The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?
Every move Pope Benedict will make on his United States visit and everything he says will be observed, recorded, analyzed, and parsed--with good reasons. While his main mission is not to deal with Catholic-Muslim relations, anything he says on that front will draw most attention--even more than what he says on well-worn but still relevant sexual issues. By now most Catholics and their neighbors are familiar with and have fairly set opinions on birth control, abortion, and the like. How Catholics and Muslims, communities disproportionate in size in the United States, but not in the world, choose to relate will have consequences in a world threatened by aggressions, war, and terrorism and in a world where many recognize the need for reconciliation across the boundaries of faiths.
First, a word about size. Note that four times in the previous paragraph I used the word "Catholic" where ordinarily "Christian" would have been in place. This reflects a terminological choice by the Vatican, which announced that Islam's growth has made Catholicism the second largest religion in the world. Hitherto, most demographers, atlas-makers, statisticians, and scholars of religion spoke of the Christian population, which includes Orthodox, Protestants, Pentecostals, and others, whose hundred millions, when included with Catholics, keep Christianity Number One among religions.
Why the accounting and naming choice? Some Vatican moves have been newly excluding; the Pope has declared that all the non-Roman-Catholic churches (save Orthodoxy, which gets a qualified churchly endorsement) can't even be thought of as churches. They are "ecclesial communities," to one of which I belong. I now, when reciting the creed, adapt and level things out by thinking, no matter what I am saying, that "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic set of ecclesial communities." Do non-Catholics not count, or count for less? Again, why the accounting and naming choice? Is it to show the Christian community is smaller than formerly thought, and that Muslim growth is to be feared, more than it would be if it remained Number Two?
After that disquisition on names and size, we are left with an awareness that two huge, huge communities and organizations, as they jostle, cause quakes among bystanders. That is why each refinement of Islamic-Catholic relations concerns us all. And the refinements and interactions have their ups and downs. Islam has no central authority--to speak of "the Muslim community," as I have, is a bit misleading. Imams, ayatollahs, scholars, mystics, who worship Allah are not centrally organized, and cannot speak with one voice as official Catholicism can.
So when the Pope, in his role as a German professor, referred to a centuries-old encounter in which Islam, all the way back to Muhammad, was seen as designed to kill by prospering through use of the sword, he had to back off, and did, clarifying his views, to the satisfaction of many or most Muslims who are open to positive interactions with Catholics and others. Muslim leaders have made positive moves, in the aftermath, to stimulate dialogue designed to produce understanding and better terms, and the Pope has also engaged in some "watch your language" adjustments.
Then new quaking followed, when he baptized journalist Magdi Allam at Easter Vigil. Allam could not have picked a worse moment--though better for him, as a professional stirrer-up--to be part of such a public recognition of Islamic apostasy and Catholic conversion. Or, maybe, the Pope could not have picked a worse public figure than Allam at this moment for whom to provide publicity. Like many an "ex-"--think ex-Mormon, ex-Baptist, etc.--he spends great energy attacking his past ties, and provides incendiary stories of Muslim horrors. He did not go quietly from one religion to another. So Muslims of many stripes, most of whom would have chafed but not many of whom would have "lost it," began to lose it.
Count on Pope Benedict to respond not with inflammatory moves and language but to join the Vatican officials who make clear the obvious, but easily overlooked, namely that Allam does NOT speak for Catholics, but only has the right to personal opinions. So, despite this second shaking moment, "dialogue" will go on, and the Pope will be a part of it, overall, though not in day to day participation.
Many deride the very idea of "dialogue" and "inter-faith" relations, which do not make the news the way suicide bombing, antagonism over proselytism, and all-but-war, as in Christian-Muslim life-taking conflict in Nigeria do. Dialogue is too polite, too remote from the battle scenes, too cautious to satisfy hard-liner Catholics, Muslims, or bystanders. Yet conversation, dialogue, and joint efforts are desperately needed. Whatever the occasional setbacks, recognize that the Pope, who seeks sharper definitions of Catholicism and is not sentimental about how "we all believe the same thing in different ways" is aware of the high stakes and will tread carefully in those little red slippers that television enjoys so much, glimpses of which inspire hope, while explosives inspired by religious conflict threaten us all.
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