Pope Benedict plans to speak publicly at least 29 times during his May 8-15 trip to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Apart from covering the main points in our news reports, we also plan to post excerpts from his speeches in a FathWorld series called “Papa dixit” (”the pope said”).

(Photo: Pope Benedict leaves Rome for Amman, 8 May 2009/Max Rossi)

Following are comments from the first day, on the plane and in Amman. The pope spoke Italian on the plane but will deliver all his speeches here in English.

COMMENTS ON THE PLANE (Reuters translation from Italian):

MIDEAST PEACE: “Certainly I will try to make a contribution to peace, not as an individual but in the name of the Catholic Church , of the Holy See. We are not a political power but a spiritual force and this spiritual force is a reality which can contribute to progress in the peace process … As believers we are convinced that that prayer is a real force, it opens the world to God. We are convinced that God listens and can affect history and I think that if millions of believers pray it really is a force that has influence and can make a contribution to moving ahead with peace.”

CATHOLICS AND JEWS: He said It was natural that after 2,000 years of separate histories, misunderstandings would develop between Christians and Jews. “We each have to do everything possible to learn each other’s language … I am convinced that we will make progress and this will help peace and reciprocal love.”

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH-MUSLIM DIALOGUE: “Certainly there is a common message. Despite the differences in our origins we have common roots …. Our faith in one God . it is important to have two-way dialogue, with Jews and with Islam but a trilateral dialogue … a trilateral dialogue must move forward. It is very important for peace and also to allow each person to live his or her faith well.”

(Photo: Benedict aboard the plane to Amman, 8 May 2009/Tony Gentile)

CHRISTIANS LEAVING THE MIDDLE EAST: “This is a difficult moment but is also a moment hope and of a new beginning . We want above all to encourage all the Christians of the Middle East and the holy land to stay, to contribute in their own way. These are the countries of their origins. They are an important component of the culture and life of this region”

ARRIVAL SPEECH IN AMMAN:

NATURE OF VISIT: “I come to Jordan as a pilgrim, to venerate holy places that have played such an important part in some of the key events of Biblical history.”

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN THE MIDDLE EAST: “The opportunity that Jordan’s Catholic community enjoys to build public places of worship is a sign of this country’s respect for religion, and on their behalf I want to say how much this openness is appreciated. Religious freedom is, of course, a fundamental human right, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world.”

ISLAM: “My visit to Jordan gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by His Majesty the King in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam. Now that some years have passed since the publication of the Amman Message and the Amman Interfaith Message, we can say that these worthy initiatives have achieved much good in furthering an alliance of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world, confounding the predictions of those who consider violence and conflict inevitable. Indeed the Kingdom of Jordan has long been at the forefront of initiatives to promote peace in the Middle East and throughout the world, encouraging inter-religious dialogue, supporting efforts to find a just solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, welcoming refugees from neighboring Iraq, and seeking to curb extremism.

(Photo: Pope greets Muslim sheikh as King Abdullah looks on, 8 May 2009//Ali Jarekji)

“At the Seminar held in Rome last autumn by the Catholic-Muslim Forum, the participants examined the central role played in our respective religious traditions by the commandment of love. I hope very much that this visit, and indeed all the initiatives designed to foster good relations between Christians and Muslims, will help us to grow in love for the Almighty and Merciful God, and in fraternal love for one another.”

AT THE REGINA PACIS CENTRE FOR THE DISABLED IN AMMAN:

HIS PILGRIMAGE: “Like countless pilgrims before me it is now my turn to satisfy that profound wish to touch, to draw solace from and to venerate the places where Jesus lived, the places which were made holy by his presence… Dear friends, every one of us is a pilgrim… Friends, unlike the pilgrims of old, I do not come bearing gifts or offerings. I come simply with an intention, a hope: to pray for the precious gift of unity and peace, most specifically for the Middle East. Peace for individuals, for parents and children, for communities, peace for Jerusalem, for the Holy Land, for the region, peace for the entire human family; the lasting peace born of justice, integrity and compassion, the peace that arises from humility, forgiveness and the profound desire to live in harmony as one.”

PRAYER: “Prayer is hope in action. And in fact true reason is contained in prayer: we come into loving contact with the one God, the universal Creator, and in so doing we come to realize the futility of human divisions and prejudices and we sense the wondrous possibilities that open up before us when our hearts are converted to God’s truth, to his design for each of us and our world.”

