The cautious Vatican reaction to the dialogue appeal from 138 Muslim scholars has prompted one of the signatories to question whether the top Catholic official for relations with Muslims understands Islam. More specifically, Aref Ali Nayed has asked how Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran can say that a serious theological dialogue with Muslims is not possible because they will not discuss the Koran in depth. This debate (discussed in an earlier post here) is dense and highly specialised. But it may be at this level that this unprecedented dialogue could take off or fail to ignite.

Nayed, a former professor at the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome and main spokesman for the 138 scholars, flatly refutes Tauran’s view. He says Muslims have always interpreted the Koran and studied it both historically and linguistically. Their methods were even the forerunners of the “historical-critical” method that Christians use with the Bible, he says. Protestants began applying this “higher criticism” to the Bible in the 18th century and Catholics accepted it only in 1943, making them latecomers to this exercise in Nayed’s view. I am no specialist on these details and will need to hear reactions from Christian theologians.

Readers interested in Nayed’s argument can read it on the website of Islamica magazine or read Cindy Wooden’s story for the Catholic News Service on it. I’ll just quote the crisp conclusion:

“Unfortunately, Cardinal Tauran’s statement turns out to be based on ill-founded ‘Islam versus Christianity’ ‘contrast tables’ developed and advocated by some ‘Islam experts’. Rather than unilaterally declaring the impossibility of theological dialogue with Muslims, Cardinal Tauran would have been wiser to ask Muslim scholars themselves as to what kind of dialogue they feel is possible, from their point of view. To unilaterally pre-determine what is possible and not possible for the other, on behalf of the other, is one sure way of achieving closure in matters dialogical.”

Until we get the Vatican’s official reaction to the Muslim scholars’ letter, we won’t know exactly how it plans to answer this criticism. But comments made by Pope Benedict before and after his election in 2005 strongly hint he has a well-developed view of the difficulty of holding a theological dialogue with Muslims. Fr. Samir Khalil Samir S.J., an Egyptian-born Catholic expert on both faiths who welcomed the dialogue appeal despite some reservations, published this long and detailed analysis of the Pope’s views on Islam in Asianews.it in April 2006.

Joseph Ratzinger is an old-school German professor and they don’t give in lightly. He was so opposed to blurring the differences between faiths that he criticised Pope John Paul’s spectacular Assisi inter-faith summit in 1986. But Pope Benedict found a way to pray with Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti of Istanbul, in the Blue Mosque last year. Are we hearing echoes of Goethe’s Faust (Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust — Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast) or should we look to another poet to explain this?

While we’re on the subject, Benedict and Saudi King Abdullah will meet at the Vatican next Tuesday for the first talks between the head of the Catholic Church and the monarch who is custodian of Islam’s holiest site of Mecca and ruler of a kingdom that follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam. Benedict has frequently noted the lack of religious reciprocity in some Muslim countries that bar the construction of Christian churches even though Western countries allow mosques to be built on their territory. In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not allowed to visit Mecca. Other religions cannot build houses of worship. Christians can’t even own a Bible. Abdullah’s visit will give Benedict the opportunity to repeat his complaint about the lack of religious freedom to the man whose country is regularly listed — as here by the U.S. State Department– as among the world’s worst offenders.

Tauran, by the way, is not the only one cautious about the Muslim scholars’ dialogue appeal. The British weekly The Spectator gave it a less-than-enthusiastic review.

Recent high-level contacts between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches are starting to show some results. It’s still in the atmospheric stage, but the comments from Moscow are now much more positive than they used to be. The latest came on Tuesday from Metropolitan Kirill, the external relations chief of the Moscow Patriarchate, in a very Russian turn of phrase — “We now have a positive tendency — we have moved on from a severe frost to a thaw.”

