The Magdi Allam baptism and debate about Catholic-Muslim relations in its aftermath continue to make waves. Here are a few interesting points that have come up in recent days:

• At www.chiesa, a well-informed multi-lingual blog on the Roman Catholic Church, vaticanista Sandro Magister says the Vatican is more interested in an inter-faith dialogue proposed by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah than the one it has just begun with the Common Word group of 138 (plus) Muslim scholars. Magister notes that L’Osservatore Romano published stories on “two instances of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam, demonstrating how this dialogue is showing promising developments precisely during the days of the controversy over the baptism of Allam, administered by the pope.” He adds: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear. In the judgment of the Church of Rome, the dialogue with Islam is not limited to the follow-up to the letter of the 138 – one of whose leading exponents, Aref Ali Nayed, has directed extremely harsh criticism against the pope for having baptized Allam – but is developed in multiple areas, some of which it believes are more promising than others.”

• Our Riyadh bureau chief Andrew Hammond, looking at Abdullah’s call, wrote in an analysis,“the king is seen in Saudi Arabia as a well-intended reformer whose plans for change have largely been foiled by hardline clerics and their allies within the Saudi royal family.” One glaring example of this disconnect came recently in the Shura Council, a quasi-parliamentary body that has refused to support efforts by many Islamic countries to have the United Nations draw up a global pact on respecting religions and their symbols. This pact is one of the top diplomatic goals for many Muslim countries these days, including Saudi Arabia. One of the main supporters of this pact is the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which is based in and heavily financed by … Saudi Arabia!

• That same www.chiesa post cited above included a long analysis by Pietro De Marco, a professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Florence and at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy. In it, he rejects in detail the criticism expressed by the leading Common Word signatory Aref Ali Nayed and offers an interpretation of the baptism as Pope Benedict offering to help Islam to “seize the opportunity to exit critically from itself, to open itself to the dimension of the universal and to come back to itself as a reflectively renewed Islam.” This sounds like the invitation to dialogue that Pope Benedict offered in the Regensburg speech better known for his controversial use of a Byzantine emperor’s quote criticising Islam.

• Magister’s point about Catholic-Muslim dialogue proceeding on several fronts is interesting, even if we’re not so sure Abdullah’s proposals will get anywhere. The fact the Vatican is still pursuing the Common Word option was made clear in the reply that Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi gave to Nayed’s criticism. Check out the full text to see an excellent example of how to reject criticism yet keep all doors open to further dialogue.

• Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, the Egyptian Jesuit who is one of the Catholic Church’s leading experts on Islam, has a long analysis on Asianews.it of Allam’s conversion. In it, he notes that both Christianity and Islam are missionary religions and adds: “The pope’s baptism of Magdi Allam is not an act of aggression, but an exigency of reciprocity. It is a calm provocation that serves to make us sit up and think. Each one of us must live as a missionary, attempting to offer to the other the best of what one has encountered and understood.”

• The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen interpreted Pope Benedict’s message as follows: (1) For a pope committed to reawakening a strong missionary spirit in Catholicism, receiving a high-profile convert during the Easter Vigil is a symbolic way of making the point, (2) Allam’s baptism can also be read as a statement of solidarity with Muslim converts to Christianity around the world and (3) the episode illustrates an important wrinkle to Benedict’s personality — stubborn indifference to the canons of political correctness. Read more here.

• Allam has defended his conversion and baptism by the pope in another long article in his newspaper Corriere della Sera.

• There have been comments on various Catholic blogs criticising the media coverage (by us and others) of the Allam baptism. The Catholic Church can baptise anyone it wants, they say, so stop making such a fuss about it. We haven’t had much of that in our comments sections but here’s an example of that argument from another blog. Anyone writing this is either wilfully playing naive or is actually naive. We never said Allam should not be baptised — we have no dispute with the Church’s right to do so. What we did was quote others, Catholics as well as Muslims, who questioned whether it had to be done with such publicity. Saying this event didn’t deserve the headlines it got shows a basic misunderstanding of both how the news media work and how the Vatican works.

The nascent Catholic-Muslim dialogue sparked by the “Common Word” initiative was never going to be easy, even under the best of circumstances. There is a lot of suspicion, misunderstanding and different agendas to deal with. And then there are the surprises that can come seemingly out of nowhere and blow the effort off course, at least temporarily. One of these was the baptism of the Egyptian-born Italian journalist Magdi Allam by Pope Benedict that popped up by surprise on Saturday evening and highlighted some of the twists along the path of inter-faith dialogue.