(Photo: Pope and king at arrival, 8 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

“Dear young friends … Your experience of trials, your witness to compassion, and your determination to overcome the obstacles you encounter, encourage me in the belief that suffering can bring about change for the good. In our own trials, and standing alongside others in their struggles, we glimpse the essence of our humanity, we become, as it were, more human. And we come to learn that, on another plane, even hearts hardened by cynicism or injustice or unwillingness to forgive are never beyond the reach of God, can always be opened to a new way of being, a vision of peace. I exhort you all to pray every day for our world.”

Multicultural Malaysia, whose official religion is Islam but which has sizeable numbers of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, has been struggling of late to ensure religious freedoms for its minorities, without offending the sensibilities of majority Muslims.

In the latest case, a Malaysian court granted permission to a Christian to challenge the authorities for seizing religious materials that used the word “Allah”. The government has banned the use of the Arabic word to describe God by all except for Muslims, saying it might confuse Muslims or offend their sensisibilities.

(Photo: A Hindu pilgrim outside Kuala Lumpur, 8 Feb 2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

The Catholic Herald, Malaysia’s main Catholic newspaper, has been fighting the government for months over the right to use the word “Allah”. Herald Editor Rev. Lawrence Andrew argues that Malaysian Christians have used “Allah” as their term for God for centuries. In a recent edition, the Herald slammed a new locally produced Bible, which further muddied these troubled waters by using the Hebrew word “Elohim” instead of “Allah” (or God for that matter) for the Almighty.

The new government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, which took over last month, is trying to portray itself as reformist. It has begun dismantling, albeit in an incremental way, some of the economic and educational privileges guaranteed Malay Muslims under Malaysia’s ethnically based political system. Najib’s government has undertaken a review of a draconian internal security law that allows indefinite detention without trial and which has been used liberally against Indian and Chinese opposition figures.

In another apparent concession to religious pressure, Legal Affairs Minister Nazri Aziz last month banned the conversion of children to Islam without the consent of both parents. The decision concerned the highly publicised case of a 34-year-old Hindu woman, Indira Gandhi (no relation to the late Indian leader), whose estranged husband converted to Islam and then did the same with their children. Nazri said minors were to be bound by the common religion of their parents at the time of marriage, even if one parent were later to become a Muslim. A number of Muslim organisations were opposed to the move, saying it was unfair to the Muslim parent, and the case has wound up in the courts.

(Photo: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, 10 April 2009/Udo Weitz)

Najib’s reform platform may make some Malay Muslims uneasy. But the coalition government led by the Malay nationalist UMNO party is responding to the debacle it suffered in the last general election, when minorities, and even many Malays, deserted a coalition that has ruled Malaysia uninterrupted since 1957, and made a huge swing to the fractious opposition alliance.

So the government will likely continue its balancing act, offsetting concessions to Hindu and Christians here with a sop to Muslims there. The Ahmadiyyas, a moderate but controversial Muslim sect, may have lost out in these equations. An Islamic council issued a fatwa against the sect last month that bans it from conducting prayers in its mosque. The Ahmadis are considered heretical by some Muslims because they refuse to accept the Prophet Mohammad was Islam’s final prophet, and say that the founder of the sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is a prophet and messiah.

All of this is taking place as Muslims have taken a more activist approach to the changing religious climate in Malaysia. A coalition of 50 Malaysian Muslim non-governmental organsiations known as Pembela that came together in 2006 has been spearheading the fight against apostasy, particularly the series of conversion cases (including Indira Gandhi’s) that have come before the courts the last few years.

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” Or politics in Malaysia for that matter.

(Photo: A Malaysian Muslim at prayer, January 2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a Utah city can refuse to put a religious group’s monument in a public park near a similar Ten Commandments display. You can see our story here.

The justices unanimously sided with the city of Pleasant Grove, which had said a ruling for the religious group would mean public parks across the country would have to allow privately donated monuments that express different views from those already on display.

The Summum religious group, founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, sought in 2003 to erect a monument to the tenets of its faith, called the “Seven Aphorisms,” in a park where there are other monuments, including a Ten Commandments display.

In the court’s opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the placement of a permanent monument in a public park was not subject to scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech clause.

The public display of religious objects is a frequent flash point in America’s never-ending “culture wars.”

What do you think? Does the decision violate the group’s right to free speech? Or were attorneys for the city right in arguing that a favorable decision for the Summum group could force cities and states to remove long-standing monuments or result in public parks nationwide becoming cluttered with monuments.

(Photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed, June 27, 2005, USA)

Two Jewish leaders due to meet Pope Benedict on Thursday say he has to ensure the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) changes some of its core views before current Catholic-Jewish strains can ease. We’ve run a news story on my interviews with them and a timeline on Catholic-Jewish relations. To give a fuller picture of what they’re saying, here are the transcripts of our talks.

__________

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

(Photo: Conference of Presidents)

What do you hope to get from the meeting with the pope tomorrow? Can steps be taken to put this behind you?

Yes, I do believe that steps can be taken for us to turn this very negative experience into something positive and that is to use this as an opportunity, a pervasive opportunity in the Church, to root out those who engage in Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism of any form, for the Church to declare that there is no place within the Church for people who espouse such abhorrent views, that they renounce them and say that they will not countenance their presence. It is not just Bishop Williamson but members of that group, the organisation of which he is part, who have espoused anti-Semitic views over the years. I think it is important that before there can be an reconciliation with them, that not only there has to be a complete renunciation of those views and the Church establishing this as a standard and that the message will go out, especially at a time when we are seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, that the Church can play a critical role in helping to stem it and to declare it morally objectionable and religiously unacceptable.

What do want to hear from the pope tomorrow and what do you think he must say to start putting this behind us?

There are several things we hope to hear from His Holiness tomorrow. I think that he must renounce the organisation and their views and make it clear that there can be no reconciliation until there is complete transformation in their views and public renunciation not only of Holocaust denial but of their anti-Semitic expressions as well and there will be an effort by the Church to address this within the Church itself and to the public to help make clear that there can be no justification for such views, that the views of people like (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, who espouses Holocaust denial, will find comfort in the fact that this group could be reconciled with the Church.

So, it is imperative for there to be a clear statement of declaration. There can be very great efforts by the Church and His Holiness tomorrow can help issue a clarion call about the rise of anti-Semitism, the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in any form, including those who call for the destruction of Israel, the de-legitimisation of Israel, a clear reaffirmation of the principles and tradition of Nostra Aetate. This I think (would be) a very important statement on the part of the Church at this time, for a group that renounces those principles and those provisions, to make clear that the Church stands by the commitments and that it expects all of the members of the Church to adhere to it.

Some members of the Vatican hierarchy say there were not aware of Bishop Williamson’s background. What do you think of that?

Well, it certainly raises questions, some of which remain unanswered, and we heard from the members of the hierarchy that they are deeply disturbed by the process. The question is at what point in the hierarchy were there people who knew but didn’t think it was significant or who may have even agreed with some of those views or didn’t believe that that this was reason
enough not to permit this process to go forward and to inform His Holiness, who has said he did not know about the views of Bishop Williamson and others. It seems this is a problem within the Church, not for us to decide, but for the Church itself to investigate and perhaps proper action taken to prevent its recurrence but also to hold to account those who were responsible.

(Photo: Pope Benedict with cardinals and archbishops at the Vatican, 22 Dec 2008/Max Rossi)

Did this wipe out decades of dialogue? You are now on the road to recovery but do you thing that the pain will be there forever?

The pain is very deep, especially for survivors in our community who went through the hell of the Holocaust and then are told that it is denied by people and that the Church didn’t feel that that wasn’t a litmus test for the actions that were taken. And for the community as a whole it seemed as not only symbolic but substantively very significant. But I believe that everyone wants to go into a process of reconciliation, a positive and constructive cooperation. We want it, I know that the Church has told us they want it. The question is what steps will be taken now, how do we take this opportunity and the Church take this opportunity to assert positively its positions on the issues of concern, on the issues that we have raised and see to it that we turn a negative into a positive.

__________

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, senior rabbi at New York’s Park East Synagogue, where he hosted the pope last year

(Photo by Gary Hershorn, 18 April 2008)

You welcomed the pope to your synagogue last year in New York. How did you feel when the whole Williamson affair exploded?

I am a Holocaust survivor. I lost my family in Auschwitz. I am a witness of man’s inhumanity to man. Therefore it was a despicable ideology that has no place, no room in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. I must say that I think that Pope Benedict’s visit, the first papal visit to a synagogue in
America, was a very significant moment because it shows his personal outreach and commitment to the Jewish community.

What would like to hear from him tomorrow about Williamson, about anti-Semitism and about the SSPX?

I can rely on Pope Benedict to send the right message. He already made a statement, a very clear statement, a firm statement, condemning Holocaust denial but also describing the relationship between our two communities and therefore I think what needs to be reiterated is a reaffirmation of the guidelines of Nostra Aetate and a very firm stand against anti-Semitism. There is no room for anti-Semite or Holocaust denier in the Church post-Vatican II.

