U.S. author Robert Wright traces the history of God and suggests that it might all point to the unfolding of something divine, though perhaps not in the sense that most people of faith would envision.

In his just published “The Evolution of God,” Wright takes his readers on a thought-provoking journey through the spiritual beliefs of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the development of the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You can see my interview with Wright here.

Wright’s engaging book covers a lot of ground and it certainly raises many questions that may be of interest to readers of this blog. I’m just going to throw a few of them out here — trust me, there could be many, many more.

1. RELIGION AND SCIENCE:

Has religion in the past given rise to science? The Polynesians that Captain James Cook encountered in the 18th century tried to predict the weather by looking at the night sky – and often succeeded. They believed this was divinely inspired  but as Wright notes:

“The apparent explanation is that both the night sky and the prevailing winds change seasonally. So there was indeed a correlation between stars and weather; the Polynesians just had the wrong explanation … Still, this is the way scientific progress often starts: finding a correlation between two variables and positing a plausible if false explanation. In this sense, ’science’ dates back to preliterate times.”

2.  MONOTHEISM AND INTOLERANCE/TOLERANCE

Wright argues that “scriptural interpretaion is obedient to facts on the ground” and that “… monotheism turns out to be, morally speaking, a very malleable thing, something that, when circumstances are auspicious, can be a fount of tolerance and compassion.”

3. A PURPOSE-DRIVEN HISTORY?

Acadamic history in the West has, for the most part, long since abandoned the view that the march of history is also the march of progress. But Wright raises the possibility that the unfolding drama of human history has been one of moral progress and that this might — just might — point to divine guidance.

“What might qualify as evidence of a larger purpose at work in the world? For one thing, a moral direction in history. If history naturally carries human consciousness toward moral enlightenment, however slowly and fitfully, that would be evidence that there’s some point to it all,” he writes.

Wright is well aware that many people will take issue with this thesis, especially in light of the horrors of the 20th century. Critics could also point to the rocky start of the 21st century with the Sept 11 attacks, the war in Congo, the depths of corporate greed … well, the list could be almost endless. In Wright’s America, secular humanists on the left have decried Wall Street’s behavior and almost all of the policies of the past administration of President George W. Bush; religious conservatives have seen almost nothing but moral decline since the 1950s and 1960s.

But as Wright told me:  “I think the fact that we have such a dim view of the 20th century is itself a sign of our moral progress.”

There is much more to this book including a history of God — or one might say the changing or conflicting image of God in the human mind — that is ground in material conditions, culture and politics. Much of it involves an on-going discussion on growth of “non-zero-sum” relationships in the world and the notion of “moral imagination” or “our capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another person” as Wright describes it.

But what do you think? Are there signs that humanity has made moral progress and could it be a sign of something divine?

(Author Photo by Barry Munger)

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The latest issue of The Economist has a provocative essay on Darwinism asking if Charles Darwin’s insights can be used profitably by policymakers. You can read it online here.

“America … executes around 40 people a year for murder. Yet it still has a high murder rate. Why do people murder each other when they are almost always caught and may, in America at least, be killed themselves as a result?” it asks.

It goes on to ask why men still earn more than women 40 years after the feminist revolution and why racism persists.

“Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying. They describe, rather than explain. They do not get to the nitty-gritty of what it truly is to be human. Policy based on them does not work. This is because they ignore the forces that made people what they are: the forces of evolution.” it says.

The essay is not proposing some new theory of eugenics or related nonsense — it just lays out interesting areas where human behavior may be explained by evolution and asks if this could help inform public policy.

What is of particular interest to readers of this blog is the waves that Darwin’s theory of natural selection — more popularly referred to as his theory of evolution — has stirred among many of the world’s religious faithful. And as 2009 will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species,” one can expect a flood of Darwin-related debates and publications in the coming months.

The late American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote on the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s seminal work that “… mankind has lived so long under the brilliant light of evolutionary science that we tend to take its insights for granted.”