The most surprising part about Allam’s baptism was not that he converted. He has been living in a traditionally Catholic country for 35 years, is married to a Catholic, is close to the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation, has long been highly critical of radical Islam and says he was never an especially pious Muslim. The surprise was that the Vatican would make it such a prominent event. There was a second surprise, too — the fact that Allam published such a hard-hitting declaration about his conversion, his view that Islam is intrinsically violent and that the Catholic Church has been too timid about converting Muslims. We quoted from the Corriere della Sera original on Sunday, but now the Catholic news agency Zenit has provided an English translation.

Reporting from Rome, the Paris daily Le Figaro had an interesting detail. It wrote on Monday that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue and as such the Vatican’s point man for relations with Islam, had not been informed about the Allam baptism before it happened. If this is true, it suggests some behind-the-scenes Vatican politics on how to deal with Muslims. It would seem that Tauran should have been informed on a need-to-know basis — this is, after all, his area of responsibility — but somebody didn’t do it.

We don’t know if the Vatican knew Allam would publish such an outspoken article on Sunday. Several Church sources have said off the record they were surprised and put off by its polemical tone and said it effectively drowned out the weak Vatican efforts to play down the baptism. Whether it was planned or not, Allam’s article became part of the whole story. As will his subsequent comments, as in an interview in today’s Il Giornale.

That was evident in the response that Aref Ali Nayed of the “Common Word” initiative gave to the Allam story on Monday. Nayed, who is director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, said he consulted several other signatories of the dialogue appeal before issuing the statement. One of the first things to note is that he treats Allam’s conversion as a personal decision and says “It is God who will judge him.” I didn’t expect “Common Word” signatories to denounce Allam as an apostate deserving death, but it’s worth noting the absence of any such comment because that traditionalist view is the one that’s probably best known to non-Muslims.

That said, Nayed turns to the baptism itself:

As for the Vatican’s deliberate and provocative act of baptising Allam on such a special occasion and in such a spectacular way, it is sufficient to say the following:

1. It is sad that the intimate and personal act of a religious conversion is made into a triumphalist tool for scoring points. Such instrumentalisation of a person and his conversion is contrary to the basic tenets of upholding Human Dignity. It also comes at a most unfortunate time when sincere Muslims and Catholics are working very hard to mend ruptures between the two communities.

2. It is sad that the particular person chosen for such a highly public gesture has a history of generating, and continues to generate, hateful discourse. The basic message of Allam’s most recent article is the very message of the Byzantine emperor quoted by the Pope in his infamous Regensburg lecture. It is not far fetched to see this as another way of re-asserting the message of Regensburg (which the Vatican keeps insisting was not intended). It is now important for the Vatican to distance itself from Allam’s discourse. Should Muslims take the high-profile Papal baptism as a Papal endorsement of Allam’s discourses regarding the nature of Islam (which happen to coincide with the message of Regensburg?

3. It is sad that Benedict XVI chose to make the basic message of his religious discourse during the special occasion of Easter into a quasi-Manichean one with motifs of ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, ‘darkness’ being assigned to the ‘other’ and ‘light’ to the ‘self’. It is also sad that the idea of ‘peace’ expressed in that discourse reduces to the bringing of the ‘other’ into the fold through baptism. Such Roman totalitarian discourse is most unhelpful.

The whole spectacle with its choreography, persona, and messages provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions, and plans of some of the Pope’s advisers on Islam. Nevertheless, we will not let this unfortunate episode distract us from our work on pursuing “A Common Word” for the sake of humanity and world peace. Our basis for dialogue is not a tit-for-tat logic of ‘reciprocity’, it is rather a compassionate theology of ‘mending the in-between’ for the sake of the Love of God and Love of neighbor.

Some pretty raw nerves on display here (plus an apparent misunderstanding about the Easter Vigil service, at which the motifs of darkness and light are a permanent feature in many Christian churches, not just a choice by Benedict this year to dramatise Allam’s baptism). Another sore point appears at the beginning of his reaction, when Nayed mentions the fact that Allam attended Catholic primary and secondary schools in Cairo before studying in Italy. He adds:

The fact that Allam was given Catholic communion at a very young age under the influence of his early Catholic teachers seems to indicate that he was Christianized in childhood. As a result of his early Catholic schooling, he is reported to have never upheld or practiced the tenets of Islam. The case of Allam reminds us, yet again, of the legitimate concerns of many Muslim scholars regarding the abuse of the trust that sometimes happens when Muslim parents, because of economic or other factors, send their children to Catholic schools. What happens to children, including Muslim ones, in Catholic schools is a matter that must be discussed as part of addressing ‘Human Dignity’ in upcoming discussions. The use of schools for proselytizing is one of the important issues to be discussed.

