Pope Benedict was “particularly satisfied” with the topic of a meeting this week held between Vatican and Iranian specialists on inter-faith dialogue, according to a statement just put out by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. That shouldn’t be any surprise. The statement copied below shows his trademark topic — the compatibility of faith and reason — was prominent at the three-day session. He has been stressing this for years, with some success (as during his recent U.S. visit) and some misunderstanding (as in his Regensburg speech). With another Catholic-Muslim meeting due later this year, with delegates of the Common Word group, we can expect this issue to stay front and centre in inter-faith dialogue.

That the Iranian delegation agreed with the statements on faith and reason shows they did not see the contradiction between them in Islam that some observers read into Benedict’s comments in Regensburg. They also agreed that “faith and reason are intrinsically non-violent,” a message Benedict said he meant to get across there. Another point agreed on here — that both Catholics and Muslims should promote respect for religious beliefs and symbols — seems to have the controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad as its background. One can’t read too much into one meeting but it seems that dialogue is moving ahead despite some occasional setbacks.

I can’t help but notice the different emphasis here from what the popular Egyptian preacher Amr Khaled said this week about the protests against the Danish cartoons.

Here is the final communique (my emphasis of main points):

• 1. Faith and reason are both gifts of God to mankind.
• 2. Faith and reason do not contradict each other, but faith might in some cases be above reason, but never against it.
• 3. Faith and reason are intrinsically non-violent. Neither reason nor faith should be used for violence; unfortunately, both of them have been sometimes misused to perpetrate violence. In any case, these events cannot question either reason or faith.
• 4. Both sides agreed to further co-operate in order to promote genuine religiosity, in particular spirituality, to encourage respect for symbols considered to be sacred and to promote moral values.
• 5. Christians and Muslims should go beyond tolerance, accepting differences, while remaining aware of commonalities and thanking God for them. They are called to mutual respect, thereby condemning derision of religious beliefs.
• 6. Generalization should be avoided when speaking of religions. Differences of confessions within Christianity and Islam, diversity of historical contexts are important factors to be considered.
• 7. Religious traditions cannot be judged on the basis of a single verse or a passage present in their respective holy Books. A holistic vision as well as an adequate hermeneutical method is necessary for a fair understanding of them.
• The participants expressed their satisfaction with the level of the presentations and the debates as well as the open and friendly atmosphere during the colloquium.
• The participants were honoured and pleased to be received at the end of the colloquium by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who was particularly satisfied with the choice of the theme and the venue of the meeting.
• The next colloquium will be held in Tehran within two years, preceded by a preparatory meeting.

Update: links to reports with more background by Reuters, Catholic News Service, AFP (in French) and L’Osservatore Romano (in Italian, with picture).

U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair often saw eye to eye politically. Are they about to see eye to eye religiously?

Blair, a life-long Anglican, converted to Catholicism in December after he left office in June. The Italian weekly magazine Panorama is reporting in its latest edition that Bush, a Methodist, may follow his political soul-mate and also convert to Catholicism after he leaves office next year.

To be honest, the odds of this happening appear as good as those of the proverbial snowball in hell. In fact, the Panorama article starts with two sentences saying this “might” happen and the rest of the article is background.

Panorama tries to build up its case by reminding the reader that Bush prayed together with Pope Benedict when the pontiff visited the White House on April 16, that Bush’s brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida, converted to Catholicism, the religion of his wife, and that a number of Bush’s advisers are Catholic.

The only other Italian publication playing with this idea was Corriere della Sera, which ran a story on April 17 entitled “Bush, a crypto-Catholic president.” Its correspondent Massimo Gaggi pins his speculation on the Washington Post, which ran a story on April 13 by Daniel Burke of Religion News Service. Citing the high number of Catholics in his administration, Burke wrote that “George W. Bush could well be the nation’s first Catholic president.” At the very end of his piece, he has two quotes to the effect that Bush is a “closet Catholic” and the parallel to Blair, but no outright speculation about conversion. Maybe that’s how all this started and found its way into Panorama.

What I find most interesting is the attention that the Panorama story is getting on some religious blogs. Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (left) ran his own translation of it on his blog What Does the Prayer Really Say? Father Z, as he is known, says the article is “a strange item” and is “typical of much of the Italian press”. He concludes his entry by saying “A lot of this article is pure fantasy.”