Fifty years later, in Hofstadter’s America, many evangelical Christians dispute the claim that Darwin’s theory provides “insights.” They argue that the Bible is the literal word of God and any theory that suggests organisms evolved over hundreds of millions of years or that we are related to the Great Apes cannot be true.

Proponents of “Intelligent Design” maintain that life is so complex that it must have had a creator. Critics say this is biblical creationism under a different name and that its claims to use scientific methods are absurd.

Darwin’s theory has long been the foundation of modern biological inquiry. Its supporters,  nearly all of the scientific community, draw on an abundance of evidence to support their view, including the diversity of life on islands, even those in close proximity to each other.

This highlights how isolation appears to spur evolution in different directions, which is what got Darwin going in the first place.

We have written and blogged at length on Darwin’s reception among various religious groups. The Vatican believes the theory of natural selection is compatible with the Bible; within the Islamic world there is a growing creationist movement.

Darwin is certain to stir up more fiery debates in 2009.

A thought-provoking new book on Christianity’s “lost history” holds that one of the central causes of 14th century religious persecution may well have been climate change. You can read my interview with author Philip Jenkins about “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia — and How It Died” on the Reuters website here.

“The Chronology of Christian sufferings under Islam closely mirrors that of Jews in Christian states,” he writes, noting that “Around 1300, the world was changing, and definitely for the worse.”

“If we seek a common factor that might explain this simultaneous scapegoating of vulnerable minorities, by far the best candidate is climate change, which was responsible for many economic changes in these years, and increased poverty and desperation across the globe.”

Jenkins notes that after a period of warming that had seen Europe’s population double from the 11th to the 13th centuries, the world entered a period of cooling which historians have long dubbed “The Little Ice Age.” Cooler, wetter summers hit harvests, leading to famines in Europe. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, there was widespread environmental collapse in the face of desertification.

This was all followed of course by the Black Death of the mid-14th century, which struck severely weakened societies and in Europe saw fresh persecution and pogroms against Jewish communities. This pushed many Jews to less developed, eastern regions of the continent; and Christians in Muslim societies also eked out their existence mostly in marginal or remote areas.

Jenkins is hardly the first historian to highlight the impact of climate change on past societies. But his observations are sobering against the backdrop of global warming and environmental pressures in our own time and the role many analysts think they are playing in stoking social conflict in places such as Nigeria and India, where religious tensions run high.

Climate change in our day — which most scientists attribute to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels — is seen exacerbating conflict in poor, rural communities in the developing world in part because of competition over increasingly scarce resources such as arable land and water. It may also raise tensions in overcrowded urban areas as rural migrants leave the land.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that some fundamentalist Christians in the United States think climate change may be a sign of the End of Times — a widespread take in the 14th century on that period’s turmoil. Other U.S. Christians have joined the green crusade on the grounds that rising temperatures and their associated problems will be felt most harshly by the poor, making global warming a moral issue.

What do you think? Are there lessons from the links between religious conflict and climate change in the past that we can usefully draw on today?

On October 9, Pope Benedict will lead the Roman Catholic Church in marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII. There is a lot of interest in what Benedict will say in his homily about his predecessor, arguably the most controversial pontiff of the 20th century because of what he did or did not do to save Jews during the Holocaust. On October 21, the Vatican will open a photographic exhibition on his papacy and on Nov 6-8, two pontifical universities in Rome, the Lateran and the Gregorian, will jointly sponsor a conference on his papacy.

An indication of what Benedict might say on October 9 can be found in his address on September 18 to the Pave the Way Foundation, a mixed Jewish-Catholic group based in the United States and headed by Gary Krupp, a Jew who is also a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St Gregory the Great.  Pave the Way held a unique three-day symposium in Rome in the days leading up to their audience with the pope at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

The title of the symposium was “Examining the Papacy of Pope Pius XII”. It was attended by, among others, panalists such as Sister Magherita  Marchione, an American nun who is feisty despite her 86 years and who has written extensively in defence of Pius, Fr. Peter Gumpel, the Jesuit who is the relator of the cause for Pius’ sainthood, Eugene J. Fisher, who was in charge of Catholic-Jewish relations for the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) from 1997 to 2007, and Andrea Tornielli, an Italian journalist who has  has written extensively on Pius XII and whose most recent biography on the pontiff was released last year.

