Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

"Pope Benedict’s Response to Rabbi Neusner"

From The Remnant of Israel website:

Pope Benedict’s Response to Rabbi Neusner 

Theological dialogue with Judaism has been one of Joseph Ratzinger’s priorities for many years. As Pope, he worked through his vacation to finish his response to Rabbi Jacob Neusner’s 1993 book, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. George Weigel wrote, in God’s Choice, his 2005 book on Ratzinger’s election to the Papacy, “Pope John Paul II wanted to reconvene this dialog [with Judaism] that was broken off in 70 AD.” Pope Benedict has “reconvened this dialog” with his new book, Jesus of Nazareth.

In 2007, Remnant of Israel and the Dallas Chapter of Catholics United for the Faith, launched a continuing seminar on First Century Judaism at Catholic colleges and universities, and online. These ongoing seminars were inspired by the following thesis: Theological dialogue with Judaism is urgent today because Jesus and His Apostles, Apostolic Tradition and Sacred Scripture – the entire Deposit of Faith, are Jewish. Jesus and the Apostles came to perfect and to preach Judaism, not to replace it; they did not start a new religion, but remained faithful to Judaism.

The current, ongoing dialogue between the American Rabbi and the German Pope focuses on Matthew’s account of the events involving Jesus of Nazareth that shook the foundations of Judaism in the First Century AD. The subject of the 2008–2009 First Century Judaism Seminars will be Matthew’s account of Jesus. Now, we are also launching a series of extraordinary 20^th Century Judaism Seminars.

The first of these, April 5 2008, at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas (droginmark@yahoo.com for details), features Dr. Robert Moynihan, Editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, and Dr. Nathan Schmiedicke, Editor of the First Century Judaism Seminar and Scripture Professor at St. Charles Borromeo Archdiocesan Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This April 5 seminar on 20^th Century Judaism will examine the issues leading to the dialogue between Rabbi Neusner and Pope Benedict; and this will prepare for a much deeper study of Matthew’s Gospel in the subsequent First Century Judaism Seminars.

20^th Century Judaism Seminar Saturday April 5, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm; University of Dallas, Art History Building Admission is free. Space is limited.

Sponsors: Remnant of Israel and St. Stephen the Martyr Chapter, Catholics United for the Faith

Visit the Remnant of Israel site.

• God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, by George Weigel
• Jesus of Nazareth, by Pope Benedict XVI

More on Roy Schoeman's journey from Judaism...

...to the Catholic Church, courtesy of two pieces by Roseanne Therese Sullivan, who runs the "Catholic Pundit Wannabe" blog:

• Roy Schoeman and the Return of the Jews: An article about both Salvation Is From the Jews and Honey From the Rock.

• Roy Schoeman Interview - The Complete Version: The full text of an in-depth interview that was published in a shorter form by National Catholic Register.

Related Ignatius Insight interviews and excerpts:

• "Jews Demand Signs" | An Interview with Roy Schoeman, editor of Honey From the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ | Carl E. Olson
• Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ | Preface to Honey From the Rock | Roy Schoeman
• Judaism Fulfilled | An Interview with Roy H. Schoeman
• The Jews and the Second Coming | Roy H. Schoeman | An except from Salvation Is From the Jews
• Eugenio Zolli's Path to Rome | Stephen Sparrow

Meanwhile, on the inter-religious front...

An October 20th story in the Los Angeles Times reports that Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim scholars recently met together in an attempt to "reconcile problematic texts" from "the Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament and the Koran that  assert the superiority of one belief system over others."

As an example, the Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, ecumenical and interreligous official of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, quoted from the Gospel of Mark: "Go into the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."

Rabbi Reuven Firestone, director of the Institute for the Study of Jewish-Muslim Interrelations at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, mentioned a series of texts, including a verse from Deuteronomy: "For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples of the earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people."

