Catholic-atheist meetings end with Pope Benedict appeal to youth
Pope Benedict urged French youths on Friday to help put God back into public debate, either as Christians sharing their faith or as non-believers seeking more justice and solidarity in a cold utilitarian world. In a video address from the Vatican to an evening rally outside Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris, the pope also urged them to “tear down the barriers of fear of the other, the foreigner, of those who are not like you” that mutual ignorance can create.
Benedict’s address, projected on a large screen in the square, came at the end of two days of a Vatican-sponsored dialogue between Roman Catholics and atheists, part of a drive to revive the faith in Europe that is a hallmark of his papacy.
“The question of God doesn’t endanger society, it doesn’t threaten human life!” he told the crowd during a break in its evening of modern and ancient Christian music. “The question of God must not be absent from the great questions of our time.”
He said religions had nothing to fear from secular society as long as it had “an open secularism that lets all live as they believe, in accordance with their conscience.”
The success of secularists, especially in France, in pushing faith to the fringes of the public sphere prompted Benedict to launch the discussions with atheists due to continue in at least 16 European and North American cities over the next two years.
The series started in impressive surroundings — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the Sorbonne university and the Institut de France, home of the prestigious Academie Francaise. Click for the programme details in French for the sessions at UNESCO, the Sorbonne and the Institut de France.
Most speakers were eminent French thinkers, making the sessions feel more like a post-graduate philosophy seminar than a public debate likely to influence a wider public. They were also directed at select small audiences. Access to the UNESCO and the Institut de France events was by invitation only and the open session in the Sorbonne’s Grand Amphitheatre attracted at most around 200 people.
Vatican launches public dialogue with atheists in Paris
The Vatican has launched a series of public dialogues with non-believers, choosing leading intellectual institutions in Paris to present its belief that modern societies must speak more openly about God.
The decision to start the series in France, where strong secularism has pushed faith to the fringes of the public sphere, reflected Pope Benedict’s goal of bringing religious questions back into the mainstream of civic debates.
The dialogues, called “Courtyard of the Gentiles” after the part of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem where Jews and non-Jews met, will continue in at least 16 cities in Europe and North America over the next two years.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, told the opening session on Thursday at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that the dialogue was meant not to confront believers and atheists but to seek common ground.
Rather it was “an invitation to non-believers … to start a voyage with believers through the desert,” he said.
The meeting was due to continue Friday with sessions at the Sorbonne university and the Institut de France, home of the prestigious Academie Francaise.
The public dialogue with Atheists could benefit from the new publication „The Great Leap-Fraud, Social Economics of Religious Terrorism.“ It is a saga of deceit and fraud under cover of religion through 2300 years of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In its approach as one piece of the struggle against poverty, it includes all necessary primary evidence how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unfolds through the eye of history.
Herbert L. Calhoun asks in his review for The Great Leap-Fraud by author A.J. Deus:
“Is this the Historico-religious Trifecta of the Century?
It is my considered opinion that all the Sam Harrises, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennetts in the world could not have made a more profound statement about why ridding the world of organized religion must remain postmodern man’s most urgent task than the case made here by this author.”
Summaries can be found at ajdeus.org.
Catholics & Jews discuss their future dialogue, possible Muslim trialogue
Jewish and Roman Catholic leaders reviewing their dialogue over the past four decades expressed concern on Wednesday that younger generations had little idea of the historic reconciliation that has taken place between them. The two faiths must keep this awareness alive at a time when the last survivors of the Holocaust are dying and both the Catholic and Jewish worlds are changing in significant ways, they said at the end of a four-day interfaith conference.
The International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC) met in Paris to discuss the future of the dialogue begun after the Catholic Church renounced its anti-Semitism and declared its respect for Judaism at the Second Vatican Council in 1965.