One interesting aspect of the symposium was the 200-page dossier that it produced. It is a very useful, user-friendly compendium in defence of Pius. While much of the material was already known to scholars, seeing it all between two covers could potentially sway some of Pius’s detractors.

For example,  it contains a confidential 1939 State Department memo from a U.S. diplomat who knew Pius when he was Vatican nuncio in Berlin before the war and before he became pope. He said that, in a meeting with the then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future pontiff described Hitler as “not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person.” The diplomat said Pius had told him he “opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism”.

The dossier also includes many other entries from individuals and scholars aimed at debunking the concept made popular first in 1963 with the publication of Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy, which accused Pius of being an anti-Semite and a Hitler collaborator, and later in 1999 following John Cornwell’s highly controversial book calling Pius Hitler’s Pope. The symposium’s dossier also includes copies of of newspaper clippings from The New York Times, Reuters, The Associated Press, Palestine Post (later Jerusalem Post) and other news organisations in the period before, during and after the war reporting on Pius efforts to help the Jews and his speeches on their behalf.

While the dossier, much of which is available on-line, may  not convince the most hardened of Pius’ detractors, it certainly is a very useful addition to the ongoing debate in what may prove to be a pivitol year.

Rome isn’t the only place where Pius is under review. In Germany, Hubert Wolf, a Catholic priest and church history professor at Münster University, has just published Papst und Teufel (Pope and Devil), a study of Vatican relations with Germany in the turbulent period from 1917 to 1939. Based on documents from the Vatican archive, whose files have been opened up until Pius’s election as pope in 1939, Wolf recounts the internal Vatican debates on how to deal with the Nazis, whether to put Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books (they didn’t) and how to speak out against growing anti-Semitism in Germany (through the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge).

What do you think about Pius? Has he been maligned? Is the tide of opinion turning in his favour?

The French are a tough audience to please and speaking to them about church-state relations is a tall order. Pope Benedict got right down to it at the start of his visit to France, using his courtesy call on President Nicolas Sarkozy to outline his view of the role religion should play in the public sphere. Fluent in French and well-read in the country’s history and culture, he made several interesting points in his short speech.

Here’s the part on church-state relations:

During your visit to Rome, Mr President, you called to mind that the roots of France – like those of Europe – are Christian. History itself offers sufficient proof of this: from its origins, your country received the Gospel message. Even though documentary evidence is sometimes lacking, the existence of Christian communities in Gaul is attested from a very early period: it is moving to recall that the city of Lyon already had a bishop in the mid-second century, and that Saint Irenaeus, the author of Adversus Haereses, gave eloquent witness there to the vigour of Christian thought. Saint Irenaeus came from Smyrna to preach faith in the Risen Christ. This bishop of Lyons spoke Greek as his mother tongue. Could there be a more beautiful sign of the universal nature and destination of the Christian message? The Church, established at an early stage in your country, played a civilizing role there to which I am pleased to pay tribute on his occasion. You spoke of it yourself, during your address at the Lateran Palace last December. The transmission of the culture of antiquity through monks, professors and copyists, the formation of hearts and spirits in love of the poor, the assistance given to the most deprived by the foundation of numerous religious congregations, the contribution of Christians to the establishment of the institutions of Gaul, and later France, all of this is too well known for me to dwell on it. The thousands of chapels, churches, abbeys and cathedrals that grace the heart of your towns or the tranquility of your countryside speak clearly of how your fathers in faith wished to honour him who had given them life and who sustains us in existence.