There are many Christian schools in developing countries, often leftovers from the colonial era, and many Muslim families send their children there because they think they’ll get a better education than in state schools. The late Benazir Bhutto, for example, attended “convent schools” named after Jesus and Mary in both Karachi and the hill station Murree. When I lived in Pakistan, I met several other Muslims who had attended Christian schools and spoke fondly of the nuns who taught them, but never converted. Allam’s example is probably quite rare, but it has clearly pointed to an issue that remains sensitive.

Anyway, if Benedict was placing conversion on the agenda for the first Catholic-Muslim Forum meeting due in November, Nayed here is putting proselytism there too. These issues might be seen as two sides of the same coin called “religious freedom.” Or they might not be. Whether they remain separate agenda points or get joined may be a barometer of how this dialogue progresses.

One last point — all this focus on the Vatican position shouldn’t obscure the fact that “A Common Word” was addressed to all Christian churches and many Protestant churches have been more positive in their responses. When I asked Nayed about this, he said: “We’re preparing for our meeting in Rome in November, but we also have several other meetings in coming months.” In July, “Common Word” representatives will meet at Yale University with theologians from Yale, Harvard and Princeton divinity schools (mostly Protestant, including evangelicals, with a few Jewish scholars as well). A meeting to discuss scripture is planned at the University of Cambridge divinity school in October, then comes Rome in November and Georgetown University in Washington in January (a mixed group to discuss religion and world politics). Sometime in the spring, they plan a meeting on prayer and meditation with Orthodox Christians at the site of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River.

Just when relations between the Vatican and Muslims were improving, Pope Benedict has taken a highly symbolic step that could set them back again. On Saturday evening, at the Easter Vigil Mass, he baptised seven people including one of Italy’s best-known Muslims. Magdi Allam, the new convert, is deputy director of the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera and an outspoken critic of radical Islam. The Egyptian-born journalist, who has lived in Italy since his university days, was one of the few Muslims who defended the pope after his controversial Regensburg speech in 2006. Allam’s outspoken articles have already prompted death threats from Islamists and he lives under constant guard. Announcing the surprise move only an hour before it took place, the Vatican stressed the Catholic Church had the right to baptise anyone who wanted to join it and that all were equal in the eyes of God.

That is certainly true, but such a high-level conversion can’t be seen outside its wider context. Islam considers conversion to another religion a grave insult to God. In some Muslim states including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan, it is punishable by death. Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity pictured at right during his trial for apostasy, only escaped death in 2006 because of an international outcry; he found refuge in Italy. Not all Muslims agree with this. An Italian Muslim spokesman, for example, stressed that Allam’s conversion was a personal decision and only questioned why Benedict chose to make his baptism such a public event. He could have been baptised in his local church without all the publicity, he said. This high-visibility baptism looks likely to provoke protests from Muslims in some parts of the world and raise questions about Benedict’s intentions.

France 24 television interrupted my Easter lunch en famille to interview me about this and their main question was whether it was a response to Osama bin Laden’s threat against the pope. That assumes a U.S. campaign-style readiness to react that is miles or centuries away from the way the Vatican works. Easter is the traditional time to baptise adult converts. Allam had to go through a long period of study before being accepted for baptism. Benedict had to know about this at least several weeks ago. In his article in Corriere (see below), Allam mentions a meeting with Benedict where he told him of his intention to convert and the pope said he would gladly baptise him. But Allam does not mention the date.

If challenged, the pope would probably first say that both Christianity and Islam are missionary religions for which conversion is legitimate as long as the person makes the choice to change religions freely. What is objectionable, he would argue, is proselytism, i.e. aggressive efforts to win converts (”stealing sheep”, some clerics would say). There are progressive Muslims who will agree with this view intellectually, but probably few would be comfortable with it.

If Benedict were pressed to explain this step further (which is not, by the way, something that we journalists get to do that often!), I think he would say that differences about conversion would be a perfect topic to discuss in the new Catholic-Muslim Forum that was just launched two weeks ago. The experts in this dialogue could explain each faith’s view of religious freedom, personal commitment and divine will. Over the course of several meetings, maybe several years, they might come to a better understanding of the relationship between individual believers and faith communities. Maybe such discussions could even influence leading Muslims to take a broader view of religious freedom, leading to greater liberty for Muslims and for the non-Muslims living in Islamic countries. Seen this way, the question to ask at the next opportunity (when? maybe in the papal plane to the United States on April 15?) is: “Holy Father, did you baptise Allam to put the issue of conversion firmly on the agenda for the Catholic-Muslim Forum talks?”