And Muzammil H. Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh (Islamic Law) Council of North America, quoted from the Koran:

"You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies: they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them -- God does not guide such wrongdoers."

In explaining the passage from the Gospel of Mark, Smith said that the troubling portion was appended a century after it was written -- when the four Gospels were compiled.

He said the longer ending, which added 12 verses, was written at a time when Christians either were questioning their faith in the resurrection of Jesus or defending it against skeptics and nonbelievers.

One should, of course, always take MSM reporting of religious issues with a huge grain of salt, and any sort of commentary would require having a far more detailed report of what was said at the conference. But if the report is accurate, the explanation offered by Fr. Smith is puzzling. The New Testament is filled with all sorts of "troublesome" statements about the superiority of faith in Christ, and the Catholic Church has never wavered in proclaiming this belief, even as she has grappled with the issue (to take one example) of those who have never heard the Gospel. Surely Fr. Smith—a well-educated man—knows that Mark 16:15-16 is part of the New Testament canon, regardless of whether it was penned in, say, A.D. 60 or A.D. 90 or A.D. 150 (see footnote #2 on this page). Which means that it cannot be excused simply for being a later addition (as many scholars agree is likely the case). After all, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has Mark 16:16 in the footnote to paragraph 846, which contains this quote from paragraph 14 of Lumen Gentium:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

One irony of trying to soften Mark 16 by arguing (in the words of the report) that it "was written at a time when Christians either were questioning their faith in the resurrection of Jesus or defending it against skeptics and nonbelievers," is that many Christians in the modern Western world have been questioning the resurrection for many centuries now, while others have been defending it against skeptics and nonbelievers. Why that makes Mark 16 unique, I'm not sure. Again, further details are needed before much more can be said about those specific remarks.

Finally:

Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, which co-sponsored the event with Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., said all people of faith need to "take ownership of their most difficult texts, wrestle with them -- not run away from them -- but confront them, where appropriate, set them in their proper historical context.

"After wrestling, I hope people can understand these texts in the appropriate contexts and realize that not all of them, but many of them, are bound by conditions of social milieu, of culture, of historical context."

In some instances, he continued, people of faith need to say to themselves, "This is part of my sacred tradition, but I reject it. I find this text offensive. It goes against my own morality, and it goes against what I believe God expects of me in the world today."

There is  much good in Rabbi Diamond's initial remarks, but the final paragraph does make one wonder: what are "some instances"? Who decides? How? This point is brought home by a short CWNews piece about the difficulties of inter-religious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims:

Responding to an initiative by 138 Islamic officials, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue has welcomed a bid for talks between Christian and Muslim leaders, but warned about inevitable difficulties in that dialogue.

In an interview with the French newspaper La Croix, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran pointed out that Muslims do not accept the sort of inter-religious dialogue that Christians have come to expect. For example, he said, Muslims "will not allow in-depth discussion of the Qu'ran," since they believe that the words were literally dictated by Allah, and any questioning of the text borders on blasphemy.

Because Islamic leaders refuse to discuss the fundamental basis of their beliefs, the French cardinal said, "it is difficult to discuss the content of their faith."

Cardinal Tauran said that insofar as talks with Muslims can be pursued, Christian leaders should insist that Islamic societies respect religious freedom, in the same way that the western world respects the rights of Muslims. Specifically, he said, "if they can have mosques in Europe, it is reasonable to expect them to allow churches built in their countries."

Yes, it does seem reasonable. Which is probably one of many reasons why Pope Benedict's Regensburg Address was about...the nature of reason. Stay tuned. I suspect these issues aren't going to be resolved anytime soon.

Roy Schoeman: Catholicism is fulfilled Judaism

The September 30th issue of National Catholic Register has an interview with Roy Schoeman, author of Salvation Is From the Jews and editor of the recently published Honey From The Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ, both published by Ignatius Press. A subscription is required to read the interview online, but here is an excerpt:

What do you think is intriguing people about what you have written?

