Catholicism and Islam

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

James Hill for The New York Times

Muslims prayed at the Grand Mosque in Rome. One cardinal says Christians can learn from their example.

Issue for Cardinals: Islam as Rival or Partner in Talks
By IAN FISHER

ROME, April 11 – One is from Nigeria, a man who grew up among Muslims and says there is no clash of cultures. Another is from Germany, who believes that it may be useful to talk to Muslims but that it is better to revitalize Christianity. Others speak of the need for Muslims in Europe to integrate better or even to become more secular.

By coincidence or not, many cardinals mentioned as candidates to be the next pope have strongly expressed positions on Islam, and on whether the Roman Catholic Church’s relations with Muslims should be conciliatory or a notch more confrontational.

John Paul II had a consistent, even ground-breaking, strategy for addressing Islam: Talk at all costs, even if there were few concrete results. But in the Vatican, and especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his unbudging advocacy of dialogue had spawned criticism, mostly quiet, as being not muscular enough.

Now, although relations with Islam will not be the decisive issue for the 115 cardinals who will meet to select the next pope, the debate is seen as vital because it intersects centrally with other major issues facing the church: increasing secularism in Europe, contrasting with the religious revival in the Islamic world; relations with other religions; and the rising number of Muslim immigrants in Europe.

Though the discussion in the church is nuanced, less a matter of opposing camps than of shades and emphasis, much of it revolves around two questions: How great a danger does Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, present to Christianity, the largest? And how useful it is to continue, in the same way, John Paul’s policy of dialogue?

"It would be too much to say there is a split, because the lines are not clearly drawn," said the Rev. Daniel A. Madigan, a Jesuit priest who heads a program on interreligious dialogue at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome.

But it is clear that some in the church – among them cardinals who will vote for the new pope – see Islam as a threat and too much talk with Muslims as unproductive.

"For some people, it’s a time to close ranks, that dialogue is a sign of weakness," Father Madigan said. "So the attitude of some people would be to hold the line – ‘Let’s not give people the idea that we’re not sure who we are.’ And that flows into the theological notion of, ‘If we’ve got the truth, what do we have to learn from anybody else?’ "

Even given this view, most of the cardinals who are considered possible papal candidates lean closer to John Paul’s embrace of dialogue. But there are hints, too, that cardinals want to overcome a major internal criticism of the pope’s efforts with Muslims: that it has managed to reach out only to moderates, not hard-liners who pose greater risks.

"I would hope that in the future, the way of dialogue would in fact increase and make inroads in the other parts of Islam," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the archbishop of Westminster, told reporters here last Wednesday. "That needs to be done as a matter of urgency for the sake of peace in our world."

During his reign, John Paul reached out to Muslims like no other pope. He was the first on record to step inside a mosque, in Damascus in 2001, and he apologized for past misdeeds of the church that many have read to include the Crusades. But his reaching out – not only to Islam but also to other religions – worried some church officials as veering toward "relativism," that no religion is intrinsically truer than another. And on Islam specifically, some critics in or close to the church often suggested that Islam was essentially a warlike and evangelizing religion, which no amount of dialogue would change.

To some degree, the central figure in the debate is one of the most influential cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger.

Cardinal Ratzinger, 77, the German who headed the department dealing with church doctrine under John Paul II, is one of the most conservative voices in the church – a possible pope, but certainly someone whose views will be heard in the conclave that selects the new pope starting next Monday. He represents a skeptical faction, one that sees the relationship between Christianity and Islam more in competition.

Last year, he said he personally opposed Turkey’s inclusion into the European Union. "Turkey has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe," he said in an interview with the Paris newspaper Le Figaro.

He was the force behind the document "Dominus Jesus" in 2000, which did not mention Islam by name, but in calling for a new Catholic evangelization, posited that Christianity is the truth and that other beliefs are lesser searches for truth.

Cardinal Ratzinger has also worried about the moral and religious clarity that Islam has stirred among believers – a clarity he says has been lost in the Christian West.

"The rebirth of Islam is due in part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the hands of old Europe," he wrote in an essay called "Europe" in a book, "Without Roots" (Mondadori: 2004). By contrast, he wrote, Europe "appears to be at the start of its decline and fall."

And so he calls for Europe to renew its Christian roots "if it truly wants to survive." He has spoken of the use of talking with Muslims but said Christians should not rule out trying to convert them, a sensitive issue in Middle Eastern countries where Christians are a minority.

Many possible papal candidates agree in part with Cardinal Ratzinger’s views, especially on the need for spiritual renewal in Europe. But most take a less confrontational stance, putting a greater emphasis on the possibilities of dialogue with Muslims to overcome problems.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, who is considered a top Italian candidate to become pope, went so far as to publicly disagree with Cardinal Ratzinger on one issue. In a recent interview with Le Figaro, he said Turkey should not be ruled out as a member of the European Union.

"Just saying no doesn’t protect us from anything," Cardinal Scola, 63, said. "A defensive attitude, often produced by fear, never pays."

He recently started a magazine, Oasis, devoted to the goal of improving contacts and dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, 71, who is archbishop of Milan and is often considered the leading Italian papal candidate, has for years encouraged better relations between Catholics and Italy’s growing number of Muslim immigrants. Following the footsteps of his predecessor in Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, he has urged Catholics to "go to the houses of Muslims" during the holy Muslim period of Ramadan.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, from Nigeria, was for 18 years the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which directed the pope’s broad efforts to reach out to other religions. As such, his views hew closely to John Paul’s, though of the possible candidates for pope, he has by far the most direct experience living with Muslims. Nigeria is roughly half Christian, half Muslim.

Like John Paul, he has often spoken of one specific rationale for reaching out to other faiths, Islam included: that believers, of whatever faith, have a duty to fight against a secularism that he says has sapped Christians of their spiritual strength.

"God can speak to us through other believers," he told an interviewer several years ago. "From sincere Muslims, Christians can learn, for example, the courage of sincere prayer. They pray five times a day, and no matter where they are – be it the railway station or the airport – they will do it.

"Whereas many Christians are ashamed of making the sign of the cross in a restaurant or pulling out a rosary on a train," he said.

Several other cardinals who could be pope have also spoken publicly on the issue of Islam.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels, 71, of Belgium, who is considered a liberal, has spoken of the need for the Muslim world to undergo the same political and religious changes that reshaped Europe, in particular the separation of church and state, and therefore become more secular.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, 60, of Austria, has made the church’s relations with Eastern Orthodoxy a major focus, and has also worked on Catholic-Muslim ties. A conservative and protégé of Cardinal Ratzinger, he has said that dialogue with Muslims is important and necessary but that Christians must speak with Muslims directly about their faith.

"For a true dialogue, one must share their innermost convictions," he said.

Some critics of dialogue contend that the fear of offending is so great that neither side talks about what it believes in most: that is, the truth of its religion, Christ as the son of God or Muhammad as the prophet of God.

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