While Father Z and I have had our differences in the past, I tend to agree with him on this one. What is fascinating is the number of comments and the level of passion Father Z’s posting has attracted on his blog, with some readers dismissing the conversion possibility outright but others convinced that Bush will eventually convert because he was “blinded on the road to Washington” (as in the headline on the Panorama article pictured at right) .

Remember ping-pong diplomacy, the exchange of ping-pong players between the United States and communist China in the 1970s that was one of the first steps that led to a thaw in relations between the two countries? If the Vatican had a ping-pong team, perhaps China would have considered sending their squad to the walled city in Rome for a match.

But the Vatican does not have a ping-pong team, as far as we know. So, the next best thing appears to be music. This week, Vatican Radio made a surprise announcement on its daily 2 p.m. bulletin. The China Philharmonic Orchestra of Beijing and the Shanghai Opera House Chorus will perform Mozart’s Requiem for Pope Benedict on May 7 in the Vatican’s audience hall, adding a stop to its already scheduled European tour.

As one diplomat said, “this could not have happened without the Beijing government approving it.” Given the fact that relations between the Vatican and Beijing have been scratchy to say the least, one can only wonder if this is the start of a mating game. It could lead to diplomatic relations and China’s recognition of the pope as leader of all Catholics in the world, including Chinese Catholics, many of whom have been forced to join the state-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

Something seemed afoot in the last few months. In November, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states, was reported to have made a secret visit to China. The Vatican never denied the reports. In March, a Chinese delegation secretly had talks in the Vatican, sources confirmed.

One precedent for baton diplomacy that comes to mind is a similar event that happened in the Vatican on February 20, 1988 when the now mostly-forgotten Cold War still existed.

The then-Soviet Union’s Red Army Choir performed for Pope John Paul, singing, of all things, Ave Maria. It, too, was a shocker when it was announced. But on Dec 1, 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made his historic visit to the Vatican, turning relations between the Kremlin and the Vatican on their head after some 70 years of mutual distrust. Relations between Russia and the Vatican were established in 1990 and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, if music be the food of diplomacy, play on.

The Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were widely condemned in the Muslim world and led to violent protests, attacks on embassies and even deaths. Even in recent days, they have continued to stir more protest (in Pakistan) and create security problems (in Afghanistan). They have set off a kind of “clash of civilisations” with a Muslim side denouncing them as blasphemy and a western side defending them as freedom of speech. The whole dispute has been extremely polarising.

Now one of the most popular preachers in the Middle East, Egypt’s Amr Khaled, has said there were positive sides to the uproar. The caricatures “were useful for Muslims and the Islamic world” because they prompted Muslims to stand up for the Prophet and for Islam, the television preacher told the German news agency dpa on Monday. The dispute “charged the batteries of Muslim youths, strengthened their faith and got them to stand up actively for their religion.”

Can a controversy that polarises people and leads to death and destruction be “useful” for a religion?

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. - Barack Obama can talk about his childhood years in Kansas and upbringing by his white Midwestern grandparents, but if voters at one small-town Indiana cafe are any indication, he has a long way to go to convince them he represents heartland America.

"Obama has great ideas but his background scares me," said Chris Leighton, 60, a secretary having lunch at the Chaperral Cafe in Shelbyville, in southeast Indiana. "Everyone talks about him being a Muslim and having ties to terrorism, but how do people really find out?"

The incorrect belief that the Illinois senator is a Muslim was shared by half a dozen others in the restaurant -- a sign that dirty campaign tactics and Internet innuendo has taken root among some voters in Indiana, the next state to vote.

Construction worker Ron Debaun, 61, said he hadn't yet decided whether he would support Obama or Hillary Clinton in Indiana's May 6 primary, noting they both "have good ideas." But he's leaning toward Clinton.

What doesn't he like about Obama?

"His Muslim ties," said Debaun.

Why does he think Obama is a Muslim?

"Let's just say that he admits it himself," he said.

Retired locksmith Leslie Hedman, 61, said he doesn't like any of the three candidates -- Clinton, Obama, or Republican John McCain -- because none are committed Christians.