When I wrote the first book, I thought that it would appeal to a very small section of Catholics who for some reason had a similar interest in Jews and Judaism. And I was very surprised it became somewhat of a best-seller and hit such a responsive chord among a wide range of Catholics.

One reason for it I think is that Judaism and the Catholic faith are not two different faith systems. They are exactly the same religion, separated in time by the fact of the coming of the Messiah.

And therefore, looking at the relationship between the two resonates very deeply and richly, and makes somehow more concrete and more compelling for Catholic readers their own Catholic faith.

I think there is another dimension too. I think that we are living in the times that St. Paul alluded to in the Letter of the Romans when the number of the Gentiles is close to complete, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, the veil will be lifted from the eyes of the Jews and there will be a wave of Jewish entry into the Church, and that will be the final completion of the Church to precede the Second Coming.

I think because that supernaturally it is that time, on some level therefore God is inspiring this interest.

Related Ignatius Insight interviews and book excerpts:

• "Jews Demand Signs" | An IgnatiusInsight.com Interview with Roy Schoeman (September 2007)
• Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ | Preface to Honey From the Rock | Roy Schoeman
• Judaism Fulfilled | An Interview with Roy H. Schoeman
• The Jews and the Second Coming | Roy H. Schoeman

On Wars...and Wars of Ideas

On Wars...and Wars of Ideas | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | September 14, 2007        

All wars are first fought out—or, better, argued about--in the mind. Because they are in minds and not on battlefields these wars are not violent. They can even be friendly. Wars are not caused by wars. They are caused by ideas. Ideas as such are good. We could not eliminate ideas that cause wars if we wanted to, though we can understand why they can be wrong. But we understand this wrongness only with another idea. The adventure of the mind is to find out which ideas are true. The adventure goes on all the time. The mind also needs to find what is true in ideas that are false since no idea exists that does not contain some truth.

The ideas that cause wars are not initially conceived as militant, but as an understanding of reality. Even then, they do not cause conflict until put into effect and meet resistance, ultimately from other ideas. The purpose of war is to establish the truth or superiority of an idea. Ideas do not always win just because they are true. One suspects that true ideas often lose. This is why, behind ideas and their carrying out, lies divine providence, which can bring out the good that is found in what is otherwise evil. Evil is ultimately to be rejected and punished when chosen.

Read the entire article...

The Cross and The Holocaust

The Cross and The Holocaust | Regis Martin | From the Prologue to Suffering of Love: Christ's Descent into the Hell of Human Hopelessness       

With the promulgation of Nostra Aetate in October 1965, [1] a significant milestone in Roman Catholic relations with non-Christian religions was reached. As regards Judaism in particular, a historic threshold had been crossed, over which not a few timorous churchmen at the time had hesitated to venture. Quite understandably, too, given so many centuries of impacted silence marked by episodic outbreaks of violence between the two traditions. "Since the foundation of the Church," observed Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book on Martin Buber published the year before the Council opened, "a dialogue between Jew and Christian has always been rare and invariably brief. Judaism shut itself off from Christianity, and the Church turned its back on the people which rejected it." [2] Can it be cause for wonder that, in the circumstances, relations between the two should inspire so little hope or confidence? [3]

But the Council Fathers intended to change that. In the great work of renewal launched by the Second Vatican Council, Mother Church, the whole People of God, were to return to the roots and springs of their past; there the encounter with Judaism was inescapable, rich, and full of promise.

Read the entire article...