But a lot of water can flow down the Tiber and the Nile between now and then. No matter how matter-of-factly the Vatican may try to present Allam’s baptism, the new Catholic has pulled no punches in his apologia. In a front-page article in today’s Corriere entitled La Mia Scelta (My Choice), Allam wrote that his mind “has been freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimises lies and deception, violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission to tyranny, permitting me to join the authentic religion of Truth, Life and Liberty”. He knew this could put him in even more danger, but said: “I realise what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith.”

The Islamist death threats against him in recent years had led him to ask “about the attitude of those who publicly issued fatwas denouncing me, a Muslim, as an ‘enemy of Islam’ and a hypocrite … a liar and a defamer of Islam, in this way legitimising a death sentence against me. I asked myself how it was possible that someone like me, who was working strenuously and with conviction for a moderate Islam, who stood up and denounced extremism and Islamic terrorism, ends up being condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of the Koran. I had to recognise that … the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.”

Wow… this is the “message of Regensburg” all over again. In that speech, the pope quoted a Byzantine emperor asking what the Prophet Mohammad had brought the world but things “only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. After that sparked off violent protests in the Muslim world, Benedict protested that he had only quoted the emperor and that did not mean he shared that view. But a pope speaking in public is not a professor debating in a seminar room. Rightly or wrongly, words, contexts and interpretations got amalgamated then and will be mixed up again now. If anyone out there seriously thinks this baptism, the Regensburg speech and Allam’s article won’t be rolled into one by commentators (Muslims and non-Muslims alike), please let me know how high you’d like to place your bet.

Talk about complicated… Who should do what in this situation? Should the pope be more of a diplomat or should he put Catholic priorities above all others? And how should Muslims react to this? These are important issues for this embryonic Catholic-Muslim dialogue and it would be interesting to hear what you think about this.

Given the discussion about the new Latin prayer to be read at Catholic Good Friday services in the Tridentine rite today, I’ve tried to find estimates for how many people will actually hear it. Jewish groups have expressed dismay that the new version of the prayer, which drops references to the “blindness” of the Jews but still calls for their conversion. The leader of Germany’s Jewish community said she could not fathom how the German-born Pope Benedict could “impose such phrases on his church.” The Vatican rejects this criticism and sources there say it could soon issue a conciliatory note. So there’s a lot of talk about this issue, but how much is actually happening on the ground?

Actually, the vast majority of Catholics attending Good Friday services around the world will not hear this prayer in Latin but a different one in their own native language. That prayer is based on a 1970 text without any explicit reference to the conversion of the Jews. There is no official number for how many will attend the Latin services in the older Tridentine rite that Pope Benedict promoted with a ruling last year authorising wider use of the old Latin Mass. But even ardent supporters of the traditional rite agree that the number is very, very small. Some have objected to our use of the term “tiny minority” for it, saying this was dismissive and implied the number was insignificant. It wasn’t, but it’s very hard to write about such a small amount without seeming to write it off.

Looking for anecdotal evidence, I first turned to the excellent conservative Catholic blog What Does The Prayer Really Say? (which just swept the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards). This was a logical step since its lively moderator, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (”Fr. Z”), had just taken us to task for writing “tiny minority.” I posted a question about how to describe the size of this group and several readers chimed in, suggesting words like “rare” (sounds like an endangered species), “relatively few in number” (too vague), “some” or “a few” (even more vague) or “small but growing minority” (that adds movement, but it’s still vague). Even the most neutral synonyms for “tiny” — diminutive, microscopic, miniature, minuscule, slight or wee (for my Scottish colleagues) — can be read as dismissive. How would Fr. Z put it — paupera lingua angliae?

One reader estimated there would be about 40 traditional Latin Good Friday services in the whole United States, compared to about 20,000 overall. There would be about 60 in France, the real centre of the Catholic traditionalist movement, he estimated.

I then turned to my colleague Nicolas Senèze from the French Catholic daily La Croix who has just published “La crise intégriste - Vingt ans après le schisme de Mgr Lefebvre” (The Fundamentalist Crisis — 20 Years after the Schism of Archbishop Lefebvre). He was not sure about Good Friday but said there were 124 parishes in France that celebrated the Tridentine Mass on the basis of the 1984 indult. Only about a dozen have been added to that total since Benedict’s motu proprio last year encouraging wider use of the old Latin Mass. “Based on the current rhythm of celebrations being organised, one can estimate the number of churches (in France) using the John XXIII missal should stabilise around 200,” he wrote in his book.