What do think of the SSPX? Is the problem deeper than Williamson?

I think the problem is deeper than Williamson because of what the Pius X Society stands for, that is why they were excommunicated to begin with, because they rejected Vatican II. But I must say, as a Holocaust survivor, you have to look beyond the moment and we have a great opportunity to even strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations after this particular event.

What do you think went wrong in the Vatican. Some people, like Cardinal Kasper, didn’t know about the decree until just before it was made public.

(Photo: Clouds over the Vatican, 12 Dec 2008/Chris Helgren)

Really, I like to be constructive. The meeting with Pope Benedict tomorrow, when I will present leaders of the American Jewish community to Pope Benedict, is a very important statement in itself. Second, we need to find ways to heal the wounds and the pain, and particularly as a Holocaust survivor you can understand that I don’t have to read history books. I’m an eyewitness. We need to heal the wounds and then just build on the future because we need each other. Catholics and Jews need to work together. There are so many issues facing mankind. For the benefit of our own communities and in service to humanity. So, let’s not get stuck. There has to be not only clarification, there has to be a reiteration of the policy of Vatican II which
is the basis, the foundation, the road map of a relationship that really has come a long way. We have made many, many achievements. I also thing that the forthcoming visit of Pope Benedict to Israel will also be a very significant moment to even strengthen our relationship.

Do you think the visit to Israel will help heal this the way his visit to Turkey helped heal the Regensburg affair?

Let’s be clear. This is not just a Catholic-Jewish issue. Holocaust denial, yes, it certainly afflicts those of us who survived the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished. It’s beyond that. I think the very basic commitment of Vatican II, the vision of a Church reaching out, inter-religious dialogue, which has happened, that is being questioned by the Pius X society. So it’s just not a question of the Jewish community vs. the Catholic Church position. We have worked together on Nostra Aetate and were are very proud of some of our achievements, considering the past history of tensions. But we are going to go beyond that. We will emerge, I’m convinced, much, much stronger, with better understand of one another and
working together. However, there has to be a very clear affirmation that those who reject some of the values that we cherish, that are very basic in the Bible, in the Torah, that those values of respect for human dignity, respect for your fellow man, human rights, religious freedom, these are basic rights that every human being has and these rights are, again, reaffirmed in Vatican II. As a result of the reaffirmation, we have been able to work together all these years and have made progress. We still have a long way to go, but still … so yes, I feel that, yes, this is a painful moment, but on the other hand also an opportunity to go beyond this crisis and emerge in the better understanding and cooperation that we need to have.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Sarah Sayeed is Program Associate and Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York.

By Sarah Sayeed and Matthew Weiner

A Canadian judge recently ruled that a Toronto Muslim woman must take off her face veil while giving testimony in a sexual assault trial. This tension between public space and private religion comes up repeatedly in western urban centers where Muslim women increasingly occupy the pubic square.  This time it happened in Toronto, but the issue arises regularly in western countries in the schools, workplaces and courtrooms that Muslims increasingly share with the majority population. At stake is whether a Muslim woman’s choice to dress in accordance with her religious beliefs infringes upon “our way of life.”

(Photo: Sultaana Freeman testifies in court for right to wear a niqab on her Florida driver’s license, 27 May 2003/pool)

While all can agree that identity, tolerance and religious freedom are important, advocates for the face veil emphasize the upholding of freedom while opponents focus on the face veil, or niqab, as a challenge to collective identity.  Such tension between public expression of religion and collective identity is not new.  It has even gone on for centuries in Muslim countries, where religious minorities feel the tension between acceptance and their need to adapt, in varying degrees, to a Muslim majority worldview.  There is also a debate within Muslim communities about whether wearing the niqab is a religious requirement.

What seems problematic in the current debate, whether in Toronto or Milan, is the implication that Europeans and North Americans are willing to tolerate differences, but only up to a limit.   Some differences seem too threatening for them to consider seriously.  They seem to think some differences should be made invisible.  Thus, and perhaps inadvertently, the opponents of the niqab - who see themselves as the defenders of collective identity - call into question another value and practice that is central to Western democracy: open dialogue in the public sphere.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Westerners have agreed that tolerance and open discussion in a public space helps prevent violence and fosters community. It is a proud tradition. The great moral effect of creating a public space was that people from different traditions, with different views and different styles of conversing, could join in a shared process.  Tolerance - putting up with something you do not agree with - is understood here as an uncomfortable but necessary virtue.