Pope Benedict XVI and the Essential Worldwide Mission

Pope Benedict XVI and the Essential Worldwide Mission | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | August 27, 2007

"The Catholic Church which is in China does not have a mission to change the structure of administration of the State; rather, her mission is to proclaim Christ to men and women, as the Savior of the world, basing herself--in carrying out her proper apostolate--on the power of God." -- Benedict XVI, Letter to the Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China, #4. [1]

"We are given a premonitory sign that allows us a fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom of the Saints, where we too at the end of our earthly life will be able to share in Christ's glory, which will be complete, total and definitive. The whole universe will then be transfigured and the divine plan of salvation will be at last fulfilled." -- Benedict XVI, Angelus, Castel Gandolfo, August 5, 2007. [2]

"The Church as such is not involved in politics--we respect secularism--but offers the condition in which a healthy political system can develop, together with the consequent solution for social problems." -- Benedict XVI, On-Board Papal Interview Prior to Landing in Brazil, May 9, 2007. [3]

I.

In the Holy Father's recent trip to Brazil, as well as in his Letter to the Chinese Catholic Church, he again indicated, as he has done previously, his understanding of what the Church is about in this world and its relation to the "Kingdom of God." In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI made clear that this "kingdom" is Christ Himself, who did, as a fact, dwell, incarnate, in this world, all the while remaining properly God, the Word. The pope is a very careful and provocative thinker. But he is also a man of action after the manner in which a pope is given to act—namely, by fostering the mission of the Church in the world, usually called "evangelization."

Read the entire article...

The non-quote of this non-existent month

The California Catholic Daily reports that Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh will be honored in the near future by a couple of different Catholic schools: Loyola Marymount University and University of San Diego. In books such as the best-selling work, Living Buddha, Living Christ (introduction by Elaine Pagels!), Hanh insists that Christianity and Buddha are really, really, super-duper close to each other in belief and practice.

Nhat Hanh, now in his ‘80s, has written, “do not be bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means, not absolute truth.” ...

Nhat Hanh says “there will not be much difference between Buddhism and Christianity” if Christians pray as Buddhists do, “with mindfulness, concentration and especially insight.” This three lead one to realize, according to Nhat Hanh, that the one to whom he prays – Buddha, Jesus, or one’s grandfather – exist in “new manifestations,” in “new forms.”They are “always in you and around you.”

A small bit of confusion arises, it seems to me, when consider that Hanh is saying, on one hand, that doctrine is not necessary and that there is no truth, and then says: "Follow this doctrine. This is the truth. This is the way to truth." Consider these comparisons:

Despite many external similarities, Buddhist meditation and contemplation is quite different from orthodox Christianity. Buddhist meditation strives to "wake" one from his existential delusions. "Therefore, despite similar aspects, there is a fundamental difference" between Christian and Buddhist mysticism, wrote John Paul II. The Holy Father continued: "Christian mysticism . . . is not born of a purely negative 'enlightenment.' It is not born of an awareness of the evil which exists in man's attachment to the world through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit. Instead, Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the living God."
Catholics believe that the Church is the Body and Bride of Christ, the seed of the Kingdom of God, and the conduit of God's grace and mercy in the world. Buddhists believe that Church, or Sangha, is in the end, upaya, nothing more than the expedient means to ultimate extinction. Rather than the Beatific Vision, Buddhist teaching holds that non-existence is the only hope for escaping the pains of life.

The Catholic Church teaches that while suffering is not part of God's perfect plan, it does bring us closer to Christ and unite us more intimately with our Suffering Lord. Buddhism teaches that suffering must be escaped from; indeed, this is a central concern of Buddhism. Christianity is focused on worshipping God, on holiness, and the restoration of right relationships between God and man through the Person and work of Jesus. The Buddhist, however, is not concerned with whether or not God exists, nor does he offer worship. Instead, he seeks after non-self (anatman).

Catholicism believes that truth, and the Author of Truth, can be known rationally (to a significant, yet limited, extent) and through divine revelation. In contrast, Buddhism denies existential reality; nothing, including the "self," can be proven to exist.

That is from an article, "Catholicism and Buddhism," that I co-authored with my good friend, Dr. Anthony Clark, who teaches Asian history at the University of Alabama. Needless to say, we aren't too interested in praying as Buddhists, simply because Christians should pray as Jesus taught them to pray: to a personal God who is Triune in nature—a belief that is of little or no interest to a Buddhist.

