dialogue, which met with imams from Cairo's Al-Azhar University, one of Islam's top religious institutions.
Lacunza-Balda cites Christian-Muslim dialogue as one of the pope's "mega-trends." "It is a necessity," he said. "We have no option if we have an interest in trying to live in peace with another religion."
The success of John Paul's outreach was evident at his funeral Mass. Many Arab and Islamic leaders attended; Arabic satellite television stations, such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, as well as state-owned Arab TV, ran unprecedented coverage of it.
Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, is the leading African candidate to become the next pope. As a Roman Catholic in a Muslim-majority country, he is seen by many observers as best-suited to understand Islam. As head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue for 18 years, he earned a reputation as the Vatican's point-man in engaging Islamic leaders.
"I think he would be the one to keep the dialogue alive," said Cesareo, Duquesne's papal history expert.
Some observers favor Angelo Scola, 63, the patriarch of Venice, who recently launched Oasis -- a magazine published in English, Arabic, French and Italian that aims to improve dialogue with Muslims.
Yet some cardinals and others in the Vatican hierarchy fear Europe, a center of Christianity, is becoming an Islamic outpost. Still others see religious liberty as an issue to be resolved with Muslim religious and political leaders; they point out that Saudi Arabia funded a mosque in Rome, but bans churches within its own borders.
While some cardinals offer a conciliatory approach to Muslims, others "tend to talk about Islam as though it is a block, and that's a problem," according to Madigan.
On the fault line of this debate is German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 77, the powerful head of the Council of Cardinals. He directs the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and is one of the Catholic Church's most conservative voices.
Ratzinger caused a stir during debate over European Union membership, when he declared Muslim Turkey had no place in Christian Europe.
In a Catholic Church document, "Dominus Jesus," he called for Christian evangelization and said Catholicism is "the one true church of Jesus Christ" -- upsetting other Christian denominations and religions.
"He would be the cardinal that saw that Pope John Paul's dialogue with Islam went too far," said Cesareo.
"He would see the Catholic Church as disarming itself and opening the door to the growth of Islam."
With more church pews empty, Lacunza-Baldo said he believes it is time for introspection….
Baltimore Sun - April 19, 2005
Dialogue with Muslim world must continue
By R. K. Ramazani
Let us hope that the successor to Pope John Paul II, the first pope in history to step inside a mosque, will continue his unprecedented policy of talking to the Muslim world.
Muslim leaders who expressed sympathy after his death did not do so simply because the pope opposed the invasion of Iraq or spoke out against the wall of separation in the Israeli-occupied territories. They did so because the pope believed firmly that Christianity should engage in a dialogue with Islam.
Western and Middle Eastern cultures have been in contact since ancient times. While the savage 9/11 attacks on America by a handful of Muslim extremists has colored our view of Islam in recent years, the intermingling of Western and Islamic civilizations has benefited Western civilization in many ways.
Muslim philosophy has helped shape Western philosophy. Muslim patterns of arches, courtyards, marbles and fountains have influenced Western architecture. And the English language has adopted as its own such Persian and Arabic trading terms as "bazaar" and "tariff" and Arabic seafaring terms such as "admiral" and "arsenal."
Indeed, the ancient Middle East interacted with Western civilization for thousands of years before the arrival of Islam in medieval times. In recognition of this, the parliament of the Council of Europe declared in 1995: "Our own civilization is a result of this intermingling."
A continuation of this millennial legacy of dialogue and interaction between Middle Eastern and Western civilizations by the Catholic Church will serve the United States' strategic interests in the Middle East. The issues are clear: We get 22 percent of our crude oil imports from the region, we are committed to the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we are pursuing our fight against the remnants of the Taliban regime and al-Qaida terrorist network.
There is also our determination to create a federal, pluralistic and democratic Iraq as a model of democracy for the entire Middle East. Still, it has never been more important than now to combine military strength with diplomacy.
A robust dialogue with the Middle East also would serve U.S. national interests in the wider Muslim world.
First, we should abandon the mistaken assumption that the Muslim world constitutes a monolithic system. The 54 countries that are considered Muslim and that convene in the Organization of Islamic Conference are very different in size, resources, language, history, culture, society and political system.
Second, Islamic law - sharia - long considered the hallmark of the Islamic character of a state, is by no means practiced universally throughout the Muslim world. Even in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East's most conservative state, where Islamic law forms the theoretical basis of its constitution, sharia is not fully observed in practice. In Nigeria, the largest Muslim country in Africa, Islamic law governs only one province. And in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the most populous states in Asia, Islamic law does not prevail at the national level.
Nor is there a monolithic Islamic view toward the West. Most of the 1.2 billion people of the Muslim world lack firm opinions about the West. Muslim extremists who commit acts of terror are in the great minority, and intellectuals are generally divided into conservative and liberal camps.
Diehard Muslim conservatives may perceive the West as the enemy of Islam, believe that Islam is the solution to all their problems and reject dialogue with the West. But many Muslim liberals tend to see compatibility between Islam and modernity and Islam and democracy. They entertain such ideas as the separation of religion and state, and generally welcome dialogue with the West.
We should hope for a successor to Pope John Paul who will continue to reach out to Muslims. This would further not only world peace but also U.S. interests. Above all, a policy of dialogue by the Vatican and Washington would give hope and encouragement to millions of democracy-minded young people who are demanding social and political reforms that challenge the age-old hold on power of traditionally minded, autocratic rulers throughout the Muslim world.
R. K. Ramazani, a Middle East specialist, is professor emeritus of politics at the University of Virginia.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.muslims19apr19,1,4606257.story
|
