Listen to the Popes on the Value of Muslim-Catholic Dialogue

(CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)

By Father John Crossin, OSFS


When the pope says an issue is vital to the stability of the human family, that carries a lot of weight. When the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs wrote their recent statement reaffirming the Church’s commitment to dialogue with Muslims, they found that not only one pope had stressed this idea, but three. In fact, there was such an abundance of verbiage affirming Muslim-Catholic dialogue, from the Second Vatican Council down to Pope Francis, that the bishops dedicated an entire section of their statement to Vatican and papal quotes.

These statements have a clarity that demands our attention. At a time when some encourage violence, the popes speak of friendship and peace. In their combined teaching, themes emerge. We can start with the importance of engagement and friendship, build into common concerns like human dignity and peace, and finally cast a hopeful eye to the future.

Let’s listen attentively for just a few moments…

“Christians and Muslims can work together, bearing witness before modern civilization to the divine presence and loving Providence which guide our steps. Together we can proclaim that he who has made us has called us to live in harmony and justice,” said John Paul II to a delegation of Muslims in 1990. In 2006, Benedict XVI expressed his wish “wish to continue establishing bridges of friendship with the adherents of all religions, showing particular appreciation for the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians.”

In dialoguing and bearing witness together, we discover what we have in common. “I believe that we, Christians and Muslims, must recognize with joy the religious values that we have in common, and give thanks to God for them,” said John Paul II in 1985. And having this in common, he argued, would contribute to peace.

(CNS photo/Arturo Mari, L'Osservatore Romano)

“No matter how difficult, no matter how long, the process of seeking peace must continue,” John Paul II said on a visit to Jordan in 2000. “Building a future of peace requires an ever more mature understanding and ever more practical cooperation among the peoples who acknowledge the one true, indivisible God, the Creator of all that exists. The three historical monotheistic religions count peace, goodness and respect for the human person among the highest values.”

Pope Francis reaffirmed this a mere nine days after his election in 2013, stating, “It is not possible to build bridges between people while forgetting God. But the converse is also true: it is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions.”

While these papal quotes are scattered across the Church’s recent history, it’s quickly apparent that the real focus is on the future and the people who will inhabit it.

“It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding, so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence. Violence destroys the image of the Creator in his creatures and should never be considered as the fruit of religious conviction,” John Paul II said, visiting the Umayyad Great Mosque in 2001.“I am convinced that the future of the world depends on the various cultures and on interreligious dialogue,” he said in Cairo the year before.

In 2005, in an address to Muslim communities in Cologne, Benedict XVI put everything in perspective, declaring, “Inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends.”

Let’s meditate on these most important values — and seek to live them.

Father Crossin is executive director of the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Dialogue and Building Trust After Tragedy

By Anthony Cirelli, Ph.D.

Courage and trust are the essential qualities of dialogue, said Pope John Paul II. He knew that true dialogue is fragile, a balancing act among people. The presence or absence of truth hangs in the balance. Tragedies like the recent events in Boston can make it difficult to be courageous and trusting of others.

“Why,” one might ask, “should I bother trusting them? How can I tell if my neighbor is who they say they are?”  Can we ever tell for certain that a Muslim neighbor, fellow Christian in the pew, or that Hindu down the street, or the Jehovah’s Witness at the door is not out to manipulate or, in the extreme case of Boston, eliminate me? It seems that paranoia, a real limitation on our freedom, not to mention a form of madness, can only ensue when we withhold trust and replace it with a vigilant suspicion.

As difficult as it might seem at the moment, there is another way. Catholics in dialogue, for example, recognize that we must listen to other people and their stories with an openness devoid of hostility, defensiveness and—at least at first—challenge. In this we go against the tide of suspicion that leads to broken communion between persons and, ultimately, broken communities. Catholics in dialogue are called to choose, like our Lord, to put ourselves out there and give the other person respect, trust, attention and understanding.

Effective dialogue unfolds as an exercise in what Catholic thinkers call the shepherding of being; drawing out the true, good and beautiful that we hold dear and precious, and which alone can bring about the transformation of the world.  Our example is Jesus, who welcomed others, including those on the margins. Just as Christians are called to accept the invitation of the Lord to trust him and share our life with him, so too are we called to imitate his act of welcome by extending it to others.