“We have new generations for whom the problems between Judaism and Christianity, especially the Shoah, are history,” said Cardinal Kurt Koch, the top Vatican official for relations with Jews. “We can’t leave that to history.” Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said: “Today most young Catholics have no comprehension of how tragic the relationship in the past between Jews and Catholics was. Jews were viewed as the enemies of God, in league with the devil, responsible for the tragedies of the world,” he said, but the Church now saw them as “dearly beloved elder brothers.”
The closed-door talks took up the question of increasing contacts with Muslims without setting out any new initiatives. “We spoke about a trialogue of Catholics, Jews and Muslims because we have a lot in common,” Koch said. “But there are also problems. Some terms don’t always mean the same thing for us.”
Rabbi Richard Marker, the top world Jewish official for interfaith ties, said his International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations already held discussions with some Muslim groups but there was no Islamic world body to speak to. The Vatican also has contacts with different groups in Islam.
IJCIC’s experience in bringing together different strands of Judaism could be a useful model for Muslims trying to create a world body to speak for them with Christians and Jews, he said. “I think there will be two tracks,” Marker said. “There will be some space for trilateral dialogue and there will be a necessity to maintain bilateral dialogue.”
Extend Catholic-Jewish amity to Islam, Jewish official tells dialogue meeting
The historic reconciliation between Jews and Roman Catholics over the past 40 years should be extended to Muslims to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, a senior Jewish official has said. The regular dialogue the two faiths have maintained since the Catholic Church renounced anti-Semitism at the Second Vatican Council should be “a model for transformed relations with Islam,” Rabbi Richard Marker told the opening session of a meeting reviewing four decades of efforts to forge closer ties after 1,900 years of Christian anti-Semitism and to ask how the dialogue can progress in the future.
“Forty years in the histories of two great world religions is but a blink of an eye,” Marker, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation, said on Sunday evening. “But 40 years of a relationship is a sign of its maturity.”
“The focus of the world is no longer specifically on Jewish- Christian amity. We must, for so many reasons, involve the third of our Abrahamic siblings… Islam,” he added.
Major faiths have held countless bilateral meetings to foster better ties since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) launched the world’s largest church on the path of dialogue. Christian and Jewish leaders increasingly meet their Muslim counterparts to seek common ground and better understanding, but none of these discussions have the history or depth of the Catholic-Jewish dialogue officially begun in 1971.
In those 40 years, the Catholic Church has apologized for its sins against the Jewish people and recognized Judaism as its spiritual “elder brother,” a step that Jewish leaders praise as a historic change in perspective. The dialogue has not always been easy. There is still much mutual misunderstanding at the grass-roots level and Jewish leaders are quick to criticize the Vatican over divisive topics, especially related to the Holocaust.
Read the full story here. See also our timeline “Ups and Downs in Catholic-Jewish relations.”
Timeline – Ups and downs in recent Catholic-Jewish relations
Senior officials from the Roman Catholic Church and international Jewish groups met on Monday in Paris to review relations after 40 years of sometimes difficult dialogue.
Following is a timeline of the ups and downs in Catholic-Jewish relations since the first papal visit to Israel.
1964 – Pope Paul VI is the first modern pope to visit the Holy Land. During the visit he avoids using the word Israel, which the Vatican did not recognise at the time.
1965 – The Second Vatican Council issues a document, “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Times“), renouncing anti-Semitism and rejecting the idea of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.
1971 – The International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee holds the first of its biannual meetings in Paris.
1986 – Pope John Paul II visits Rome’s synagogue, becoming the first pope in nearly 2,000 years to visit a Jewish place of worship and saying Jews are “our beloved elder brothers”.
1994 – Vatican and Israel forge full diplomatic ties after almost 2,000 years of Christian-Jewish hostility.
I hope that I’m mistaken, but I believe that I posted a serious comment here a day or so ago, and it appears to have been blocked. If someone who has studied the issues covered in this post for many years can’t have their views aired because they don’t agree with the moderator’s views, why publish any views at all, if they must be views that everybody already SHARES?
