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    The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue
    The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue
    The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue
    Ebook71 pages1 hour

    The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue

    By Robert R. Reilly

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    About this ebook

    Robert Reilly provides an assessment of the prospects for dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam. In particular, he highlights the problems posed by their different views of God and humanity. Christian-Muslim dialogue can be meaningful and fruitful, but only if both affirm a God who is reason and that humans possess inalienable rights.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJun 30, 2014
    ISBN9780991614516
    The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue
    Author

    Robert R. Reilly

    Robert R. Reilly is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He has served in the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

    Read more from Robert R. Reilly

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      Book preview

      The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue - Robert R. Reilly

      9780991614516

      The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue

      Upon Muslims, too, the Church looks with this esteem. – Nostra Aetate

      And nearest among them in love to the believers thou wilt find those who say: ‘we are Christians.’ – Q 5.85

      From the Christian perspective, it seems that there is little dispute over the necessity of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam, the world’s two largest religious denominations. In Cologne on August 20, 2006, Benedict XVI said, Interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends. At the Vatican on March 22, 2013, his successor, Francis I, said, It is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.

      This study will begin with a look at 20th-century and more recent Vatican and papal pronouncements on the subject of dialogue with Muslims. What are the reasons for it? What can it hope to achieve? And what reservations have been expressed regarding its limitations? This study will then consider the potential problems for dialogue in the context of the historical background of the predominant Islamic theological school, as it has developed from the 9th century till today. This is extremely important, because this school, Ash‘arism, defined reality for a large part of the Muslim world, and still does. Next, with this perspective in mind, we will analyze the contemporary Muslim responses to Benedict’s statements on Islam, particularly from the Regensburg Lecture. The paper will conclude with a critical assessment of the prospects for dialogue, with a special focus on how dialogue has been conducted in the United States by the three regional conferences of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops.

      In Guidelines for Dialogue between Christians and Muslims, from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Fr. Maurice Borrmans, one of the pioneers of dialogue, wrote that …Christians and Muslims seem now to have entered a time of respect and understanding in which Christians, for their part, try to appreciate Muslims on the basis of the best in the latter’s religious experience. This perspective is essential for any appreciation of Islam. If approached in this manner, a great deal in the Muslim way of life can be grasped with sympathetic understanding.

      Consider, for instance, this entreaty: O God, I ask of you a perfect faith, a sincere assurance, a reverent heart, a remembering tongue, a good conduct of commendation, and a true repentance, repentance before death, rest at death, and forgiveness and mercy after death, clemency at the reckoning, victory in paradise, and escape from the fire, by your mercy, o mighty One, Forgiver. Lord, increase me in knowledge and join me to the good.

      Certainly, not much, if anything, would need to be changed in this prayer for a Christian to say it. Yet it is what Muslims recite at the seventh circumambulation of the ka‘ba during the haj in Mecca. The spiritual impulses and hopes that this prayer expresses make more or less immediately apparent to Christians what they may share in common with Muslims in the best of their religious experience. One must begin, therefore, in any appraisal of the prospects for dialogue with an understanding that Muslims sincerely seek the will of Allah.

      What the Catholic Church Says

      Perhaps the most compelling impetus for dialogue is charity. Several recent popes, including Benedict XVI, have quoted Gregory VII’s missive in 1076 to Al-Nasir, the Muslim Ruler of Bijaya (present day Algeria): Almighty God, who wishes that all should be saved and none lost, approves nothing in so much as that after loving Him one should love his fellow man, and that one should not do to others, what one does not want done to oneself. You and we owe this charity to ourselves especially because we believe in and confess one God, admittedly, in a different way, and daily praise and venerate him, the creator of the world and ruler of this world.

      Needless to say, charity has not been the principal feature of Catholic-Muslim relations over 1,400 years. However, efforts for dialogue began in earnest some 50 years ago, inspired by two church documents. They were preceded in August, 1964, by Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter on the church, Ecclesiam suam, in which he commended adorers of God according to the conception of monotheism, the Muslim religion especially, [as] deserving of our admiration for all that is true and good in their worship of God. Then, four months later, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church announced that the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind (Lumen Gentium 16).

      The second and most extended Vatican II reference to Islam comes in the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (Second Vatican Council, October 28, 1965), which makes clear what is true and good in their worship of God:

      The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom

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