(Photo: Female Saudi pharmacist in Jeddah, 4 June 2007/Susan Baaghil)

In deliberative democracy, each side or point of view must be given a chance to express itself and be subject to deliberation.  No side of the debate should be suppressed or dismissed without due consideration. However the niqab, when allowed into the public square, is a message that by itself questions the very boundaries of what is public versus private.  It is a mode of dress that suggests a different social order, a different public square.

Should people who cover their faces (and their mouths) speak and deliberate in the public square with those who do not?  There seem to be several good reasons for saying yes.

While it may be genuinely strange for us to encounter people with their heads and faces covered, it need not violate the principles of public space or democratic discourse.  Orthodox Jews are not supposed to shake hands or interact too closely with the opposite sex. This is accepted.  Advocates of public space need to recognize that if the public is genuinely democratic, every minority voice needs an opportunity to participate on their terms.  While this necessarily changes how discourse takes place, it is possible that the change will strengthen rather than threaten the collective.

Secondly, if women wearing a niqab are not permitted to engage in the public square in Western societies, the ripple effects may even impede the democratization of Muslim societies and keep Muslim women out of public life.  People who hold their religious values dear may choose — or worse, be forced — to remain out of the public square if they are not permitted to enter on their own terms.

(Photo: University graduate in Sanaa, Yemen, 30 July 2008/Khaled Abdullah)

If a community cannot express itself publicly in a way true to their own identity, what will this lead to?  Who will it exclude? What effect will such exclusion have, not only on the community at large, but on minorities’ ability to integrate in a way that maintains their identity?  And what will the impact of slow democratization in Muslim nations have for women’s rights and the larger global fabric?

There does not seem to be an easy answer, either to these questions or to the debate at hand. But deciding what makes the public square public and how people participate in public deliberation goes beyond the simple debate of religious freedom and national identity.  What is important for now is that someone spearhead a healthy discussion that seeks to think through these nuances, as opposed to the current polarized debate that simply compounds a growing divide between communities. Sadly, some who call for a dialogue with Muslims start with the proviso that Muslim women follow their standards for what is properly public.  This is not a partnership-based beginning.  Rather it will be the communities who move in the direction of real conversation, with openness to change, that will deserve to be called defenders of the pubic sphere.

The Rohingyas, a Muslim minority fleeing oppression and hardship in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, have been called one of the most persecuted people on earth. But they have seldom hit the headlines — until recently, that is. More than 500 Rohingyas are feared to have drowned since early December after being towed out to sea by the Thai military and abandoned in rickety boats. The army has admitted cutting them loose, but said they had food and water and denied sabotaging the engines of the boats.

(Photo: Rohingyas in immigration area in soutwestern Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)

The Rohingyas are becoming a headache for Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia where they have washed up. Indonesian authorities this week rescued 198 Rohingya boat people off the coast of Aceh, after three weeks at sea. Buddhist Thailand and mostly Muslim Indonesia call them economic migrants looking for work at a time when countries in the region, like everywhere else, are in an economic downturn. But human rights groups such as Amnesty International are calling on governments in the region to provide assistance to the Rohingyas and let the UNHCR  have access to them.

Myanmar’s generals have a shabby enough record with their Buddhist majority. The brutal suppression of monk-led protests that killed at least 31 people in September 2007 and the continued detention of opposition icon and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi bear witness to that. But their treatment of ethnic minorities, including the Muslim Rohingyas and the Christian Chin people in the mountainous Northwest — where insurgents have been fighting for autonomy — have been especially brutal. They are not oppressed because of their faith alone, but their faith and ethnicity make them targets. The military government does not recognise them as one of the country’s 130-odd ethnic minorities. They are forbidden from marrying or traveling without permission and have no legal right to own land.

(Photo: Thai policeman with Rohingyas at immigration area in southwest Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)

Most Rohingyas come from Rakhine State, also known as Arakan State, in northwest Myanmar, abutting the border with Bangladesh.  Their roots go back at least to 1821, when Britain annexed the region as a province of British India and brought in large numbers of Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers. When Burma won independence from Britain in 1948, the Bengali-speaking Muslim population near the border exceeded that of the Buddhists, leading to secessionist tensions. This translated into harassment following the 1962 coup that has led to nearly five decades of military rule by the ethnic Burman majority. Thousands fled to Bangladesh to escape a 1978 military census of the Rohingyas called “Operation Dragon.”

