One noteworthy recent initiative in Catholic/Muslim relations is the Oasis project, launched by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice in 2004. Though Oasis does not shy away from theological conversation, its accent is on understanding Islamic cultures, sometimes expressed as the ‘Islam of the people’ – what in journalistic parlance might be called ‘the Muslim street.’ In particular, Oasis is interested in the interplay between traditional cultures and the new forces of pluralism and mixture of peoples driven by globalization. (Scola likes to use the Italian term ‘meticciato’, which roughly corresponds to ‘mestizo’, to convey this idea.)

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, June 22-23, the scientific committee that directs Oasis met in Venice to take up the subject of ‘intepreting traditions in a time of blending.’ In conjunction with that event, I interviewed Scola, 67, on the current state of Christian/Muslim relations.

In light of current events, Scola’s comments on Iran seem especially interesting. In a nutshell, he suggested that a form of ‘Shi’ite messianism,’ corrupted into a political ideology, may be part of the problem in terms of Iran’s checkered relationship with the West – but that it’s ‘reversible.’ He also suggested that the 1979 Iranian revolution and all that’s followed offers a useful reminder to the secularized West that history is sometimes still forged by ‘theological options.’

The full text of the interview follows.

1. Why the choice of ‘tradition’ as the theme for the annual meeting of Oasis?

Each of us, in making daily decisions in work, in our relationships, even when we rest, starts with an interpretive hypothesis about reality that we’ve received from preceding generations – in other words, a tradition. Oasis, as you know, wants to investigate the “process of mixing of civilizations,” and while the actors in this mixture are single individuals, they’re all heirs of a tradition. The problem, naturally, is how these traditions relate to one another. Are we prisoners of our tradition, as multiculturalism has it? Do we have to put our traditions in parentheses in order to adhere to certain abstract universal principles? Or, with a truly revolutionary attitude, do we even have to abolish them? In reality, tradition presents itself to us as a patrimony that has to be interpreted, because it’s a fact of experience in constant evolution, which is all the more evident in a pluralistic society such as ours.

2. The pope talks about ‘inter-cultural’ rather than ‘inter-religious’ dialogue. What do you think this distinction means? Does he too possibly have in mind the weight of tradition?

I believe that the Holy Father wants to emphasize that the Christian faith, which is the child of an incarnate God, and because it’s offered to humanity as an answer to the questions of daily life, immediately becomes a culture. There’s no pure ‘faith,’ which then enters into relationship ‘with the different cultures.’ Moreover, every faith and every religion is always subject to cultural interpretations. The relationship between faith and culture is inevitable, and circular. Just think about all the different points of view we in the West have with regard to ‘the Islams.’ Therefore, there simply is no inter-religious dialogue that isn’t at the same time inter-cultural.

The pope’s approach in no way intends to limit the dialogue, but rather to define it rigorously. What’s in play aren’t ‘pure faiths,’ but faiths as they’re culturally interpreted. That has nothing to do with relativism: The Truth is incarnate. That applies to Christianity in itself, to all the religions, and thus to inter-religious dialogue.

3. In Jordan, the Holy Father proposed an ‘alliance of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims. What do you think the aim of such an alliance would be?

The pope himself gave the answer at the end of his speech at the airport in Amman: ‘To grow in love for the Almighty and Merciful God, and in fraternal love for one another.’ Together Christians and Muslims can offer witness to an ‘expanded reason,’ capable of opening itself to the dimension of the Absolute.

4. In your view, what were the principal fruits of the pope’s trip to the Holy Land?

Pope Benedict’s trip to the Holy Land was a lesson in realism. At the beginning, it looked like an “impossible trip” because it seemed destined to make everybody unhappy. Intead, Benedict XVI inserted himself into the vast ranks of Christian pilgrims to the holy places. He walked in the footsteps of the Incarnate God, who died and rose again for the salvation of human beings. He traced the paths that throb with the suffering of the Christians who live there. In the name of the entire Catholic church, he embraced the Christian community on that edge of the Middle East, the ‘lit candle that illuminates the holy places.’But this embrace – precisely because it was performed in the name of Him who is the way of truth and life – also included, though in diverse ways, our Jewish brothers and the Muslims who live in the land given to our father Abraham. It’s the universal and incarnate proposal of Christ that leads the Christian faith to encounter with every religion, with every vision of reality.