These are still exceedingly small numbers in the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic world. Fr. Z and several of his readers say they are rising, and I’m sure that’s true, but the rate is very gradual. We have also heard many bishops and priests saying there is little or no interest in the traditional Mass in their dioceses. We’ve been criticised on some blogs for reporting this, often by indignant readers who insist the traditional Latin Mass is so much more beautiful and prayerful than the usual vernacular services. That may very well be the case, but that is an internal Catholic matter. For the time being, we have to look at the overall numbers. This doesn’t mean we think that’s the end of the story. If this number rises steadily, we’ll revisit the issue at some point. But this is where it stands now.

Several traditional Mass enthusiasts have contacted us to point out that many young Catholics attend these services and ask why we haven’t written about this. Actually, we have written about it, back in 2005 when we first noticed this. If this continues to grow, watch this space. In the meantime, Happy Easter to all Christians, no matter which language they pray in this Sunday.

Does the public have the right to know the reasons why Tony Blair converted to Roman Catholicism just before Christmas? I mean the real reasons — what does the Catholic Church give him in terms of spirituality, theology or tradition that the Church of England did not? The initial news stories and follow-up articles over the holidays repeated the known circumstantial evidence, such as the fact his wife and children are Catholic and he has attended Catholic mass for years. Many took a political angle, noting that he waited until he had left office. Some accused him of hypocrisy for doing so despite supporting policies the Vatican opposes. But they didn’t give the real reasons.

The articles didn’t report Blair’s innermost convictions because he hasn’t revealed them. And he may never do so. There is so much public use and misuse of faith in politics that he may have decided he did not want his beliefs torn apart by his critics or the media, so he waited until they could no longer argue the prime minister’s faith was a matter of public interest. Journalists regret this, because we always want to know more, but fair-minded people can respect it.

I mention this because the latest edition of the U.S. Jesuit magazine America has the most informative article on Blair’s conversion that I’ve seen. In “From Thames to Tiber,” Austen Ivereigh, a former adviser to London Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, tells us that “Blair’s background is in liberal Anglo-Catholicism; his favorite theologians are Leonardo Boff and Hans Küng, not Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs Von Balthasar. He belongs to an ecclesial tradition in which the gate is wide, and bridges more important than borders.” He says Blair was attracted by “the Church’s vast international reach, its commitment to the poor, its capacity for mobilisation against injustice and its courage to stand firm on unpopular issues.” That goes a lot further in locating his faith.

On Catholics in politics, Ivereigh said: “It is one thing is to hold Catholics in public life to account: to question how Judge Antonin Scalia can be in favour of the death penalty, or John Kerry of abortion. But it is another to call them hypocrites, to pretend to know what choices faced them, and why they took the decisions they did. Politicians are not lackeys; they must govern in favour of the common good in a pluralist society. If a Catholic can only serve a government whose every act chimes with his conscience and with church teaching, he cannot be a politician.”

Do you think Tony Blair has a duty to tell why he converted? And are Catholic politicians held to more demanding standards than others? Is that more hypocritical than the hypocrisy they’re accused of?

Returning to news reporting after two weeks off feels like you’ve been away for two weeks. Returning to blogging after a holiday break feels like you’ve been away for an eternity. So much going on! My colleague Ed Stoddard in Dallas was minding the shop, but he was unexpectedly sent off to report the news from the campaign trail. That gave FaithWorld a very American accent, which was a timely twist given the role of religion in the Iowa vote. It’s back to the view from Paris now — here are some inital comments on recent events concerning religion around the world:

Benazir Bhutto — The assassinated Pakistani leader will speak from beyond the grave next month when her book Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West is published. HarperCollins has announced it has brought forward to Feb. 12 the release of the book that Bhutto worked on before returning to Pakistan in October. In a statement, it called the book “a bold, uncompromising vision of hope for the future of not only Pakistan but the Islamic world. Bhutto presents a powerful argument for a reconciliation of Islam with democratic principles, in the face of opposition from Islamic extremists and Western skeptics.”

It will be interesting to see what she has to say about the role of Islam in Pakistani politics, especially after all the praise for her as a modern, secularist Muslim leader in comments after her assassination. Bhutto’s party is politically secularist and she pledged to fight against Islamist militants now challenging the Islamabad government. But let’s not forget that the Taliban emerged during her second stint as prime minister in 1993-1996 and were a key element in Pakistani policy towards Afghanistan at the time. She worked with an Islamist politician close to the Taliban then and now. It was also on her watch that, as historian William Dalrymple put it, Kashmir was turned into “a jihadist playground.” Whether she supported all this, couldn’t oppose the military people behind it or both (that’s my hunch) is something historians will debate long into the future. But it is clear that her record is more complex than some of the eulogies would have it.