Many people, here in France as elsewhere, have reflected on the relations between Church and State. Indeed, Christ had already offered the basic criterion upon which a just solution to the problem of relations between the political sphere and the religious sphere could be found. He does this when, in answer to a question, he said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk 12:17). The Church in France currently benefits from a “regime of freedom”. Past suspicion has been gradually transformed into a serene and positive dialogue that continues to grow stronger. A new instrument of dialogue has been in place since 2002, and I have much confidence in its work, given the mutual good will. We know that there are still some areas open to dialogue, which we will have to pursue and redevelop step by step with determination and patience. You yourself, Mr President, have used the expression “laïcité positive” to characterise this more open understanding. At this moment in history when cultures continue to cross paths more frequently, I am firmly convinced that a new reflection on the true meaning and importance of laïcité is now necessary. In fact, it is fundamental, on the one hand, to insist on the distinction between the political realm and that of religion in order to preserve both the religious freedom of citizens and the responsibility of the State towards them; and, on the other hand, to become more aware of the irreplaceable role of religion for the formation of consciences and the contribution which it can bring to—among other things—the creation of a basic ethical consensus within society.

One of the largest medieval buildings in Paris reopens this week as a forum for discussion about faith in the modern world after more than two centuries being used mostly as a fire station and police training centre. The Collège des Bernardins was founded in 1247 by the English Cistercian monk Stephen of Lexington as a residential college for the order’s monks. After the French Revolution, it was taken over by the city.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Paris bought the building and spent five years renovating it to house its theology school and host debates, conferences, art exhibitions and evenings of film and music. Its first major event will be a speech on faith and culture by Pope Benedict, who will address an audience of 700 personalities from the world of French culture on the first day of his Sept. 12-15 visit to France.

The college, whose name comes from its original designation as St. Bernard’s College, stands on the Left Bank just off the Boulevard Saint Germain. The five-year restoration highlighted the building’s simple Gothic architecture while adding modern comforts such as heating, air conditioning and WiFi (see video). The college aims “to serve mankind in all its dimensions — its emotions, its intelligence, its liberty, its relations and its faith”.

The city’s archbishop, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, told journalists during a pre-opening media tour that the Catholic Church needed to promote discussion with modern society. “Our Christian faith, our Christian tradition and wisdom are today immersed in a pluri-religious and pluri-cultural society. Despite the generous and multiple forms of religion on offer, many of our contemporaries do not belong to a specific religion, or have no religion or belief at all.” The discussions will bring together Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and non-believers, to discuss issues including culture, economics, international development and Christian-Jewish relations. Another issue will be the effects of scientific progress on society and questions of bioethics, he said. “How will human identity — what it means to be a man or a woman — be respected and promoted? Will it be reduced to the roll of a tool for the well-being of a few?

“All these questions face us. We don’t all have the same answer. We don’t always have an answer. But we are all confronted with these questions and we cannot avoid them, unless we consider human history to be a fate that mankind cannot change. That is not our conviction.”

The college is the largest civil building in Paris dating from the Middle Ages. Only Notre Dame Cathedral and a few other major medieval churches are larger, said Hervé Baptiste, the Culture Ministry’s chief architect for historical monuments. Thanks to its monument status, the Culture Ministry, Paris City Hall and the Ile-de-France region around Paris contributed 14.5 million euros of the college’s 50-million-euro renovation bill. The rest was financed by contributions from companies and individuals as well as bank loans guaranteed by rents the archdiocese receives from its real estate holdings in the French capital.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe and Ile-de-France Region President Jean-Paul Huchon will join Cardinal Vingt-Trois in inaugurating the college on Thursday.

Recognising when religion plays a part in a military conflict can be a tricky business. Its role can easily be overemphasized, underplayed or misunderstood. Having covered several such conflicts myself, I was curious when I saw Ted Olsen’s post at Christianty Today about how John McCain stresses Georgia’s Christian heritage when talking about its conflict with Russia. When Russian forces rolled into Georgia in support of pro-Moscow separatists there,  McCain’s reaction statement noted that Georgia was “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.” In his televised discussion with leading evangelical pastor Rick Warren on Saturday, he said “the king of then Georgia in the third century converted to Christianity. You go to Georgia and you see these old churches that go back to the fourth and fifth century.”