Pope Benedict has been wooing the Orthodox churches from the start of his papacy and would like to become the first Roman pontiff ever to meet a Russian patriarch. The current patriarch, Alexiy II, tested the Catholic waters with a visit earlier this month to Paris, where he met Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard and other French prelates. He spoke about “emerging cooperation” between the two churches, without going into too many details. Speaking to journalists the next day, Kirill added a clearer assessment. “We have achieved some very positive results recently,” he said.

So does the frost-to-thaw image add anything? For journalists weighing every word these men say, it pushes the story just a little bit further. It was another departure from the wooden responses we used to hear in the past. That usually signals some real movement behind the scenes. When will we see the next step?

It’s one of those stories you can’t make up. Phil Stewart in our Rome bureau reports that one of Italy’s most infamous mobsters has become a father this week without ever consummating his marriage to his daughter’s mother. What’s more, his wife’s name is Immacolata (Immaculate)… But this is not some kind of bad Catholic joke.

Raffaele Cutolo, a former boss of the Naples-based Camorra crime network, got multiple life sentences on “hard time” — without conjugal visiting rights — on murder charges over two decades ago. He married Immacolata in prison in 1983 but was never allowed to be alone with her. In fact Cutolo, now 65, told the Rome daily La Repubblica last year that he had only kissed his wife once in 23 years. But he said: “I want so much to give her a child.”

According to Il Messaggero newspaper, the couple immediately asked for permission to try artificial insemination, but it wasn’t until 2001 that this was granted. They apparently needed several tries before their daughter was conceived.

Immacolata Cutolo said she wanted little Denise to grow up never hearing the word Camorra. “It is synonymous with pain for everybody,” she said.

It is now clear that Turkey, a country to which Western visitors have often applied adjectives such as “timeless” and “slothful”, is changing profoundly, and with un-Oriental speed.

Anyone who’s been following the news out of Turkey this year has to nod in agreement when reading the lead to Christopher de Bellaigue’s interesting article in the New York Review of Books. It was only last April that the army issued a veiled threat to intervene if the governing AK party — usually called a “party with Islamist roots” — tried to overturn Turkey’s secular system.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called their bluff and won a snap general election, allowing his AK partner Abdullah Gül to be elected president. The AK-led government now plans to replace the military-era constitution with a new document that will confirm “our democratic, secular and social state and guarantee basic rights and freedoms”, as Gül told parliament early this month.

Gül and Erdogan started their careers as Islamists critical of secularism, but along the way came to see secularism as the best guarantee of more rights for Muslims. The secular system, they found, pledges to respect individual rights — the problem was that the rigid army-guided secularism of Kemalist Turkey did not allow them. One shorthand way of describing these ex-Islamists is “Muslim Democrats” analogous to the Christian Democrats of post-war Western Europe. Their stress is much more on promoting Muslim values than imposing Muslim laws. This is an important turn in political thinking in the Muslim world. If Turkey continues along the road it’s on, it could become easier to answer the question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy.

De Bellaigue’s “Turkey at the Turning Point?” gives a useful overview of the evolution of the AK party which he says “gives grounds for hope. It is possible that an Islamist movement with a history of intolerance and bigotry will succeed in transforming Turkish politics along genuinely democratic lines”.

One of the factors behind this evolution in Islamist thinking in Turkey is Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher who founded a large and influential movement named after him. He advocates what might be called a “middle class Islam” that advocates a secular state, personal freedom, religious tolerance and an entrepreneurial spirit. The movement has built up a large media and business empire in Turkey and a network of more than 100 schools in Turkey and Central Asia. It is active in international dialogue with other religions.

A three-day conference on Gülen and his movement was held in London last weekend. Its website has posted a massive 755-page PDF with all the papers presented there. Two that are particularly helpful for understanding this movement and the changing relationship between Islam and politics in Turkey are “What Made The Gülen Movement Possible?” by Mustafa Akyol and “Changing Perspectives on Islamism and Secularism in Turkey: The Gülen Movement and the AK Party” by Ahmet T. Kuru.