Saying this is not meant to tarnish the reputation of this courageous woman. The Pakistanis who were ready to vote for her know all this already. Her father and political mentor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a left-wing populist who sported Mao caps and campaigned on the faith-free slogan roti, kapra, makan (bread, clothes, housing), played the Islamic card with concessions to religious pressure groups when necessary. It’s more a comment on how complex Pakistani politics are and how hard it is to fit its main actors into categories that readers readily understand.

BTW it’s disappointing to see Dalrymple, a fine historian of the Subcontinent, fall into the same trap as readers who want us to write about “Muslim riots ” in France. In his New York Times op-ed piece cited above, he said that former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by “Sri Lankan Hindu extremists.” The Tamil Tigers are Sri Lankan and presumably mostly Hindu, as most Tamils are, but their separatist struggle is nationalist and not religious at all. They were some of the first modern suicide bombers, but that’s as close to religiously inspired militants as they get.

Anglican Agonies — Will 2008 be the year of decision for the Anglican Communion? Yes, no, maybe… or maybe none of the above? It’s getting more complicated as July’s Lambeth Conference nears. The Global South primates have announced a rival meeting for June called the Global Anglican Future Conference (with the unfortunate acronym GAFCON). The news was hardly out before the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, complained he had not been consulted and expressed concern it could boost tensions in the region. “I believe our Primate, Dr Mouneer Hanna Anis, is also concerned about this event,” he wrote. “His advice to the organizers that this was not the right time or place for such a meeting was ignored. I urge the organizers to reconsider this conference urgently.”

The organisers say primates can attend both Jerusalem and Lambeth, but it looks like this is the alternative Lambeth conference that Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola has suggested. It’s hard to see what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams can do. “The Archbishop of Canterbury was never one for diktats,” Andrew Brown blogged at The Guardian. “Now his inaction has let those who would split the church get into a fine mess.”

The next Black Pope — The Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits, open their General Congregation on Monday to elect a new Superior General, aka the “black pope.” The Jesuits are the largest order in the Roman Catholic Church, with a long intellectual heritage, checkered history and record of theological tussles with the Vatican. We’re covering this for news, so I won’t go into it much now, except to spotlight the Jesuit info page on the pow-wow and two previews from America, Commonweal , The Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter and interviews with the outgoing chief Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach in Vatican Radio, Catholic News Service, Die Tagespost, La Croix, adnkronos and Katholiek Nederland (he’s Dutch). My favourite nugget from all this is that the four days they put aside for considering the new superior general is known as the murmuratio. There’s not supposed to be any campaigning, but they can murmur about the candidates.

Malaysia’s Allah Muddle — Another story on increasingly exclusive Muslim views from Malaysia, where a Catholic weekly has been told it cannot use the word Allah for God in its Malay-language articles, even though it is the usual Malay word for the deity. There seemed to be some flip-flopping over this, and the weekly eventually got its publishing permit renewed. But government officials later insisted the word Allah is from now on reserved for Muslims.

This is not just semantics. The Malaysian government has a policy of moderate Islam that it calls Islam hadhari, or civilisational Islam. It has been talking this up for a while now, just at a time when Washington has been looking for “moderate Muslims” to promote as a counterweight to Islamic radicals. But the trend in Malaysian Islam seems to be going the other way, as increasing complaints from minority Christians, Hindus and Buddhists indicate. As Malaysian political scientist Farish Noor notes: “The administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi came to power on the promise that it would promote its own brand of moderate Islam that was pluralist and respectful of other cultures and religions. But time and again the Malaysian public — first Hindus and now Christians — have felt necessary to protest over what they regard as unfair, biased treatment and the furthering of an exclusive brand of Islam that is communitarian and divisive. The latest fiasco over the non-issue that is the name of God would suggest that Prime Minister’s Badawi’s grand vision of a moderate Islam has hit the rocks, and is now floundering.”

Ali Eteraz, a lively Muslim blogger in the U.S., says “Leaders in Malaysia promote supremacist, dominionist versions of Islam, because it makes political sense for them to do so. Sixty per cent of the country is Malay-Muslim; the rest are Chinese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus and animists. So, if you can control the Muslims, you will control the government.”

A few other stories from Malaysia chipped away further at its reputation for tolerance — Taoist statue deemed “offensive” to Islam and Malaysian Hindu loses case to ban conversion to Islam. Next door in Indonesia, there are reports of increased attacks on the Ahmadi sect, which many Muslims consider to be heretics, and an Islamic Defenders’ Front wants to ban it. Also, an Anti-Apostasy Alliance says conversion to Christianity “is a bigger evil than terrorism.”