"Obama is a Muslim," he said. Where did he hear that?

"He said he was but then he said he's not," said Hedman.

Ironically enough, many of the lunchtime crowd said they were also turned off by Obama's ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- the former pastor of Obama's Christian church in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ.

"I definitely don't like Obama because of the mess with him and his pastor. I don't think he's been honest about it," said Candace Demmin, 37, as she had lunch with her mom.

"How can you go to a church for 20 years and not heard your minister say something off-color? Either he's heard it and is lying about it, or he's lying about going to church as much as he does," said Demmin. "In which case he's not the Christian he says he is."

Obama strongly denounced his former pastor on Tuesday and called his racially charged comments "appalling."

And if Obama's Muslim ties and Christian pastor aren't bad enough, his atheism is the last straw.

"A person who doesn't believe in anything? I don't want anything to do with him," said cafe owner and Clinton supporter Shirley Bailey, 70. "He says he won't take an oath on the Bible, he won't salute the American flag. That doesn't sit well with me."

Obama was sworn in at the U.S. Senate with his hand on a Bible. He stopped wearing an American flag lapel pin -- standard issue for U.S. politicians -- saying that a pin on the chest matters less than what's in the heart.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Andrea Hopkins (Shirley Bailey, owner of the Chaperral Cafe in Shelbyville, Indiana, said she can't support Barack Obama in Indiana's May 6 primary because of his religious views. Many of her customers agreed.)

A papal visit, with its weeks of build-up and intense media coverage, often seems to end with an afterglow — but very little news — once the pope and his party fly back to the Eternal City. Not so with Pope Benedict’s recent U.S. visit where, more than a week after it ended, the volatile issue of public figures, the abortion & Communion issue is making headlines.

While journalists reported that prominent Catholic politicians who support abortion rights stepped up to receive the Eucharist during Masses in Washington and New York (here’s our story and blog post), the development was little more than a footnote in the wave of coverage that washed over the visit. It was notable, however, in view of a controversy that began in 2004 when some U.S. bishops said they would deny Communion to John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee, because he supported abortion rights

But during the U.S. papal Masses, not only did Kerry receive Communion but so did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani and Senators Edward Kennedy and Christopher Dodd. The conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that this “reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington” and did not indicate any softening of the pope’s anti-abortion position.

“The effect was to dull messages of faith, obligation and compassion conveyed by Benedict,” Novak wrote. “In his Yankee Stadium homily, he talked of ‘authority’ and ‘obedience’ — acknowledging these are not easy words to speak nowadays. They surely are not for four former presidential candidates and two princes of the church, represending Catholics who defy heir faith’s doctrine on abortion.”

On the day Novak’s column appeared, one of those two princes — New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan — posted a statement on the archdiocese website saying Giuliani had violated an “understanding” he had with him not to receive Communion because of his views on abortion rights and that he — the cardinal — deeply regretted it had happened. What Egan did not mention is that Giuliani has also been married three times — his first marriage was annulled but the second ended in divorce, which should bar him from the sacrament according to church law. Some bloggers have criticised him for this and Beliefnet’s David Gibson wondered if he ignored the divorce issue because so many Catholics are getting divorced these days but remain faithful and want to take Communion.

In reply, Giuliani’s spokeswoman said he is willing to meet with Egan but that his faith “is a deeply personal matter and should remain confidential.”

None of the public figures involved received Communion directly from the pope, but from other clergy as the Masses. But before becoming Pope, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was reported as saying he backed denying communion to Kerry. His statement was more nuanced than that, but it has been presented in the U.S. (mostly by conservative bishops) as a refusal.

The issue of public figures and the sacrament has not surfaced in this year’s presidential nomination derby, probably because none of the remaining candidates is Catholic. But it simmers still in some places, notably St. Louis, where Archbishop Raymond Burke has raised it in various ways. When he headed a Wisconsin diocese before taking the St. Louis post, Burke said Communion should be denied some state lawmakers there who supported abortion rights. More recently he suggested Communion might be denied to basketball coach Rick Majerus at St. Louis University — a Catholic institution — who attended a rally for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and said he was “personally” pro-choice.