Refugees typically leave Rakhaine state for Bangladesh first before taking off in their flimsy fishing boats to find a new life elsewhere in Southeast Asia. On a recent Reuters visit to a Bangladeshi refugee camp, our correspondent Nizam Ahmed heard harrowing tales of being rape, torture and slave labour. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 200,000 Rohingyas now live a perilous, stateless existence in Bangladesh. As a result, thousands have fled to try to start new lives, chancing their luck in rickety wooden boats they hope will get them to Malaysia, home to 14,300 official Rohingya refugees and maybe half as many again unregistered ones.

(Photo: Rohingya refugees prepare lunch at a naval base in Indonesia’s Sabang Island, 30 Jan 2009/Tarmizy Harva)

To Myanmar’s generals, the Rohingyas are a suspect lot who support local insurgencies that threaten the unity of the country. To Myanmar’s neighbours, they are fresh wave of boat people in Asia’s endless migrations impelled by destitution. To human rights and religious groups, they are persecuted minorities. As for the desperate and stateless Rohingyas who sail off in flimsy boats hoping to wash up on a friendly shore, they just need somewhere to call home.

(Photo: Pope Benedict at his weekly Vatican audience, 28 Jan 2009/Tony Gentile)

Pope Benedict clarified a crucial point in the Vatican’s dispute with the rebel traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) during his regular weekly audience today. Apart from the issue of Bishop Richard Williamson and his denial of the Holocaust, which has angered Jewish leaders and caught most of the headlines, the decision to lift the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops raised serious concerns among many Catholics because it seemed to signal a departure from reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council. Specifically, by lifting the bans without demanding the SSPX bishops first recognise all Council reforms, it looked like Benedict was not trying to defend these Church teachings against their most implacable critics. Benedict has long been a champion of a conservative re-interpretation of the Council so any concessions he makes to the SSPX go beyond the narrow issue involved.

The Second Vatican Council was a major and complex event (well explained in the new book What Happened At Vatican II by Georgetown University Professor John W. O’Malley pictured at right). Its reforms include the opening to Jews, Muslims and other religions and a commitment to religious freedom. They replaced earlier teachings that Jews were Christ-killers, that all other faiths were deeply in error and that democracy and the separation of church and state were modernist aberrations. Many Catholics would not be able to recognise their own Church if it went back to those notions. Some would even leave if it did.  But the SSPX officially rejects these reforms as grave errors and it refused to agree to them as a pre-condition for having the excommunications lifted.

The fact that Benedict agreed to lift the bans without gaining this concession from them (which the Vatican was demanding as late as last June) prompted speculation that he would fudge this condition in the negotiations due with the SSPX to regularise their status within the Church. SSPX Superior General Bishop Bernard Fellay fuelled this suspicion by writing a triumphant letter to his followers clearly stating he had not made this concession (the Vatican statement was not clear on this point). Statements from the Vatican in reaction to the uproar about Williamson have been curiously defensive. Church officials have said his views were unacceptable and not related to the excommunication issue. Those statements were fine as far as they went. But they never shifted to the offensive and said, “And what’s more, we’ll demand that they sign up to all Vatican II documents.” The whole episode led Catholics to ask, as did blogger David Gibson, “Why so much for this group?”

This point was not lost on Catholic bishops elsewhere. On Monday, the German bishops’ conference said the SSPX must accept Vatican II, especially the document Nostra Aetate that set relations with Jews on a new basis. On Tuesday, the bishops’ conference in Switzerland — where the SSPX has its headquarters — said the same thing, also citing Nostra Aetate. Today, the French bishops’ conference joined in, saying that “The Second Vatican Council is not negotiable at all. No Church group can take the place of the Magesterium,” the overall teaching of the Church. While none of these statements criticised the Vatican directly, they were stage-whispered shouts of concern to Rome that the Vatican was going too soft on the SSPX.

At his audience today, Benedict made three special announcements. The first hailed the election of Metropolitan Kirill — a friend of the Vatican — as the new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The third repeated Benedict’s condemnation of the Holocaust and solidarity with Jews — a well-known position he would not have had to repeat if this whole episode had not been presented so poorly in the first place.

(Photo: Pope Benedict speaks with Holocaust survivor at Auschwitz, 28 May 2006/pool)

The second announcement concerned the lifting of the SSPX excommunications:

“I hope that this gesture of mine will be followed by the desired commitment on their part to take the further steps needed to achieve full communion with the Church, thereby showing true loyalty and true recognition of the Magisterium and the authority of the pope and of the Second Vatican Council.”