History is fascinating but McCain’s use of it here begs the question whether there is an actual faith factor in this conflict or just in his presentation of it. Russia, after all, is also a traditionally Christian nation, but he made no mention of that. After the fall of communism there, the Russian Orthodox Church has resumed its traditional role there — as has the Georgian Orthodox Church in the Caucasian republic after state-sponsored atheism lost out there too. There are no obvious doctrinal disputes that divide them.

Church-to-church relations also seem reasonable. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, senior officials of the two churches spoke by telephone last week and “declared their common peacemaking position and readiness to cooperate in this field.” Patriarchs of both churches have called for a ceasefire and condemned the violence among fellow Christians. “Orthodox Christians are among those who have raised their hands against each other. Orthodox peoples called by the Lord to live in fraternity and love confront each other,” Russia’s Primate Alexiy II said. “What is most important (is that) we (are) united with Christian faith and must live peacefully without blood,” Georgian Catholicos Patriarch Ilia II said.

Since Orthodox churches are organised nationally, each side naturally reflects in some way its own country’s political view of the crisis. But even in his protest letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, Ilia’s only reference to religion was his lament that Orthodox were killing each other.

Other religious authorities — Pope Benedict after an Angelus prayer and the World Council of Churches and Conference of European Churches in a joint statement — have also mentioned the two countries’ common Christian heritage in their calls for a ceasefire but not implied it played any role in the conflict.

On his Crunchy Con blog, Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher — a convert to Orthodoxy — branded McCain’s comments as “total and shameless pandering to Evangelicals. As if Russia isn’t a Christian nation. As if Russia hasn’t been Christian for over a thousand years. As if Christianity had anything to do with this conflict.”

Beliefnet editor-in-chief Steven Waldman saw McCain signalling three possible messages to evangelical voters: (1) I think having Christianity as an official religion is a fine idea in general, (2) This is just like the Cold War when the forces of Christianity are at war with the forces of Atheism or (3) I view the protection of Christians from attack worldwide as an important goal.”

What do you think? Does McCain’s selective mention of religion have any relevance to this conflict?

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.

During World War Two, Pope Pius XII was (1) a saintly man, (2) Hitler’s Pope or (3) neither of the above. This question continues to weigh on Catholic-Jewish relations despite all the progress made since the Second Vatican Council. It would be easy to assume that Catholics answer (1) and Jews (2), but the debate is far more complex than that. There are Catholics who say Pius didn’t do enough to help the Jews and Jews who defend him as doing everything he could under the circumstances.

The issue keeps smouldering because the Catholic Church is considering Pius for possible beatification and sainthood. The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League has urged the Church to suspend the procedure until the Vatican declassifies all its wartime archives. The Vatican opened its archives up to 1939 — the end of the papacy of Pope Pius XI — in 2005, but it is still processing the files from Pope Pius XII’s papacy (1939-1958). In the meantime, the controversy has produced a steady stream of books on Pius XII and the Holocaust, only some of which are thumbnailed below.

Pope Benedict XVI has now slowed down the procedure by asking for a further review of the Pius XII dossier, which is 3,500 pages long. Andrea Tornielli, Vatican correspondent of the Italian daily Il Giornale, has reported that Benedict has also decided to set up a committee to review the issue and is concerned about the possible reaction if the Vatican beatified Pius XII too soon. Tornielli, whose fourth book about Pius XII was published in May, says the pontiff was not a callous anti-Semite as some critics portray him.

“This is a black legend that refuses to die. Pius XII has become a lightning rod for all the presumed responsibilities of the Catholic Church in that period,” Tornielli told our Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella. “It is impossible to have a calm historical debate about Pius because he has been branded ‘the Nazi Pope’ and this is a clear distortion of history.”

Father Peter Gumbel, the Jesuit who heads the Church probe int Pius’s qualification for sainthood, said that the department responsible for saints believed the late pope met the requirements for beatification, the first step towards sainthood. It has documented this in a 3,500-page dossier for his “cause,” the Vatican term for the procedure to declare someone a saint.

