Yet another clue that Mgr J-M Lustiger is a shoo-in for the next Pope:
In picking new pope, a key issue is Islam
By Ian Fisher The New York Times
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
ROME One is from Nigeria, a man who grew up among Muslims and who says there is no clash of civilizations. Another is from Germany, who believes it might be useful to talk to Muslims but that it is better to revitalize Christianity. Others speak of the need for Muslims in Europe to integrate better or even to become more secular.
By coincidence or not, many cardinals mentioned as candidates to be the next pope have strongly expressed positions on the issue of Islam, and whether the Roman Catholic Church's relations with Muslims should be conciliatory or a notch more confrontational.
It is an issue for which John Paul II had a consistent, even ground-breaking, strategy: talk at all costs, even if there were few concrete results. Within the Vatican, and especially since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the pope's unbudging advocacy of dialogue long spawned critics inside the Vatican, most of them quiet, who considered the policy as not muscular enough.
Now, Islam is shaping up as a key issue for the 115 cardinals selecting the new pope. But it is a complicated and delicate one. On Islam, experts say, it is less a matter of absolutely opposing camps than of shades and emphasis, with nonetheless major consequences. Much of it revolves around two questions: How great a danger does Islam present to Christianity? And how useful is it to continue, in the same way, John Paul's policy of dialogue?
"It would be too much to say there is a split because the lines are not clearly drawn," said the Reverend Daniel Madigan, a Jesuit who heads a program on interreligious dialogue at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome.
But it is clear that some in the church - among them cardinals who will vote for the new pope - see Islam as a threat and too much talk with Muslims unproductive. "For some people, it's a time to close ranks, that dialogue is a sign of weakness," Madigan said.
"So the attitude of some people would be to hold the line, let's not give people the idea that we're not sure who we are.
And that flows into the theological notion of: If we've got the truth, what do we have to learn from anybody else?"
Most of the possible papal candidates lean closer to John Paul's embrace of dialogue. But there are hints too that cardinals want to overcome what has been a major internal criticism of the pope's efforts at talks with Muslims: that it has only managed to reach out to moderates, not the hard-liners.
"I would hope that in the future the way of dialogue would in fact increase and make inroads in the other parts of Islam," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the archbishop of Westminster, told reporters here on April 6. "That needs to be done as a matter of urgency for the sake of peace in our world."
Church experts say Islam remains pressing since it intersects centrally with other major issues facing the church: increasing secularism in Europe, contrasting with the revival of religion in the Islamic world; relations with other religions, a top priority for John Paul; and the rising number of Muslim immigrants in Europe. The dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East is also a major concern.
John Paul reached out to Muslims like no other pope: He was the first on record to step inside a mosque, in Damascus in 2001, and issued an apology for past misdeeds of the church that many have read to include the Crusades. In scores of speeches to Muslims, he emphasized not arcane theological differences but similar beliefs.
In Morocco in 1986 he said, "We believe in the same God, the only God, the living God, the God that creates worlds and brings its creatures to perfection."
But his reaching out worried some church officials as veering toward "relativism," that no religion is intrinsically truer than another. And on Islam specifically, some critics in or close to the church often suggested that Islam was essentially a warlike and evangelizing religion, which no amount of dialogue would change.
Renzo Guolo, an Italian author and expert on Islam in Europe, said that John Paul's moral authority blocked a fuller discussion on Islam inside the church.
"The successor of the pope will have to confront this issue," he said.
To some degree, the central figure in the debate - as with many other questions facing the church - is the influential Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger, 77, head of church doctrine under Pope John Paul II, is one of the most conservative voices in the church - a possible pope, but certainly someone whose views will be heard in the conclave that selects the new pope starting on April 18.
And inside the church, he represents a skeptical faction, one that sees the relationship between Christianity and Islam more in competition.
Last year, he said he personally opposed Turkey's inclusion into the European Union, saying in an interview with Le Figaro that "Turkey has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe."
He was the driving force behind the contentious document "Dominus Jesus" in 2000, which did not mention Islam by name, but, in calling for a new Catholic evangelization, posited that Christianity is the truth and other beliefs are a lesser search for truth.
He has also worried about the moral and religious clarity that Islam has been able to stir in its believers, a clarity he says has been lost in the Christian West.
He calls for Europe to renew its Christian roots, essentially to return to the faith, "if it truly wants to survive." Many possible papal candidates agree in part with Ratzinger's views, especially on the need for spiritual renewal in Europe. But most take a less confrontational stance, putting a greater emphasis on the possibilities of dialogue with Muslims to overcome problems.
Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Venice, considered a top Italian candidate to become pope, went so far as to publicly disagree with Ratzinger on one issue. In a recent interview, also with Le Figaro, he said that Turkey should not be ruled out as a member of the European Union.
"Just saying no doesn't protect us from anything," said Scola, 63. "A defensive attitude, often produced by fear, never pays."
Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, from Nigeria, was for 18 years the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which directed John Paul's broad efforts to reach out to other religions. As such, his views hew closely to John Paul's, though of the possible candidates for pope, he has by far the most direct experience living with Muslims. Nigeria is roughly half Christian, half Muslim.
Like John Paul, he has often spoken of one specific rationale for reaching out to other faiths, Islam included: that believers, of whatever faith, have a duty to fight against a secularism that he says has sapped Christians of their spiritual strength.
"God can speak to us through other believers," he told an interviewer several years ago.
"From sincere Muslims, Christians can learn, for example, the courage of sincere prayer. They pray five times a day, and no matter where they are - be it the railway station or the airport - they will do it.
"Whereas many Christians are ashamed of making the sign of the cross in a restaurant or pulling out a rosary on a train."
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