The point that I would like to make is that it is very difficult to persuade Chritians that there is no way for them to escape responisibility for the Holocaust which took place in a country where 98% of the population professed to be Christians. 6 million Jews perished at the hands of millions of CHRISTIANS. After trying in vain to persuade Christians and especially Roman Catholics to face up to that responsibility, I have created a web page designed to ask Catholics to see why they should care about the tremendous harm done TO THEM (and not just to the Jewish OTHERS) by their church leaders. See http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/RC_victim s.html .
Russian Orthodox Church’s Kirill on ecumenism, via Wikileaks
Some interesting comments on Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, back in April 2008 when he was still Metropolitan Kirill, in a cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow published by Wikileaks:
¶8. (C) Kirill seemed to be in good health was preoccupied as always with the, in his view, excessive emphasis on the individual in the West, and stressed the need to harmonize traditional human rights concerns with “morality and ethics.” Economic progress had been a two-edged sword for Russia, Kirill thought. With prosperity, Russians had “lost something” and Kirill, who is Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, pointed to less prosperous Smolensk as “better preserved” than Moscow or St. Petersburg.
¶9. (C) Kirill spoke highly of a UN-sponsored effort to bridge the gap between East and West by seeking an alliance of civilizations. Kirill was attempting to interest the UN in his efforts to sponsor ecumenical dialogue especially, he said, in the Middle East. As he has in past conversations, Kirill contrasted Roman Catholic Pope Benedict favourably with his predecessor John Paul II, and again held out the prospect of significant improvement in Russian Orthodox – Roman Catholic relations. Also on the ecumenical front, Kirill reported to the Ambassador efforts, via the Russian Orthodox Church of America and the National Council of Churches, to reach out to Protestant denominations in the U.S.
Although the three great monotheist faiths of the world — that is, Jews, Christians, and Muslims — seem to clash and grate against each other, there is an oasis of peace and agreement and sanctuary among them that can be found in the immortal account of the Prophet Elijah. All three of these enormous religions believe in and respect and honor the prophet Elijah. A new motion picture has just been made (fresh out of Hollywood) of the life of Elijah. This wonderful movie is called “Blast and Whisper”. Check it out on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrJ0-4UN7 uQ
Check it out on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/BLAST-AND- WHISPER/322296232152?v=info
Check out the press release at:
http://www.wdcmedia.com/newsArticle.php? ID=4174
Check it out on IMDb at:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2492800/
Why did the U.N. proclaim World Interfaith Harmony Week?
The United Nations General Assembly passes a stack of resolutions every year and many of them go all but unnoticed. One such document just approved in New York established a new World Interfaith Harmony Week. High-minded resolutions put most news junkies to sleep, so it’s probably no surprise this one got such scant media coverage (see here and here). But there’s more to this one than meets the glazed-over eye.
The resolution, accepted by consensus on Wednesday, urged all member states to designate the first week of February every year as the World Interfaith Harmony Week. It asked them to “support, on a voluntary basis, the spread of the message of interfaith harmony and goodwill in the world’s churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of worship during that week based on Love of God and Love of the Neighbour, or based on Love of the Good and Love of the Neighbour, each according to their own religious traditions or convictions.”
Amid the standard legal wording of U.N. resolutions, that phrase “Love of God and Love of the Neighbour” stands out both as a rare example of religious belief in an official document like this and an unmistakable hint at the authorship of this text. Readers of this blog will recognise it as a trademark phrase of the Common Word group, the Muslim scholars who have been pursuing better interfaith understanding through dialogue with Christian churches. They’ve held a number of conferences with different churches and two of the manifesto’s signatories last week became the first Muslims to address a Vatican synod of bishops. Now the group is pursuing its mission on the diplomatic stage with an appeal to governments to help foster interfaith contacts.
Jordan’s King Abdullah proposed the idea to the General Assembly on Sept. 23: “It is … essential to resist forces of division that spread misunderstanding and mistrust, especially among peoples of different religions. The fact is, humanity everywhere is bound together, not only by mutual interests, but by shared commandments to love God and neighbour, to love the good and neighbour … What we are proposing is a special week during which the world’s people, in their own places of worship, could express the teachings of their own faith about tolerance, respect for the other and peace.”