Should Giuliani not have come forward for Communion? Or are he and the cardinal making a political football out of this? And why do you think Egan avoided the divorce issue?

If a Catholic bishop wants to warn youngsters about moral dangers lurking on the Internet, where should he go to get his message across? YouTube, of course. That’s what Bishop Peter Ingham of Wollongong , in New South Wales in Australia, has done. The four-minute clip accompanies a pastoral letter just issued by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference on the same subject.

The white-haired prelate confesses up front that he’s a newbie in cyberspace. “I wouldn’t know my Facebook from my Second Life, or a blog from a chatroom,” he admits. To show how familiar young people are with the Internet, he tells the story of how a little girl learning the Lord’s Prayer misunderstood its appeal for deliverance from evil and ended it  by saying: “… lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some email , amen.”

Here’s the whole clip:

PS: Hat tip to The Religious Write.

Britain passed its law legalising abortion 40 years ago today. But the controversy has not died down. Parliament is again besieged by two camps of activists, one keen to stop what they say is murder and the other defending what they see as a women’s right. Judging it too difficult to have the law overturned, the anti-abortion camp aims to lower the 24-week limit for the termination of pregnancy to 20, 18 or even fewer weeks.

For more, read Kate Kelland’s feature here. We also have a factbox on abortion laws around the world and the story of a boy born at 22 weeks — probably the most premature baby to have survived in Britain — and now thriving.

The factbox shows a wide spectrum of legal positions, with differing rationales producing different conditions, especially on the time limits. Britain is clearly in a minority with its 24-week limit; many other countries set the bar at 12 weeks, with possible exceptions.

Do you think Britain should reduce its 24-week limit?

WASHINGTON - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's former pastor, pinned the blame on the media for the controversy over his fiery sermons, saying they misinterpreted his remarks and the ensuing criticism was an attack on the black church.
 
Obama has tried to distance himself from Wright, criticizing him for remarks that have included charges that the Sept. 11 attacks were an act of retaliation for U.S. policy and that the government may have created the AIDS virus to kill black people.
 
On Monday, Wright argued during a National Press Club speech that reporters did not listen to his entire sermons so they did not understand the context of his remarks and that people who question his patriotism are off the mark.
 
"I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me.  They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites and that which is looped over and over again on certain channels," he said. "I served six years in the military.  Does that make me patriotic?"

"How many years did Cheney serve?" he said, referring to Vice President Dick Cheney's deferrals from the military draft. For his full remarks, click here. 
 
Does Wright's remarks clear the air, does it help or hurt Obama, or has the issue run its course? 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Wright speaks to the National Press Club).

It sounds counter-intuitive. German Jews want Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf — the 1925 book that spells out his plan for a Nazi state and gives expression to his extreme anti-Semitism — to be published in Germany. The Central Council of Jews in Germany would be ready to help edit the new edition and pressure the Bavarian state government (which owns the rights and blocks publication) to issue it. As our Berlin correspondent Dave Graham reported, Stephan Kramer, the Central Council ’s general secretary, made the suggestion in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio (here are the DLF text report and audio in German).

Kramer said things had changed since Bavaria banned its publication in the initial post-war years as a way to thwart a revival of Nazi ideology. “Through the Internet and other media, the book is widely available abroad. Especially in far-right wing circles, there has been what you might call a romanticising of the book Mein Kampf, so I personally and we in the Central Council now feel a publicly available version of Mein Kampf with critical commentaries would now be much more helpful. It would make clear to readers who access it what crude stuff was written there,” he said.

Meanwhile in Austria, work has begun on a spoof biopic of Hitler called — what else? — “Mein Kampf.” It’s based on a play of the same name by the late Hungarian-Jewish playwright George Tabori and will premiere in Germany next year.

How to deal with the Hitler legacy is a political, moral and artistic minefield. The debate about publishing Mein Kampf  has gone on for years. German and Austrian directors have made films about him, but usually serious ones like Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 film “Der Untergang “(Downfall). A German parody, “Mein Fuehrer — The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler,” sparked controversy and scathing reviews in Germany last year.

Hitler was responsible for some of the worst evils in history, starting with the Holocaust. Do you think Mein Kampf should be published in Germany or that filmmakers should make parodies of his life?