That still doesn’t mean the SSPX will follow through. There is good reason to expect the coming negotiations to be extremely difficult and the SSPX will try to deconstruct this statement to the point where they don’t have to make any concessions. But at least now, after four days of vagueness, Benedict has given the impression of drawing a line in the sand. Let’s see how it holds up when the SSPX starts negotiating with Rome.

What do you think? Will Benedict stand up for Vatican II? Or is he using this as another way to re-interpret it in a more conservative way?

Pope Benedict is reportedly planning to lift the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist Catholic bishops who have defied the Vatican for decades by rejecting some central reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Andrea Tornielli, the well-informed vaticanista of the Italian daily Il Giornale, says the decree inviting the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) back to the Roman fold should be announced this weekend. If this is true (which, given Tornielli’s track record, it presumably is),  the unanswered question now is: who caved?

(Photo: Pope Benedict at the Vatican, 10 Jan 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

Our vaticanista Phil Pullella writes that lifting the excommunications “would be a major gesture by Benedict to resolve a crisis in the Church that surfaced in 1988, when the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre illegally consecrated four bishops without the requisite permission of the late Pope John Paul.”

The Swiss-based SSPX has about a million followers worldwide compared to 1.1 billion for the official Church. It maintains the old Latin Mass and rejects Vatican II reforms such as dialogue with other religions.

Benedict has already granted the SSPX several concessions in his attempt to heal the 20-year-old schism. In 2007, he granted widespread permission for the return of the old-style Latin Mass. Before Easter 2008, when it was unclear whether that meant the traditionalists could use an old Latin prayer on Good Friday that Jews consider anti-Semitic, he rewrote the prayer in a way that dissatisfied both Jews and the SSPX.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the current head of the SSPX, has been running a two-track campaign for years to get the excommunications (which include his own) lifted. On the one hand, he has turned on the charm, professed loyalty to the pope and even launched a prayer drive in which the faithful prayed 1.7 million rosaries to the Virgin Mary over the past two months to have the bans lifted.

On the other hand, he has until now steadfastly refused to accept the Second Vatican Council reforms as valid. When the Vatican challenged him last June to give “a commitment to avoid the pretence of a Magisterium superior to the Holy Father and to not put forward the Fraternity [SSPX] in opposition to the Church,” he gave a vague answer that even an SSPX spokesman described as “an answer without a response.”

(Photo: Bishop Bernard Fellay, 13 Jan 2006/Franck Prevel)

Until now, despite his sympathy for the traditionalists and their defence of the old liturgy, Benedict has insisted that the SSPX must accept Vatican II, especially its statements on religious freedom that stick in the Lefebvrists’ throats. The relevant documents here, especially Nostra Aetate on relations with Judaism and other non-Christian religions, are the basis for the interfaith dialogue and reconciliation the Vatican has conducted since the Council.  But only a few years ago, Father Franz Schmidberger, a top SSPX official who was Lefebvre’s right-hand man, said Benedict should tell Jews and members of other religions to convert because they are part of “false systems.”

So if the Vatican and the SSPX bishops have come to an agreement, who caved? Did the SSPX bishops agree to fully accept Vatican II? Or has Benedict loosened that requirement by making an exception for them? Or have they found a form of words that will let both sides say the SSPX bishops are loyal to the pope and Vatican II, but let them go on as before rejecting the reforms they don’t like?

Compared to an agreement Lefebvre signed with the Vatican in 1988 and later renounced, last June’s ultimatum was much less explicit. Its main point was that the SSPX had to accept the pope’s authority and stop criticising him in public. If this agreement is as vague, it seems that would allow the SSPX to continue much as today as long as it agrees not to make its disagreements so public.

There is also the question of whether all four SSPX bishops will return to Rome — or be accepted. After Tornielli’s article ran, the Times in London ran a story about how one of the four — British-born Richard Williamson — denied the Holocaust just this week in an interview with Swedish TV. See the video on the Daily Telegraph’s Holy Smoke blog. The German-born pope has already angered Jews to the point that Italian rabbis boycotted an Italian Church day this month commemorating Judaism. What will it look like if he brings a Holocaust denier back into the Roman fold?

Many Italians were shocked to find pictures in their daily newspapers recently of Muslims kneeling in prayer on the piazzas in front of the cathedrals in Milan and Bologna during demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
Predictably, politicians in the centre-right government criticised the protests with some, including the ministers for defence and European affairs, calling them a blasphemous provocation.