Before the vote on Wednesday, Jordan’s Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal presented the resolution to the General Assembly. In his speech (full text here), Ghazi, who is coordinator of the Common Word group, provided details on the thinking behind this initiative. “Our world is rife with religious tension and, sadly, mistrust, dislike and hatred,” he said. “The misuse or abuse of religions can thus be a cause of world strife, whereas religions should be a great foundation for facilitating world peace.”
World Interfaith Harmony Week is being observed throughout the world in places of worship and with actions among people of faith. As President of the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, I wanted you to know that in 2011 we hosted a World Interfaith Harmony Week breakfast for about 150 people.
This year, The Office of the President of the General Assembly is working with the Committee of Religious NGOs and other NGOs at the United Nations to present World Interfaith Harmony Week 2012, Common Ground for the Common Good. The February 7 program, in the spirit of UN Resolution A/65/5, will be held in the United Nations General Assembly Hall. Over 1000 people have registered. This event is designed to share some of the ongoing, positive impact of our work around the world in building a culture of peace.
Excerpts from pope speech at London interfaith meeting
Pope Benedict met leaders of non-Christian faiths in London on Friday and stressed the need for dialogue among religions to foster peace. Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Khaled Azzam, director of the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, also spoke.
Here are some excerpts from the pope’s speech:
“I would like to begin my remarks by expressing the Catholic Church’s appreciation for the important witness that all of you bear as spiritual men and women living at a time when religious convictions are not always understood or appreciated. The presence of committed believers in various fields of social and I would like to begin my remarks by expressing the Catholic Church’s appreciation for the important witness that all of you bear as spiritual men and women living at a time when religious convictions are not always understood or appreciated. The presence of committed believers in various fields of social and economic life speaks eloquently of the fact that the spiritual dimension of our lives is fundamental to our identity as human beings, that man, in other words, does not live by bread alone. As followers of different religious traditions working together for the good of the community at large, we attach great importance to this “side by side” dimension of our cooperation, which complements the “face to face” aspect of our continuing dialogue…
“Your presence and witness in the world points towards the fundamental importance for human life of this spiritual quest in which we are engaged. Within their own spheres of competence, the human and natural sciences provide us with an invaluable understanding of aspects of our existence and they deepen our grasp of the workings of the physical universe, which can then be harnessed in order to bring great benefit to the human family. Yet these disciplines do not and cannot answer the fundamental question, because they operate on another level altogether. They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
“The quest for the sacred does not devalue other fields of human enquiry. On the contrary, it places them in a context which magnifies their importance, as ways of responsibly exercising our stewardship over creation… (God) entrusted us with the task of exploring and harnessing the mysteries of nature in order to serve a higher good. What is that higher good? In the Christian faith, it is expressed as love for God and love for our neighbour. And so we engage with the world wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, but always with a view to serving that higher good, lest we disfigure the beauty of creation by exploiting it for selfish purposes…
“Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has placed special emphasis on the importance of dialogue and cooperation with the followers of other religions. In order to be fruitful, this requires reciprocity on the part of all partners in dialogue and the followers of other religions. I am thinking in particular of situations in some parts of the world, where cooperation and dialogue between religions calls for mutual respect, the freedom to practise one’s religion and to engage in acts of public worship, and the freedom to follow one’s conscience without suffering ostracism or persecution, even after conversion from one religion to another. Once such a respect and openness has been established, peoples of all religions will work together effectively for peace and mutual understanding, and so give a convincing witness before the world.
It is easy to say but difficult to act. I dont think that interfaith prayers or Dialogue can br successful or friutful.
Jews Christians,Muslims and others can neither pray in a Cinagaugue,chrches, Masjids or other temples and Gurdwaras together, because it will be great disturbance to each other in their way of pray.