Akyol makes the interesting point that these Turkish Muslims came to see the West as better than the limited “Westernising” that Turkey’s secularist establishment offered them. He quotes Gülen, who lives in the United States, as saying:

“Islam flourishes in American and Europe much better than in many Muslim countries. This means freedom and the rule of law are necessary for personal Islam. Moreover, Islam does not need the state to survive, but rather needs educated and financially rich communities to flourish. In a way, not the state but rather community is needed under a full democratic system.”

Is there a straw that will break the Anglican Communion’s back? One move that, like the gay bishop consecration that started the current crisis, can trigger a landslide that finally pushes the Communion into schism? Religion reporters are now watching each and every conference and bishop’s election to see if it will hit the tripwire.

The next flashpoint in the Anglican Communion’s struggle with gay issues looked like it could come from Chicago, where the Episcopal (U.S. Anglican) diocese on November 10 will pick a new bishop from among eight candidates, one of them an openly gay woman. The Episcopal Church promised last month to “exercise restraint” in naming further homosexual prelates. In an interview this month, its Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori (in picture at right) stressed there would be “no outcasts in this Church.”

Judging from how things look now, the lesbian Rev. Tracey Lind, who is now the dean of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, may not be among the favorites vying for the post, Chicago Tribune religion reporter Manya Brachear reported on Monday.

Based on inteviews with church members who attended sessions where the candidates visited various congregations during the weekend, she wrote that the two favorites appear to be Rev. Jeffrey Lee, rector of St. Thomas Church in Medina, Washington, and Rev. Petero Sabune, chaplain of Sing Sing prison in New York state. They seemed to have connected more with the congregations than the six others, including Lind.

If chosen, Lind would be only the second openly gay bishop in Anglican history, the other being Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. If anything, the faithful in Chicago spoke more of Lind’s managerial and fundraising capabilities than they did about her sexual orientation, the report said. Those who favored Lee and Sabune emphasized their confidence and their feeling of personal connection.

Remember the “God gap”? During and after the 2004 U.S. elections, Washington was awash with talk that the Democrats were increasingly out of touch with the religious views of the voters, especially the evangelicals linked to the Republican Party. Karl Rove based President George Bush’s successful re-election campaign on that analysis. But since the mid-term vote in 2006, the “God gap” strategy has looked increasingly shaky. Several articles in recent days discuss how some of the evangelical communities in that supposedly solid voter bloc have turned away from the Republicans’ “wedge strategy”.

At the same time, articles are appearing about how U.S. Catholic bishops are putting the final touches on a pre-election statement that will urge Catholics to be “guided more by our moral convictions than by our attachment to a political party or interest group”.

Our colleagues over at the Reuters U.S. political blog Tales from the Trail 2008 have already flagged the slump in evangelical support as seen in the polls and Dallas correspondent Ed Stoddard has highlighted the dilemma about how to appeal to “religious right” voters. Seeing several other articles on this shift prompted me to flag it to readers of this blog, especially those outside the United States who don’t follow American politics that closely.

On the evangelical side, the New York Times Magazine today has a long feature “The Evangelical Crackup” about how “the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders”. David Kirkpatrick quotes Bill Hybels, whom he calls “very possibly the single most influential pastor in America”, as saying the people in the pews were growing weary of religious right leaders who keep hammering away at the hot-button issues: “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more that your two or three issues. We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world’.”

“Political Tide Turning,” a shorter story in today’s Washington Post, has the same message. Another solid analysis on the evolution of evangelical voters was at a discussion of two books about them at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, called “Evangelicals and the Public Square.”

There was also a specifically Catholic dispute in 2004, over whether they could support a Catholic politician who did not follow Vatican teaching on abortion and whether priests could/should/would give them communion. The bishops were divided, with some saying “no” to both questions but most wanting to avoid “a confrontation at the altar rail”, as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick put it. The bishops asked Pope Benedict, at the time still the top Vatican doctrinal watchdog Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, for an opinion. He said priests should refuse communion to Catholic politicians who actively support abortion, but Catholics could vote for them if they did so because of other policies the candidates advocated.