“In an important cause like this, the Supreme Pontiff wants to think and wants to see things. He is a man of study,” Gumpel told Pullella. He said he had no official word that Pope Benedict had set up a special committee to review the dossier once again, but he thought the Vatican was right to be cautious, especially given the fact that Jewish community leaders and historians were themselves split over Pius XII and his role.

“The pope wants excellent relations with Israel and with the Jewish community and wants to see if any legitimate problem could arise. .. It will have to be seen from a diplomatic point of view if any reasonable, legitimate objections are arise. I’m certain this is not the case but it is a precaution so the pope can always say this has been examined from every possible angle and he can say ‘I’m sorry, study the matter and you will see that these objections are not true.”

“I personally remain convinced of the merits of this cause. It’s simply a question of time for this decree to be signed.”

Are you convinced that Pius XII was a saintly man? Or Hitler’s Pope? Or do you think this issue has become so polarised that it is difficult, if not impossible, to come to an agreed version of what he did and did not do?

Any foreign correspondent who ever covered the old Soviet bloc remembers how the official press seemed to print only news-free communiques and bland official photos. Scanning newspapers like Pravda or Scînteia or Neues Deutschland, the skilled reader looked for subtle changes from the norm as hints of possible shifts in official thinking. Once a slight deviation was sighted, readers would watch to see if it was just a flash in the pan or whether it became a normal feature.

That style of reading came to mind when L’Osservatore Romano published on Sunday what may be its first article ever by a Jewish writer. With its columns of papal speeches and discretion about internal Church issues, the Vatican daily has an unmistakable stylistic likeness to those old party organs. Not in content or purpose or inspiration, I hasten to add (hold the emails, I’m not saying the comparison goes that far). But as newspapers go, it’s as daunting as those other papers and its regular readers develop the same keen sense of small differences. So what does this change mean? Is the official voice of the Catholic Church opening up to views from other faiths? Will Muslims, Hindus or others follow?

The article was a review of a new book Brutti Ricordi (Ugly Memories), an Italian translation of two essays by Israeli academics Anita Shapira and Ephraim Kleiman on the departure of the Palestinians from Israel in 1948-1949 (review here in Italian). The author, Anna Foa, is a history professor at La Sapienza University in Rome. “The byline is not the only significant element,” writes veteran Vatican watcher Sandro Magister of L’Espresso magazine. It was also interesting, he said, that the book dealt with the dispute in Israel about whether the Palestinians left in 1948 “of their own will or were forcibly banished by the victorious Jews.”

Corriere della Sera Vatican correspondent Luigi Accattoli asked the Vatican daily’s new editor Giovanni Maria Vian whether this was the first Jewish author published there. “It’s hard to say, given that our newspaper has a 146-year-long history. There may have been exceptional cases of hospitality, but this is probably the first time that a Jewish voice has been invite to provide a cultural article,” Vian answered. He said he wanted to cover cultural issues more broadly, inviting “authoratative voices of various backgrounds” to contribute. He also plans to have more women writers and beef up the paper’s Internet site.

For more on this unique newspaper, check out a recent entry on Magister’s www.chiesa site (in English this time!) reprinting a witty article “The difficulties of “L’Osservatore Romano” that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini — the future Pope Paul VI — wrote in 1961. It’s down the page, below a portrait of Vian. Two short excerpts:

One will notice immediately that “L’Osservatore” does not speak, for example, of theatre, sports, finance, fashion, judicial trials, cartoons, puzzles… or of anything that would seem to capture the curiosity, if not always the interest, of the so-called general public…

Even when the headline page is not in Latin, one cannot always say that it provides enjoyable reading. Edifying, yes; but no one blames the respectable newspaper if it cannot serve as entertainment, unlike the many other papers that make for amusement and relaxation. And we will say nothing of the page, as ostentatious as can be but full of the usual roundup of Vatican events, which may provide the pleasure of an incomparably grandiose spectacle, but not without a certain suspicion that one has seen all of this before…