Benedict's Gifts and Supposed Gaffes

Examined by the editors of National Catholic Register in the August 12-18 edition of that newspaper.

More on that controversial prayer...

... for the salvation of Jews in the 1962 Missal of Blessed Pope John XXIIII, which states (in English):

For the conversion of the Jews.  Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:  Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.  Through the same our Lord...

Fr. Neuhaus of First Things writes, in responding to criticisms made by Abraham Foxman of the ADL:

In the 1570 form of the Roman Rite for Good Friday there was this: “Oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis” (Let us pray for the perfidious Jews). On the first Good Friday after his election to the papacy in 1959, Pope John XXIII eliminated the adjective “perfidious” from the prayer. That same year, he also eliminated from the rite of baptism the phrase used for Jewish catechumens: “Horresce Judaicam perfidiam, respue Hebraicam superstitionem” (Disavow Jewish unbelieving, deny Hebrew superstition). Also eliminated were similar formulas for those converting from idolatry, Islam, or a heretical sect.

The Roman Missal modified by Pope Paul VI in 1969, and put into effect in 1970, has this formulation: “Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.” The following prayer is this: “Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption.”

Of course some Jews may be offended at the suggestion that the fullness of redemption is found in Jesus Christ, but their problem is with Christianity as such. They certainly are not interested in respectful dialogue between Jews who adhere to Judaism and Christians who adhere to Christianity.

As I say, the ADL reaction is a mix of bellicosity and ignorance. The 1962 Missal does not say what Mr. Foxman says it says. And, if he had read Benedict’s apostolic letter before attacking it, he would know that it explicitly says that the Missal of 1970 will be used exclusively in the Triduum of Holy Week, which of course includes Good Friday. An apology is in order but I fear it is not to be expected from an organization that is prone to making reckless and publicity-grabbing statements. It is a sadness. [emphasis added]

Dr. Scott Carson, in a post titled "Why Not Pray for People?", makes some thoughtful, helpful comments:

From a strictly literary-critical standpoint, it does seem rather difficult to escape the emphasis of the older prayer on the veil that has covered the heart of the Jewish people, preventing them from seeing the truth of Christ and leaving them in the shadows, while the newer prayer emphasizes the role of the Jewish people in the history of salvation, noting their priority of place in God's promise to Abraham and the great hope of fullness of redemption for all who turn to Christ in love. From a more theological standpoint, however, a standpoint devoid of the vitriol of mundane emotivism, the prayers say roughly the same thing: the Jews are God's own chosen people, and we pray for them to gain the full reward that was intended for them from the beginning and that is now in the possession of their heirs, the Christian Church. One can only object to this sentiment if one antecedently rejects the idea that there is such a thing as a Christian Church that is in possession of the fullness of God's promise of salvation. In short, only a non-Christian could really be bothered by what this prayer is asking for, regardless of whether one objects to its precise wording.

There is much more to Carson's post, which is well worth the read.

On a related note, I recently had the pleasure of visiting on the phone with Roy Schoeman, author of Salvation Is From the Jews and editor of the recently published Honey From The Rock, (read the preface here) which contains the stories of sixteen Jews (including Schoeman) who converted to Catholicism. I'll be posting an interview with Schoeman in the near future, in which he discusses the great challenges that face Jewish converts, challenges that are quite different from, say, those encountered by Protestants who become Catholic. In the preface to Honey From The Rock, Schoeman writes:

Some of the "converts" in this book came from secularized, liberal, or even atheistic Jewish backgrounds, while others came from Orthodoxy or even Hasidism. Some were unschooled in Judaism, while others were among the most highly trained Jews of their day. Some were rich and wildly successful, others down and out. But one thing they all had in common was a profound (dare I say,  Jewish?) longing for God that gave them no peace until they found God Himself, peace Himself in the Catholic Church. They were all dying of thirst in the desert--some actually at the point of suicide in their frustrated despair at failing to find God. And it was at that point they found so much more than they had suspected even existed. Longing for a sip of water in the parched desert, they found a river of honey, honey from the rock.