The bishops are due to meet on Nov. 12-15 and vote on draft guidelines for Catholic voters called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) statement stressed, as did their statement in 2004, that they would not tell the faithful how to vote. The statement this time around says clearly that Catholics should be “guided more by our moral convictions than by our attachment to a political party or interest group”, it said. The New York Times and America magazine ran stories on the upcoming statement at the weekend.

The America story has some interesting excerpts from the text. It says the draft document repeats the Ratzinger argument that Catholics can vote in good conscience for a Catholic politician who supports abortion if they do so “despite the candidate’s … position but because of other proportionate reasons”. It does not mention the issue of giving communion to a pro-abortion Catholic candidate. America hasn’t run the full text, so we can’t say with certainty that the bishops have skirted the other part of Ratzinger’s letter “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion, General Principles.” But, having seen the communion issue become a political football in 2004, it does look like they do not want it to be part of next year’s campaign

“Although some bishops have denied communion to pro-choice politicians and have told Catholics not to vote for them, this document does not endorse either position,” Fr. Thomas Reese S.J., former editor-in-chief of America, wrote in an analysis. “The bishops are clearly upset with pro-choice Democrats who defend themselves by saying that they are with the bishops on issues of justice and peace. But the bishops are equally upset with Republicans who oppose programs to help the poor and say that abortion is the only issue that matters. The bishops are unhappy with either response.”

But they are not unanimous about this. St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who said in 2004 he would refuse communion to Kerry, has said he would do the same if Rudy Giuliani turned up in his communion line.

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The Russian Orthodox Church has published an embargoed statement from a Catholic- Orthodox dialogue session that it walked out of in protest this month. The Web site of the Church’s representation to European institutions in Brussels posted the text along with a commentary saying it would give its opinion of the statement later. The statement was not due to be released until November 15. According to the French Catholic news service I.Media, its early publication evoked surprise and disappointment at the Vatican department for ecumenical relations, as well as concern this could compromise the continuing talks.

The statement is interesting because Orthodox churches supporting it recognised the primacy of the bishop of Rome, i.e. the Roman Catholic pope. We already mentioned this breakthrough in this delicate ecumenical dialogue in a post on October 17, quoting two participants. The text says the bishop of Rome is the protos, or first among the patriarchs of Christian churches. “They disagree, however, on the interpretation of the historical evidence from this era regarding the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome as protos, a matter that was already understood in different ways in the first millennium,” it said. “It remains for the question of the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth.”

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna, the Russian Orthodox representative to the European Union, said in an interview on the website that the absence of his Church made the work of this International Mixed Commission problematic. “The Moscow Patriarchate represents more than a half of world Orthodox Christianity,” he said. “Without it, the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue will in fact be a dialogue of the Catholic Church with less than a half of the Orthodox Church.”

Hilarian said he hoped a solution could be found by the time the commission meets in about two years.

P.S. Here’s the Catholic News Service story on the statement.

While Muslim scholars wait for an official Vatican response, more Catholic Islam experts have spoken out in favour of the scholars’ appeal for high-level talks between Muslim and Christian leaders. Five professors from the Vatican’s own Islam institute have described the appeal by 138 Muslim scholars as “a highly significant event” that showed “a new and creative attitude” towards the Koran. The five, all priests, include the rector and the dean of studies at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome.

The interesting aspect here is that the experts seem to take a more positive view of the initiative than the Vatican apparently does. So do the other Christian leaders who have responded. The Catholic experts’ responses have not been without critical reflections — see the analyses from Jesuit scholars Samir Khalil Samir and Christian Troll. But most approach it as a novel opportunity to launch a serious dialogue, while comments by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran — the Church’s top official for relations with Islam — seemed to focus more on obstacles to further understanding. He said, for example, that a real theological discussion was not possible with Muslims because they did not question and analyse the Koran as Christian theologians dissect the Bible.