5. What’s your view of President Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo?

I’m curious to hear from participants in the Oasis meeting what effect the words of the American president had on the populations of the Middle East, especially the Christian minorities. His speech seemed to me very political. It was extremely lucid in indicating the challenges that the United States must confront, decisive in suggesting certain changes in direction, and even audacious in favoring a greater role for regional actors. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the arguments offered in support of a ‘new beginning’ between Muslims and the United States are fragile, and some historical readings were distorted to suit the necessities of the moment. Obama was forced to pass over some of the points of greatest friction. It was an understandable choice from a tactical point of view, but it can’t hold up for very long.

6. What are you hearing from your contacts in Iran these days? Looking down the line, it seems that Shi’a Muslims and Catholics share certain traits: A strong clerical hierarchy, a theology of sacrifice, and deep currents of popular devotion. Does this suggest that Catholicism can play an important role in a dialogue with Iran, where Shi’a Islam is dominant?

Three accents strike me in the Shi’a tradition: the necessity of a continual actualization of revelation in certain physical persons, to the point of overcoming a too-rigid conception of divine transcendence; the lively expectation of eschatological fulfillment; and the reflection on the problem of evil. I have the impression that we’re not well informed on these points, despite the enormous work of study and analysis that’s been done by specialists in recent years. We know Shi’ites better than we know Shiism!

The Oasis network really hasn’t arrived yet in Iran, so what I know about what’s happening is what I see and read in the mass media. I don’t doubt, however, that many people in Iran want better relations with the West. We must not forget that Persian culture has shown itself to be extraordinarily fertile and receptive.

The principal probelm, if I can put it slightly audaciously, is that Shi’ite messianism, almost unable to bear the weight of the exepectations with which is is structually bound up, has been converted over the centuries, at least in some circles, into a political ideology. We’re talking about a long process that’s not linear, which experience a brusque acceleration with the 1979 revolution. As Westerners, we were caught off guard. We had forgotten that history is also sometimes forged by ‘theological options.’

In any event, all this is reversible.

7. One sometimes has the impression that any step toward Muslims by the Catholic church is experienced by Jews as a step away from them, and vice-versa. How do we balance these two relationships?

When he arrived in Paradise, Dante asked the blessed if they weren’t annoyed by one another, defensive of their goods and jealous of those touched by the others. The response was no, because with love, the more it’s shared the more it grows. That point holds true for Christians, well beyond their own limitations, also in the arc of history.

‘Readiness for dialogue’ is a good, and a good is always to be shared. If you’ll forgive the crude comparison, it’s not like a cake which, if I eat it, you can’t – or if the Jews get it, the Muslims can’t have it. When dialogue isn’t a tactic, but, as Bonhöffer said, it opens the dialogue partners to “the depths of reality,” then a step forward with Muslims not only doesn’t mean a step back in relations with other religions, but on the contrary, it acts as a stimulus.

With regard to Judaism, it’s written into the DNA of our own faith. I’ve never forgotten the words that Cardinal Henri de Lubac said to me in long-ago 1985: ‘If Christianity must be inculturated, then it must inculturate into the history, which is still unfolding, of the Jewish people who are our roots.’

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/24/iran-struggling-with-shiite-messianism-cardinal-says/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/22/oasis-interpreting-tradition-at-the-time-of-metizaje-of-civilisations-on-the-inevitable-cultural-interpretation-of-faith/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/22/oasis-interpreting-tradition-at-the-time-of-metizaje-of-civilisations-on-the-inevitable-cultural-interpretation-of-faith/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:19:03 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=158 “Oasis is called to an exploration of the role of traditions in the time of the mestizaje of civilisations as a place of the inevitable interpretation of every faith. These interpretations are the subject of a continual narrative and dialogue between the subjects that live in our plural societies. Without, however, ever forgetting the ultimate assent required by Truth, because, as Pascal observes, ‘however much such antiquity may have force, truth must always have the better of it, however much it is of recent discovery, since it is always older than all the opinions that have been held of it’”.

Here some excerpts of the card. Angelo Scola’s contribution.

Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 22-23 June 2009

INTERPRETING TRADITION AT A TIME OF MESTIZAJE OF CIVILISATIONS
ON THE INEVITABLE CULTURAL INTERPRETATION OF FAITH

“A year after the stimulating meeting in Amman, which was concerned with religious freedom considered even to the extreme foundation of freedom to convert, we are reunited again today in the magnificent seat of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in order to analyse the subject of traditions and their interpretation.
The growth, at a numerical level as well, of those taking part in this scientific committee and their variety of religious backgrounds and loyalties bears witnesses to how deeply is felt the need for a place of shared encounter. It was precisely the perception of this need that inspired, by now six years ago, the idea of a reality of communion that would unite Christians of the East and of the West in a work involving the reading of the historical circumstances in which to actuate the increasingly urgent relationship with Muslim believers.
Whilst I believe that by now the goodness of that initial insight has been ascertained in the light of the fruits that it has produced in recent years, there remains in front of us, always open because inexhaustible, the task of refining our comprehension of a historical process that calls on us in an increasingly imposing way.