Those interested in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's views of Judaism and the Jewish people should read Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World, or Jesus of Nazareth, which contains a long and thoughtful dialogue with the work of Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner.

Challenges from Archbishop Chaput

From an address given today, May 22nd, by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver, titled "Religious Tolerance and the Common Good" and posted on the First Things site:

But the problem is that much of American culture right now is built on an adolescent fiction. The fiction is that life is all about you as an individual—your ideas, your appetites, and your needs. Believe me: It isn’t. The main interest big companies have in your wants and mine is how to turn them into a profit. Part of being an adult is the ability to separate marketing from reality; hype from fact. The fact is, the world is a big and complicated place. It doesn’t care about your appetites. It has too many of its own needs, and it won’t leave you alone. ...

People who take the question of human truth, freedom and meaning seriously will never remain silent about it. They can’t. They’ll always act on what they believe, even at the cost of their reputations and lives. That’s the way it should be. Religious faith is always personal, but it’s never private. It always has social consequences, or it isn’t real. And this is why any definition of “tolerance” that tries to turn religious faith into a private idiosyncrasy, or a set of personal opinions that we can have at home but that we need to be quiet about in public, is doomed to fail.

The mentality of suspicion toward religion is becoming its own form of intolerance. I have seen a kind of secular intolerance develop in our own country over the past two decades. The modern secular view of the world assumes that religion is superstitious and false; that it creates division and conflict; and that real freedom can only be ensured by keeping God out of the public square.

But if we remove God from public discourse, we also remove the only authority higher than political authority, and the only authority that guarantees the sanctity of the individual. If the twentieth century taught us anything, it’s that modern states tend to eat their own people, and the only thing stopping this is a resistance based in the human spirit but anchored in a higher authority—which almost always means religious witness.

You know, there’s a reason why “spirituality” is so popular in the United States today and religion is so criticized. Private spirituality can be quite satisfying. But it can also become a designer experience. In fact, the word spirituality can mean just about anything a person wants it to mean. It’s private, it’s personal, and, ultimately, it doesn’t place any more demands on the individual than what he or she wants.

Religion is a very different creature. The word religion comes from the Latin word religare—to bind. Religious believers bind themselves to a set of beliefs. They submit themselves to a community of faith with shared convictions and hopes. A community of believers has a common history. It also has a shared purpose and future that are much bigger than any political authority. And that has implications. Individuals pose no threat to any state. They can be lied to, bullied, arrested, or killed. But communities of faith do pose a threat. Religious witness does have power, and communities of faith are much harder to silence or kill.

Much, much more, all of it great stuff, as usual.

Cardinal Levada: "'I am not responsible for the Crusades"

Cardinal William Joseph Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco and now Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently gave a lengthy interview—his first since being named head of the CDF—with the Belgian newspaper Mondiaal Nieuws (ht: Whispers in the Loggia). Some of it has been translated into English:

The Catholic Church shares quite a few values and even elements of faith with Islam. That should make Rome an important player in the indispensable dialogue between the West and Islam, says Cardinal Levada. "That dialogue is a crucial effort at this moment of history, not just for the religions but also for the future of humanity. We both share a common resistance to the violence that is perpetrated in the name of religion. Even though the Old Testament contains many passages in which God uses violence against the enemies of His people, we know that God is not a God of violence".

The rejection of a religiously motivated violence, in Levada's view, is in the first place a call to respect each person's freedom. "In the Catholic Church we needed centuries of religious and doctrinal development to arrive at the insight that each person has a right to religious liberty", says Cardinal Levada.

Would not the defense of religious pluralism gain in strength and credibility if the Church itself would present it with a bit more humility, for example by recognizing its own mistakes in the past? "I am not anymore responsible for the crusades than atheists are responsible for what Hitler or Stalin did", the cardinal responds.

