Historic Catholic-Muslim forum opens at Vatican
VATICAN CITY —
The Vatican Tuesday opened historic inter-faith talks with top Muslim leaders, two years after Pope Benedict XVI sparked outrage among Muslims for a speech seen as linking Islam with violence.
The Holy See’s first-ever Catholic-Muslim forum opens “a new chapter in the long history” of dialogue between the two faiths, the head of the 29-member Catholic delegation, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, told the French Catholic daily La Croix.
Benedict will meet with the delegations on Thursday.
The Muslim side is led by the mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric, whose spokesman Yahya Pallavicini said the delegates “represent no state and no ideological tendency.”
Tunisian academic Adnane Mokrani, a member of the Muslim delegation, said on Italian public radio RAI that the talks should be transformed from closed door dialogue to an open forum.
The delegation includes Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan, an outspoken and controversial Muslim figure in Europe, along with Aref Ali Nayed of the Islamic Centre of Strategic Studies in Amman, Jordan, and Iranian ayatollah Seyyed Mustafa Manegheg Damad.
Ramadan, in a commentary published in France’s Le Monde newspaper Tuesday, said that the need for “constructive dialogue on the values and the common goals is more important than rivalry on the size of the adherents and conversion. We have to start,” this, he underscored, saying: “the fear that permeates the present sometimes makes us view the past with bias.”
Ramadan said the two sides had to work together on forging responses to the “social, cultural and economic questions of our time.”
Several women in the delegation include Ingrid Mary Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies at the Hartford Seminary in the United States.
The Vatican seminar was organized in response to a Muslim call for dialogue issued in October 2006, a month after Benedict’s controversial speech in Regensburg, Germany.
The call titled “A Common World” was signed by 138 Muslim religious figures and scholars.
The Regensburg lecture sparked days of sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries, prompting the head of the Roman Catholic Church to say that he was “deeply sorry” for any offense and to attribute Muslim anger to an “unfortunate misunderstanding.”
The closed-door discussions at the Vatican will focus Tuesday on human rights and religious freedom.
The Vatican is however cautious over opening a purely theological dialogue, with Tauran telling La Croix: “We’ll see how far we can go together.”
Christians and Muslims differ in their concept of God, and follow “different paths to reach this God,” said Tauran, the Roman Catholic Church’s pointman for dialogue with Islam.
Wire reports
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skipthesong
will this be offered the other way around as well, or will it remain one sided?
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Azrael
Let there be hope for peace. If the Catholic Church and the Muslims are able to reach understanding that allows fellowship, it is likely that the Protestants will listen to them and want to participate (or so I hope). This won't be easy dialogue, but it cannot be postponed any longer. I am glad the Muslims took the initiative sending such a transcendent letter.
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WilliB
Azrael:
You should read it before swooning too much. Basically, it was an invitation to join islam. While phrased politely, there is no concession in there at all. It speaks totally from the position of islamic superiority.
It is also typical that a muslim delegation is welcome at the Vatican. How about a Catholic delegation at the Grand Mosque in Mecca? Oops.... all of Mecca is muslim-only. Not entry for infidels. How about if Rome adopted such a measure?
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Azrael
This is not regular "carrot and stick" diplomacy; it's religious diplomacy. In that context, the Catholic Church takes a firm and yet conciliatory posture. The Catholic Church won't turn Muslim any minute (that'd be absurd) but the Muslim as well cannot be expected to turn into a Catholic standard or so to speak. In order to reach an agreement, careful negotiations need to be held. Besides, it's already been stated this is not about Dogma or the religions themselves, but the relationships between them. The Muslim may be preposterous as you suggest, but that doesn't mean they are not willing to negotiate. Their willingness is stated by sending the letter. The Catholic Church is responding - and the Catholic Church is one of the best mediators on Earth, regardless the beliefs of the ones who ask her for mediation or peacemaking. So, the tone of the letter itself is irrelevant - the motion is what matters. Only from the meetings start and onward we may know if there'll be success in bringing peace and understanding closer or not.
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