This give-and-take of dialogue can dramatically impact the lives of individuals and nations.  Welcoming others, encouraging them to love and share his/her life with the world, and so bringing people into the light and out of the shadow world of loneliness and fear, is the basis for transforming the world through positive action that will lead to the formation of healthy minds and the building of culture. Our commitment to dialogue remains the best and only chance to foster understanding and peaceful coexistence, and so alone can serve our nation and the world in the prevention of another tragedy.

Anthony Cirelli is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More information on interreligious dialogue is available on the USCCB website.

(CNS Photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)

People of Faith, Voices of Reason

As the Vatican gears up for the October 27 interreligious gathering in Assisi, one of the details that's emerged to set this event apart is that, for the first time, nonbelievers will be included.

The mere presence of atheists at this gathering is reflective of Courtyard of the Gentiles, an ongoing series of dialogues between believers and nonbelievers sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture.

If the Vatican can be that cutting edge in terms of engagement with atheists, this blog can be too.

Last Tuesday, the Washington Post's On Faith blog featured a piece by the head of an atheist organization that, according to its website, seeks to create a "secular society based on science, reason," etc. While I naturally took issue with the author's anti-religious sentiments, I found myself nodding along to a couple of his points, specifically:

1. Presidential candidates should not be forced to field questions about their religion.

2. The nonreligious should not be considered un-American.

3. Our policy discussions should be framed in secular terms (as opposed to theological ones).

As an American, I value concepts like religious freedom and the notion of our government not sponsoring any particular religion. As a Catholic, my thoughts immediately go to examples like John F. Kennedy's 1960 bid for the White House and the broader experience of discrimination faced by Catholics over the years.

But on the third point, the author got a little more elaborate about what he meant, stating:

Moreover, our policy discussions should be framed in secular terms, and decisions about public policy should be based on secular considerations. Whether it’s abortion, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, or stem cell research, we should keep matters of faith out of the discussion.

The biggest problem with this assertion is that it presumes that people of faith are only capable of expressing positions on issues of public concern that are explicitly grounded in their religion. i.e. "I believe [insert issue position here] because the Bible says so..." or "...the pope says so..." or "...it's God's will."

And that simply isn't the case. The Catholic Church in particular believes that faith and reason are highly compatible and that someone imbued with the values of his or her faith is perfectly capable of making arguments -- privately and publicly -- based on reason, or secular terms.

A great example is the recent statement by the U.S. bishops on physician-assisted suicide, "To Live Each Day With Dignity." While this document includes a smattering of quotes from Church teaching to spell out its underlying values, the actual arguments it makes are firmly rooted in the practical realities of the issue: Legalized physician-assisted suicide creates the expectation that some lives are less valued and should be ended; countries who've legalized the practice have had thousands of people killed against their will; the practice creates an erosion in quality of end-of-life care because assisted suicide ultimately becomes the most cost-efficient option.

There is nothing to distinguish these arguments as religious. They reflect a certain perspective, one informed by a certain set of values, but they could easily come from the mouth of a secular humanist or a member of any faith.

If people of faith are capable of making arguments grounded in reason, one would hope that we continue to have a place at the table in public debate and participation in public life. For the Catholic Church, this became less of a certainty with the recent action by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to mandate coverage of contraceptives in all private health plans and then failed to provide an adequate exemption for religious employers. Similarly, HHS recently moved to disqualify USCCB'S Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) from a contract to help victims of human trafficking, likely because MRS does not refer clients for contraceptives, abortions and sterilizations. These and other alarming developments have prompted the U.S. bishops to make religious liberty the focus of a new ad hoc committee, in part to give a greater voice to the long-standing, widely-held, reasoned arguments for robust protection of religious liberty in law.

It's one thing to say that the language and arguments in our public discourse shouldn't be explicitly religious. It's another thing to say that people whose values are informed by their faith have no role in that discourse. That would echo the concerns put forward by the author of the On Faith piece, that anyone, because of belief or unbelief, be regarded as less than fully American.