An Ineluctable Horizon: the Mestizaje of Civilisations
This year’s title, ‘Interpreting Traditions at a Time of Mestizaje of Civilisations’, contains in its second part an important clarification. Our analysis, indeed, seeks to develop by taking into account a context evoked by the category of ‘mestizaje of civilisations’.
To the benefit of those of our guests who are joining the deliberations of Oasis for the first time, I would like to observe that through this term, which has a explicative and not a prescriptive meaning, we seek to read the process of the unprecedented mixing of peoples that is in front of everyone’s eyes. The qualification ‘of civilisations’ by which we connote the term ‘mestizaje’ is often not seen in all its delimiting range perhaps because the term ‘mestizaje’ produces at the outset a certain counter reaction.
For us, the mestizaje of civilisations – and I would like to stress this clarification – is not a political programme: its circumstantial character, indeed, excludes the possibility of erecting it into a goal to be pursued down the historical future. At the same time, it is something more than a simple description of a process (as an enunciation of a physical law or a detached observation of a biological phenomenon could be) because it is offered as a horizon that is able to provide space for all the categories that are necessary to creating the conditions by which such a process could become an opportunity for a broader mutual acknowledgement on the part of all the actors in the field. I am referring to the subjects of identity, otherness, difference, relationship, interculturality, integration, etc. Decisive weight amongst these categories should certainly be given to the factor of ‘tradition’.
(…)
As we have always done, we will take advantage of the specific expertise of each participant, but for the sake of a shared work which, taking them as given, goes beyond them. In this sense, our coming together constitutes a practical illustration of that unity of forms of knowledge which today is increasingly seen as necessary. It constitutes the great challenge and the reason for existence of the Studium Generale Marcianum, in whose cultural project Oasis participates to the full.
First of all – by now this is something that we know – we are dealing with unity of the subject of knowledge in its capacity to host the whole of the real, but because of the special configuration of the disciplines that involve us in Oasis this reflection can attempt to express itself also as unity of the various forms of expertise, albeit in obvious respect for the methodologies that are specific to each form of expertise. In this field, in fact, the building of humanistic knowledge does not appear to be as yet imploded.

Although one of the finest fruits of Oasis for me and for many other people has been the possibility of getting to know better the fascinating Islamic civilisations and the rich Easter Christian traditions, it is evident that we cannot think that we will all dedicate ourselves full time to Islamic studies or to the study of Eastern Christianities or to the theology of religions. Is this a limit destined to condition the future developments of Oasis? Decidedly not, because the specific object of our work is not directly the study of Islam or of Eastern Christianities, nor even inter-religious dialogue stricto sensu, but a reading of the process of the mestizaje of civilisations, in which both Islam and Eastern Christianities come into play, as indeed do the various traditions of the West. This is a process that concerns all of us in the first person, beyond specialisations, so important has it become. I, for example, can touch it with my hands as a bishop every time that I make a pastoral visit in any Venetian parish.

The Implications of Faith
If faith is inevitably destined to become culture because it always offers an interpretation of the real, and culture in its turn interprets faith, the dialogue between the subjects involved in the mestizaje of civilisations will take place first of all, even though not solely, at this level, in an adventure of reciprocal edification. The subject is of capital importance for a plural society which seeks to promote the fundamental practical good of being together.
The dual risk is that of falling into deductivism, on the one hand, or into extrinsicism, on the other. Giving way to deductivism, from the principles of faith would flow in an automatic way certain applications, certain consequences. In opposite fashion, in giving way to extrinsicism, culture would be the field of the ‘human’ on which faith would then be grafted from the outside as a superadditum. Both these paradigms have experienced at different times broad success within the Christian world but by now they display with clarity their limits.
On the ridge between the two fronts is, in my opinion, located a more suitable pathway. Not mechanical applications, nor extrinsic juxtapositions, but dynamic implications. An implication, as is known, is an aspect contained – implied – in a reality that precedes it. If we talk about the implications of the Christian Mysteries, the primary reality is the Christian Mysteries, but these mysteries according to the sacramental logic of Revelation (FR, n. 13) are dynamically embodied in the present of the subject who lives them. They this bear upon how men conceive themselves, on the way in which society is conceived, and on the way in which the relationship with creation is conceived, and they are subject in their turn to the inevitable cultural interpretations that this subject practices. The commitment of a Christian as regards people, society and the cosmos is not a consequence of these Mysteries. And yet it does not immediately coincide with the Christian Mysteries as such: it is implied in them. Indeed, the Christian Mysteries are not given once and for all in the form of a package of dogmas from which to draw opportune consequences; they are dimensions of the event of Jesus Christ which constantly proposes itself anew to the freedom of man, which is always historically located.