I think its a dream which can not come true. The only solution for peace is every religion should mind its own business without any intrupption
Russian Orthodox and Polish Catholic churches eye major reconciliation
Russia’s Orthodox Church and Poland’s Roman Catholic Church have pledged to help their nations overcome a painful shared past and move towards reconciliation. The two churches, very influential in their own countries, agreed at a rare meeting of senior clergy to draw up a joint document that will express their Christian vision of how the two Slavic neighbours can come together.
“The idea is to look at the history of our nations from our Churches’ point of view. During the history of our nations we have experienced glorious moments but also very painful ones,” Stanislaw Budzik, a Polish bishop, told a news conference on Thursday. “As Christians we should reflect on the history of our nations and call for mutual love and cooperation,” said Budzik, general secretary of the Polish Bishops’ Conference.
Conflicts between Russia and Poland stretch back centuries. Soviet Russia joined Nazi Germany in 1939 in carving up Poland and Josef Stalin ordered the murder of 20,000 Polish officers in 1940 in Katyn forest. After World War Two, Moscow imposed an atheistic communist regime in Poland that lasted until 1989.
The churches’ initiative coincides with a cautious rapprochement between the governments that has gathered pace since a plane crash in Russia in April killed Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski, triggering an outpouring of Russian solidarity. Kaczynski and his 95-strong entourage had been heading to Katyn to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre there. Russia and Poland remain at loggerheads over a host of issues including NATO expansion and missile defence, but want to focus more on their burgeoning trade relations.
Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations department, said the churches would steer clear of politics in their document, which he said would probably take up to a year to complete. “Our aim is to call for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation so the errors of the past are not repeated in the future. Our aim is to seek those things common to us both… such as Christian history,” he said.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches have been split since the Great Schism of 1054 and relations have often been poor, but Russia’s Patriarch Kirill has assigned a high priority to improving inter-faith dialogue since his election last year.
Serbian church leader breaks with past, invites pope to Belgrade
For all of Irinej Gavrilovic’s 80 years, his Serbian Orthodox Church has kept its distance from the Vatican and the pope, maintaining a division whose roots date back a millennium. But only a few days into the job as the 45th Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, Irinej has several times repeated an invitation to the Roman Catholic pontiff, hoping that both men could celebrate a significant anniversary in 2013.
It was an expression of hope, not only that the churches could overcome past differences, but also that two men already in their 80s could make plans three years into the future.
On Thursday, Irinej discussed the invitation in a forum that none of his recent predecessors had ever employed, the news conference, amid a give and take with a gaggle of reporters. There he said his church will be glad to welcome Pope Benedict to Serbia in 2013 in a bid to foster dialogue about reconciliation between two largest Christian communities, a millennium after their Great Schism.
The occasion would be the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan, which will be marked in Serbia’s southern city of Nis, the birthplace of the Roman Emperor Constantine. The Edict promoted religious tolerance and legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire, whose realm extended across the Balkans.
“For what we know, there’s a wish of the Roman Episcopate, the pope, that such a meeting should happen in the city which is the birthplace of an emperor who made such a landmark move,” Irinej said. Though there were no formal contacts between the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate and the Holy See, “such a meeting would be a golden opportunity not only for an ecumenical meeting but also for the renewal of the dialogue. It would be an opportunity to open the issue of the reunification and discussion about that. It would be a long process since many centuries have passed since the split.”
The East–West Schism of 1054 split Christianity into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Church further divided into the autocephalous groups including the Russian, Greek and Serbian Orthodox Churches.
In 1965, after centuries of sometimes bitter disputes, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople nullified the anathemas exchanged between Eastern and Western Christian leaders in 1054, but the split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political and geographical lines lines has never been healed.
@Dmitry85: Catholics only believe that the Pope is a direct spiritual descendant of Saint Peter, who had the apostolic mission of spreading up the Good News throughout the world. The Pope will never be the same as Christ.
- And about the money, money is offered optionally, no one is forced to give money to the Church for helping out in their services, should they not wish it !
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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