The PISAI professors’ letter said they wanted “to enter with an open mind into the dynamic of this event” and were “convinced of the good faith of those who produced it.” They said the 138 Muslim scholars had taken “a new and creative attitude relative to the Koranic text”. They noted several points on which the scholars took a broader and more inclusive approach than Muslims have usually done. “We note the emergence of a new attitude,” they wrote.

The professors are PISAI Rector Fr. Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, Dean of Studies Fr. Etienne Renaud. Fr. Michel Lagarde, Fr. Valentino Cottini and Fr. Felix Phiri.

The leading role monks played in the September protests against Myanmar’s military rulers has put the spotlight on the politically active side of Buddhism.

Next door in Thailand, this activism takes a quite different form. Buddhist groups there tried in vain earlier this year to have Buddhism declared the country’s official religion in its new post-coup constitution.

In April, they converged on parliament in Bangkok — some riding into the city on elephants — to highlight their demand.

Even though 95 percent of Thais are Buddhists, the drafting assembly rejected the idea.

In an unusual step, Queen Sirikit said in a speech marking her 75th birthday in August that religion should be separate from politics. Given the deep respect Thais have for their monarchy, that put an end to the campaign.

The drive to give Buddhism official status has come back in another guise. As the Bangkok Post reports, 179 members of the 250-seat National Legislative Assembly have backed a bill to make offences to Buddhism a crime punishable by stiff penalties. The report said:

The bill sets a jail term of 10-25 years and/or a fine of 500,000-1,000,000 baht for insulting, offending, imitating and distorting Buddhism and the Lord Buddha and a jail term of 5-10 years and/or a fine of 100,000-500,000 baht for damaging Buddhist objects, personnel and places.

People who have any form of sexual affair with monks, novices and nuns are liable to five to 10 years in jail and/or a fine of 100,000-500,000 baht.

However, the bill does not include any punishments for monks, novices and nuns who engage in sexual relations … Punishment for physically assaulting monks, novices and nuns would be three times those stipulated by law.

(100,000 baht = $3,180 )

The issue of blasphemy played a central role in the violent protests in Muslim countries last year against the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad.

Pakistan is regularly criticised by the United Nations and groups supporting religious freedom for its blasphemy law that critics say is used to oppress non-conformist Muslims (such as Ahmedis) and religious minorities such as Christians.

Does bringing in a blasphemy law to protect Buddhism sound like a good idea to you?

Over at another Reuters blog, Ask… , my London-based colleague Michael Holden has put the spotlight on a growing debate in Britain about the 40-year-old abortion law there. The law has come under increasing fire in recent years from anti-abortion activists, who say medical advances mean a foetus born before the 24-week limit can survive and the limit should therefore be reduced. At the same time, pro-abortion activists want to change the law to make it easier to obtain an abortion by dropping the requirement that two doctors agree to the procedure.

Michael’s post asks:

Abortion - time for a change?

October 24th, 2007, filed by Michael Holden

The highly charged issue of abortion is once again becoming a hot political issue.

Ever since terminations were legalised in1967, there has been heated debate between those who argue that abortions are morally wrong and those who say it is a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby.

Then there are the medical issues. Doctors support maintaining the 24-week upper limit for abortions, arguing that is the point at which a foetus is considered viable. However others say scientific advances mean this is no longer the case and this limit should be reduced.

Last year the number of abortions rose by 4 percent and Lord Steel, who brought forward the original Abortion Act as a young MP, has voiced his concern that there are too many terminations nowadays and some women are acting irresponsibly.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has also said he worries that people need to think harder about the consequences of their actions.

So should there be a change in the law? Or should people instead be given better advice and sex education to help them avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

– P.S. for FaithWorld — Two Catholic cardinals, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of London and Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh, have also joined the debate. They issued a joint letter calling for a change in attitudes to help reduce the number of abortions. Here are the text (PDF) and a BBC story on it.