Tradition and Truth
Here, therefore, is outlined the pathway that I have tried to follow through brief points: Oasis is called to an exploration of the role of traditions in the time of the mestizaje of civilisations as a place of the inevitable interpretation of every faith. These interpretations are the subject of a continual narrative and dialogue between the subjects that live in our plural societies. Without, however, ever forgetting the ultimate assent required by Truth, because, as Pascal observes, ‘however much such antiquity may have force, truth must always have the better of it, however much it is of recent discovery, since it is always older than all the opinions that have been held of it’.

It was the challenge of Christian coexistence with Muslims that formed the focus of this week’s gathering of 15 Catholic leaders and scholars from Islamic-majority countries who made it to Venice this week. And nowhere is that challenge more acute than among Christians living in Muslim countries. Says Fouad Twal, Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem: “We ask that when Western leaders make decisions concerning the Middle East, they also consider the presence of Christians there. Rarely does anyone ask our opinion, for we can be of great help,” says Twal. “We are rooted in the region. The Muslim world is our world.”
One Western leader who has made a point of listening to the concerns of the Christians of the Muslim world is Venice’s Cardinal Angelo Scola, host of the two-day encounter at the 17th century Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Scola is rapidly becoming Catholicism’s most influential voice beyond the Pope himself on matters related to the Muslim world. From Venice, which for centuries has served as a bridge betweeen civilizations, the Cardinal founded Oasis, a cultural and study center and twice-annual journal that gathers perspectives from Catholics in Muslim countries. The initiative is both as a way to safeguard the rights of Christian minorities, and to promote mutual understanding between the Church and Islam.

“We gain knowledge about the different forms of Islam by starting with what the Christians living in these various realities suggest to us,” Scola said. In the past, many in the Vatican hierarchy believed it was too risky to raise the issues of religious liberty and violence in Islamic countries. “Sometimes we have been too timid,” Scola said. “We can’t stay quiet. We want the encounter. It is vital to distinguish fundamentalism not just from the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims, which can be an ambiguous term, but from the masses in the Islamic world.”
Scola hopes that working with Christians in Islamic countries will also help Europe better face the challenges post by its growing Muslim immigrant population. Focused on what he calls the “hybridization” of cultures that comes with mass migration, Scola says the challenge is finding a balance between integrating new populations and maintaining the identity of the native culture.

The current level of political tension in a number of different Muslim countries placed much of the event’s attention on issues of security and violence. Several of the prelates asked not to be identified by name or country, fearing reprisal. One bishop said: “Extremists are very much still in the minority, but the situation is deteriorating, and there is more and more intolerance. Being here and listening to others, a similar picture emerges. The fundamentalists are networking.”
Though controversial, Pope Benedict XVI’s speech last September in Regensberg about faith, reason and violence continues to be cited as a turning point in the Muslim-Christian debate. Scola, who has known the Pope since 1971, expands on the ideas in the Regensberg address. “Violence is not in itself a sign of the absence of religion. It occurs when the worst poisons of the surrounding culture have infested religion,” says Scola. “You need a strong link between faith and reason in order to purify religion.”

Cairo-born, Beirut-based Professor Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit expert on Islam, says that Benedict is “going farther(and) deeper” in his approach toward the Muslim world than Pope John Paul II. “He does not want to reduce or to chill the dialogue,” Samir says of Benedict. “But he is looking for a dialogue that is real, rather than diplomatic. We are not looking for conflict, but we’re also not going to avoid the hot points.”
byJeff Israely

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1636286,00.html

On the occasion of his encounter with representatives of Muslim communities in Germany on 20 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI re-emphasised that “interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an occasional option. It is in fact a vital necessity, and our future depends to a great extent upon it”.
Here the Pope was re-stating a personal conviction about interreligious dialogue which he had espoused some years before in his celebrated volume entitled Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (The new people of God). In this work the theologian Joseph Ratzinger had maintained: “[] it has become an integral part of our faith today that Christianity should have relations with the religions of the world: this is far from being a matter of a mere curiosity that is solely interested in constructing some theory of its own about the destiny of others this destiny is decided by God alone, who does not need our theories (…) But today there is more at stake: the sense of our being able and obliged to believe. The religions of the world have become a question mark for Christianity; faced with them it must start to think afresh about its claims, [] how it can understand them as playing a necessary role in the history of salvation”1.