(more comments to follow)

The Roman Catholic Church statement about evangelisation last Friday was one of those classic Vatican documents that are short on news but long on content. We covered it in a news story from Vatican City, but it was not top news that day (”Christians should spread the faith” is not exactly a new message). The document also avoided the blunt tone that sometimes comes out of the Vatican — an angle journalists were watching out for — and dealt with a sensitive issue “softly, softly,” as one theologian put it.

The impact of this document should unfold slowly in the context of the Vatican’s relations with Orthodox churches and with Muslims. It proclaims a duty to spread the Gospel without respect to geographical boundaries. That sounds like a rebuff to the Russian Orthodox argument that Rome should not seek or accept converts in traditionally Orthodox countries. It’s also a challenge to Muslim countries that forbid conversion, to the point of declaring apostasy — i.e. leaving Islam — a crime worthy of the death penalty. Since the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) says it issued the text because of “a certain confusion about whether Catholics should give testimony about their faith in Christ,” this document amounts to a practical guide for dealing with these situations. That’s not news now, but it can well become news at some point ahead if this leads to tensions.

Relations with the Russian Orthodox are sensitive and difficult to read. Metropolitan Kirill, the “foreign minister” of the Russian Church, met Pope Benedict on December 7 and said the session was proof of improving ties. A quick look at the Interfax Religion service seems to hint at a more critical view in Moscow. Kirill seems to take a tougher line back home. The Moscow Patriarchate is also concerned that Opus Dei, which just opened an office in the Russian capital, might proselytise in Russia.

Another question is whether this means the Catholic Church will become more active in its missionary work. The Church is already facing competition from evangelical and Pentecostal missionaries who are winning converts in developing countries, especially in traditionally Catholic countries in Latin America. In Muslim countries like Iraq , it says assertive evangelical missionaries arriving in recent years have upset a long-standing balance the Christian minority had found with the majority population.

Do you think the Catholic Church is right to claim a right and duty to convert people everywhere? Will it become more assertive about it now?

Attenzione! The Vatican will issue an important doctrinal document on Friday “on some aspects of evangelisation.” Pope Benedict has a long track record of making sharp distinctions between Catholicism and other religions in his doctrinal declarations. Some of these have upset other Christians, others have angered Muslims and been challenged by Islamic scholars. This new text has been written by papal aides, not the pope himself, but it is expected to be a close reflection of his views. What Vatican observers are waiting to see is how clearly it states the Catholic view on converting others and how other religions react.

The document from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed for over two decades before becoming pope in 2005, comes at a time of growing Catholic difficulties with Anglicans, Protestants and evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. Its hesitant reaction to an invitation leading Muslim scholars for a theological dialogue has raised questions about its interest in inter-faith relations. And evangelisation is now a sensitive topic for Christian churches. The Vatican is working with the World Council of Churches, the World Evangelical Alliance and Pentecostal leaders on a code of conduct for missionary work .

The declaration is expected to say that conversion remains a goal of Catholic missionary efforts and that Catholic theologians must not water this down by arguing that other faiths can be paths to salvation. This recalls Dominus Iesus, a document issued in 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that said the Catholic Church was the only true church of Jesus Christ and others were “gravely deficient.” In fact, the document should be a guide on how to put Dominus Iesus into practice. The CDF began this process with a clarification of the 2000 document last June — a clarification that caused dismay among leading Protestant theologians.

Doesn’t the Roman Catholic Church have the right to restate its traditional beliefs? Of course it does. But it also operates in a broader context than the Catholic world alone, a context where Vatican documents are read carefully by other faiths for indications of how the world’s largest church thinks and what it plans to do. In a globalised world, leading religions are involved in inter-faith and ecumenical dialogues to foster better understanding among peoples. These efforts have led to much improved contact and comprehension among religions in the past few decades. Pope John Paul preferred this kind of dialogue, such as the 1986 World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Italy, but Cardinal Ratzinger kept his distance.

In recent years, this ecumenical drive seems to have slowed. Many faiths seem to be putting a renewed emphasis on their own identity. Again, that’s their right, but it does sometimes rub other religions the wrong way. Pope Benedict has done that before in the past, for example with Dominus Iesus (which upset Anglicans and Protestants) or with his 2006 Regensburg speech (which upset Muslims). He has shown more interest in working with the Eastern Orthodox churches. Wolfgang Huber, the top Lutheran bishop in Germany, has been especially critical of Benedict’s approach, for example calling the restatement of Dominus Iesus “an affront” to Protestants.

The line-up for Friday’s news conference in Rome about the new document indicates it is meant mostly as an internal text. It will be presented by CDF Prefect Cardinal William Levada, Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and CDF Secretary Archbishop Angelo Amato.