"The Church's clear position on religious freedom is the result of many painful experiences: the crusades, the religious wars in Europe, the martyrs under the Protestant kings of England, and the Catholic prelates in Spain and France", he adds. "And, as a matter of fact, Pope John Paul II did recognize those mistakes in the past. But it becomes a bit strange when the Church, time and again is denied credibility to speak up against violence by refering to the crusades".

And:

Cardinal Levada does not like fundamentalism as a way of life. At the same time he heads the administration responsible for formulating and guarding the doctrine of a billion Catholic believers. In what sense does his mission differ from the ambitions of movements who preach an undisputable truth and try all they can to subject others to that truth? The prelate's answer is a lengthy dissertation on the relation between faith and reason, concluded by the statement that accepting the dogmas of the Church is not the same as abdicating one's freedom of thought or capacity to reason.

"After all", he said, "human reason and intelligence are, after divine grace, the ultimate gifts, the capacities that differentiate us from the rest of creation. But reason is balanced by devotion, the acceptance of an authority beyond yourself, of God. That is not the same as a rejection of human reason or an autonomous judgment, but an exercise in challenging our own thinking by confronting it to calls that supercede or, on first view, even contradict this thinking".

The role of the Church in that dialogue between an individual and his or her God, says the Cardinal, is not to be the first interlocutor, but the role is indispensable. "We believe that the apostles and their successors received the mission to interpret revelation in new circumstances and in the light of new challenges. That creates a living tradition that is much larger than the simple and strict passing of existing answers, insights and convictions from one generation to another.

But at the end of the day there has to be an instance that can decide whether a specific lifestyle is coherent with the principles and values of our faith, that can judge whether our actions are in accordance with the commandment to love your neighbor. The mission of the Church is not to prohibit people from thinking, investigate different hypotheses, or collect knowledge. Its mission is to give those processes orientation".

B16: Defender of Freedom

Sandra Magister reports on Benedict XVI's first day in Turkey:

On his first day in Turkey, Benedict XVI did not again quote sura 2:256 of the Qur’an, which he had taken as the launching point for his lecture in Regensburg: “There is no compulsion in religion.”

But it was as if he had referred to it again. In speaking in Ankara, first to the “Diyanet” for religious affairs, and then to the diplomatic corps, pope Joseph Ratzinger placed the question of freedom at the center of both addresses.

In the first of the two addresses, Benedict XVI had before him, among others, the head of religious affairs in Turkey, Ali Bardakoglu, who is one of the harshest critics of his lecture in Regensburg, but also the grand mufti of Istanbul, Mustafa Cagrici, who was one of the signatories of the open letter commenting upon that same lecture, written in mid-October by 38 illustrious Muslims from various countries, and very respectful toward the pope and his reasoning.

In speaking to them, Benedict XVI urged “an authentic respect for the responsible choices that each person makes, especially those pertaining to fundamental values and to personal religious convictions.”

The Vatican Radio has more news, as well as transcripts of the Holy Father's speeches.

CNS reports on how smoothly and safely the trip has gone so far:

The important thing, the Vatican spokesman said, was that his Turkish audience responded positively to the pope's argument that religions need to inspire modern cultures with values, reflecting a harmony between reason and faith.

Other Vatican officials beamed with satisfaction.

"We felt strongly how the Turkish government did everything to warm up the atmosphere. This was a very positive day, especially because the meeting with (Bardakoglu) was very cordial," said retired French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who accompanied the pope as a kind of "wise man" of Vatican diplomacy.

Added Cardinal Walter Kasper: "The dialogues were very positive, and it was a day that expressed peace and reconciliation."

MonstersandCritics.com has pictures (see upper right hand section of the page) of the trip so far.

Meanwhile, the AP reports that "Al-Qaida denounces pope visit to Turkey." Surprise, surprise!