(Photo: Il Giornale says Milan square “transformed into a mosque”)

The government ministers noted that it would be impossible for Christians to pray in Mecca and one called on the Roman Catholic Church to take a harder stand and be less tolerant.

Critics of the demonstrations have found an unlikely ally in Yahya Pallavicini, the vice-president of CO.RE.IS, Italy’s Islamic Religiuos Community. The demonstrations were organised by another Islamic group, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII) and Pallavicini thinks they went over the top.

“We pray in our mosques and in our in mosques and our homes but using prayer during demonstrations in such a theatrical way after burning U.S. and Israeli flags creates disorder and leads to the stereotyping of Islam in Italy,” he told me in a phone conversation. “This is a manouevre to try to help fundamentalist positions.”

“This is a very misleading use of religion, this is the strategy of Hamas,” he said.

After some Catholics expressed outrage over the prayers in front of Milan’s cathedral, some Muslims apologised to the city’s archbishop, Cardinal Dionisio Tettamanzi. But Pallavicini urged the prelate not to accept their apology and to take a hard line instead against Muslims who abuse religion for political purposes.

Do you think Muslims crossed a red line by praying in front of these cathedrals or do you think they have a right to do so?

(Photo: Milan cathedral, 13 Jan 2001/Stefano Rellandini)

Here is an Italian video discussing the Muslim prayer protest in Milan. Footage of the protest runs from 0:54 to 1:26:

Of all the things to get exercised about, yoga would seem to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. But such has been the case in Malaysia this week.

Malaysia’s prime minister declared on Wednesday that Muslims can after all practice the Indian exercise regime, so long as they avoid the meditation and chantings that reflect Hindu philosophy. This came after Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council told Muslims to roll up their exercise mats and stop contorting their limbs because yoga could destroy the faith of Muslims.

It has been a tough month for the fatwa council chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, who in late October issued an edict against young women wearing trousers, saying that was a slippery path to
lesbianism. Gay sex is outlawed in Malaysia.

The council’s rulings, and other religious controversies, might at first blush seem to indicate a growing strain of conservative Islam in mostly Muslim Malaysia. But it could also
reflect the growing unease of Islamic authorities in defending the faith in a rapidly modernising Malaysia where non-Muslims constitute 40 percent of the population and are increasingly
asserting their rights.

The yoga fatwa stirred up a hornet’s next, not only in the blogosphere where that could be expected, but in another deeply conservative Malaysian institution — the sultans.  Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who presides ceremonially over the central state of Selangor, said Abdul’s fatwa council should have consulted the nine hereditary Malay rulers who take turns being Malaysia’s king before announcing the ruling.  The highly unusual comment from one of the sultans on a
policy matter suggests some discord about who speaks for Malaysia’s Muslims on matters of faith. Islam is the official religion in multi-religious Malaysia and the constitution designates the nine sultans as guardians of the faith. The (rotating) king is the head of Islam in Malaysia.

The sultans, for their part, have seen what remains of their secular powers eroded over the years, particularly under the two-decade administration of former prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad. They could be defending a last bastion of royal prerogoative in the religious arena.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badaw, who has been preaching a moderate brand of Islam called Islam Hadhari, moved to contain the damage saying Muslims can do exercises like the “sun
salutation” so long as they don’t start chanting.

The fatwa council’s rulings, in any case, are not legally binding until they are adopted as national laws or sharia (Islamic) laws in individual states. There seems to be little appetite for that. No laws have been made against young women wearing trousers. The government in May dropped a proposal to restrict women from travelling abroad by themselves after a storm of derision from women activist groups.

But even as the flap over yoga is relaxing, the government is crossing swords with Christian groups.

A Christian federation  claimed Bibles were seized at entry points earlier this year. Malaysian Catholics are having an ontological argument with the authorities about the word “Allah”.
The government banned the Malay-language section of a Catholic weekly newspaper from using the word, saying it creates confusion among Muslims. Catholics say Allah is simply the Arabic word for
“God”, and has long been used in Malay-language Bibles. (A Dutch bishop has stirred debate in Europe with a similar argument)

Non-muslims, who constitute 40 percent of Malaysia’s population, sometimes worry that things such as the fuss over fatwas and words for God, may augur a mini-clash of civilisations in Malaysia, which last year saw a harsh crackdown on Indian rights protesters. It was one year ago that 10,000 ethnic Indians defied tear gas and waterr cannon to voice complaints of racial and religious discrimination in its biggest ever anti-government street protest.