Having acknowledged the centrality of interreligious dialogue, we next need to determine the few basic criteria to which Benedict XVI refers. They can then be the object of discussion and study in our dialogue. It is not possible in this brief introduction to offer a systematic presentation of these criteria. I will limit myself therefore to stating two; I cannot even hope to be able to offer an organic analysis of them.

a) Religions and good life
The first of these criteria – not in order of importance but because it is the most pacific was particularly and significantly emphasised by the Holy Father in his addresses to Muslim believers. This asserts that dialogue is proper to every believer as a member of the people of God or of the Muslim communities. It derives above all from the fact that every person is de facto a member of a society, and is thereby called to contribute to the good life of the society in which he or she lives. Here the Pope strongly emphasises the need for adhérents of religions to take the same path: “Certainly, recognition of the positive role of religions at the heart of the social body can and must impel our societies to explore more and more deeply their knowledge of the human person and to respect human dignity by placing the person at the centre of political, economic, cultural, and social activity. Our world must come to realise more and more that all peoples are linked by profound solidarity with one another, and they must be encouraged to assert their historical and cultural differences not for the sake of confrontation but in order to foster mutual respect.” (Pope’s speech to the diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Nunciature at Ankara, 28 november 2006).

b) Faith, reason, and religions
The second and more demanding criterion is the one emphasised particularly in the celebrated lecture at the University of Regensburg. It deals with the nexus of faith, reason, and religion and the capacity of human reason to grasp this nexus. In this connection the Holy Father affirmed at Regensburg: “theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences (…) precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith. Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. (…) A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. (…) For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity (…) is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. (…) The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.” [Official translation from Vatican website]
This long quotation from the Regensburg lecture can help us to determine a few essential elements which can be the object of our dialogue.
The correct relationship between faith, reason, and religions, perfectly comprehensible to human reason when not enslaved to reductionisms, involves a recognition of the two inseparable sides to dialogue, neither of which can be dispensed with.

c) The principle of integration
The first of the above criteria can be identified as the principle of integration. What does it consist in? It can best be described in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Basle theologian acknowledges the necessity of a comparison of the actual contents of religions at all levels. In this way “something like a scale of recognisable truths will be born, which can be co-ordinated according to the principle: “The one who has more truth is more right and has more rights on his side” (…) The one who turns out to be in a position to integrate the maximum of truth into his vision would have the presumption of a maximally true truth”2. From this point of view it is possible to grasp why the Holy Father proposes to understand interreligious and intercultural dialogue in a unitary fashion. A definition of culture which does not take into consideration the religious dimension constitutive of the ultimate requirements of reason is reductive (Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?)

d) Truth and freedom
The second indispensable aspect of dialogue concerns the truth-freedom nexus. While it is true that the principle of integration is essential, because required by the quest for truth proper to religions, at the same time it does not manage to encompass all of the horizon of truth on its own. By its very nature truth requires the act of a freedom which is ready to give active assent.
The principle of integration cannot but bow to the “freedom of God in His Self-revelation”3, proposing a kind of absolute knowledge of hegelian stamp. The same principle must also respect the truth of the finite freedom of man, which is called actively to welcome the statement of truth rather than merely enduring it! That is why Balthasar himself speaks of truth in terms of “love that gives itself in freedom (“only love is credible”)”4. Pope Benedict also fully took on board this crucial aspect of interreligious dialogue when, in his Message on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Interreligious Encounter of Prayer for Peace (the second of September 2006), he opted to speak expressly of the «language of testimony».Christians and Muslims in particular must bear testimony, in reciprocal dialogue, to their faith in the one God and in the ineradicable distance constantly present in the Islamic faith between Creator and creatures. They must not however undervalue the differences – beginning with the trinitarian monotheism central to Christianity. Defending in continuous open dialogue the freedom of religion in every civil society, Christianity and Islam are then called to testify that every form of violence is by its nature alien to the authentic raison d’être of religion as such.

————-

1. J. RATZINGER, Il nuovo popolo di Dio, Queriniana, Brescia 1971, 391-392. [Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie, 1972]

2. H. U. VON BALTHASAR, La mia opera ed epilogo, Jaca Book, Milano 1994, 97-98. [My Work: in Retrospect, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993]

3. Ibid., 98.

4. Ibidem.

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