Notably absent will be the two cardinals who head dicasteries — the Vatican equivalent of government ministries — that deal directly with other faiths. They are Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue and Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Kasper was openly critical of the CDF in a speech to cardinals in Rome last month, saying the powerful dicastery “aroused perplexity and created discontent” by issuing its document restating Dominus Iesus last summer.

A statement by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) last week stressed issues expected to be part of the CDF document as well. In that statement, the bishops criticised Father Peter Phan, a leading theologian teaching at Georgetown University in Washington, for creating “considerable confusion” about Christ, the Church and other faiths. They restated Church teaching that Jesus Christ Catholicism was the only true church, Jesus Christ was mankind’s only saviour and other religions were “a preparation for the Gospel.” (Read John Allen’s full analysis here)

How do readers who follow developments in ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue see the way relations between faiths are going under Pope Benedict? Is his emphasis on traditional Catholic positions making it easier or more difficult to promote understanding among religions?

On the world religion scene, one interesting trend concerns the growing number of Christian missionaries seeking to convert people in developing countries. Many are evangelicals from the United States or South Korea, often trying to convert Muslims. We usually hear about them when their work creates tension or leads to a diplomatic incident. It’s rare to see a lengthy report on what a mission is actually doing and how it is received.

The Commercial Appeal daily in Memphis, Tennessee has just published a fascinating report on a mission to convert Hindus in India that is sponsored by a hometown Baptist church. Bellevue Baptist in Memphis spends $5.5 million each year for missionary work around the world. The Commercial Appeal’s Trevor Aaronson visited the National Training Institute for Village Evangelism in Hyderabad, which Bellevue supports, to see what it does on the ground. These missions can be controversial. In several Indian states, Hindu nationalists have protested against missionary work and passed laws banning conversion from one religion to another. World churches are working on a code of conduct to help spread their faith without antagonising other religions.

Aaronson’s article is a zoom-lens look at one mission, its problems, its links to its American donors and the reactions of the Hindu nationalists. He presents the mission warts and all, which has sparked off a lively debate on the paper’s Web site. As Daniel Pulliam over at GetReligion notes, this is “an impressive journalistic endeavor for a local newspaper … the activities of churches often go uncovered, particularly missionary work.”

Do you think Christian churches should seek converts like this? Can a code of conduct help avoid tensions with other faiths?

The “neo-atheists” in the best-seller lists over the past year or so are getting serious competition from the other side. The new book There Is A God is all the more challenging because it comes from a former atheist who is far better versed in the complex arguments at the core of this debate. And he has a major U.S. publisher to promote this story of how a leading atheist philosopher eventually changed his mind. Anthony Flew doesn’t like to call his story a conversion, but a lot of people will probably see in it a modern Saul-to-Paul experience.

Anthony Flew is a British philosopher, now 84, who provided modern atheists with some powerful arguments during his career. His approach was to take atheism as the default position until sufficient evidence for God appeared — he called it “the presumption of atheism” and compared it to the presumption of innocence in the law. In numerous books with titles such as God and Philosophy or Does God Exist?: A Believer and an Atheist Debate, he rejected the usual arguments for God’s existence with logic and style. His approach was a far cry from the “neo-atheists” who rail against caricatures and excesses of religion (and there are certainly enough around to take aim at!) but avoid asking the tough questions that science cannot answer.

When the news came in 2004 that he had come to doubt full-blown atheism and had shifted towards deism, many atheists wrote this off as nothing more than the sign that his mental faculties were fading. Flew insisted in a long interview that he had not started believing in the God presented in the main monotheisms and did not accept the idea of an afterlife. He believed, instead, in what he called Aristotle’s God, the First Cause that created the universe but played no further role in it. He said he had come to the conviction that some form of superior intelligence must have ignited the Big Bang and set up the laws of nature.

A long feature in the New York Times Magazine has again raised the issue of whether Flew, with an admittedly fading memory, could have actually written There Is A God. It calls him “a senescent scholar.” His co-author Roy Abraham Varghese rejects the charge and says Flew’s new conviction had long roots. “The only reason why people ask questions about his mental faculties is because he dared to change his mind,” he has written in response.

I have neither the information nor the inclination to want to take sides in this debate. Although part of the interest in There Is A God comes from Flew’s change of mind, the question of how much he wrote and how much Verghese edited may turn out to be secondary to the contribution it makes to the atheism debate as a whole. It certainly seems to be more serious than other recent books on the topic. As Stanley Fish pointed out in his blog for the New York Times, the book does not trivialise its subject or demonise those who think differently, “which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.”