Yesterday twenty-one red roses, twenty-one ‘rosebuds’, were offered to the altar of the Nicopeia Madonna in St. Mark’s  Basilica at the end of the mass held by the Patriarch, Cardinal Angelo Scola. A special gesture to remember the martyrdom of the Christians in the world and the massacre of 21 people which has hit the Coptic community of Alexandria in Egypt, a church that is particularly close to that of Venice, since both were born from the preaching of Mark the Evangelist.

Cardinal Scola, in an interview with the Corriere  the imam El Tayeb, head of the al-Azhar mosque, asked the Pope for a sign in order to re-establish trust. You have been involved in the presence of the Christians in the Middle East for decades now through the Oasis Foundation. What do you think of El Tayeb’s words?

“First of all we must bear in mind that we still know little about each other. This is shown by the fact that no practising Christian would recognise himself in the image of his faith which is current among Muslims and vice versa. There is also an urgent need to face the big problem of the relationship between truth and freedom. It is a question of a balance that must always  be regained, since without truth man loses his way, but without freedom man is a slave. Violence is  born from this too”.

But the Christians have never threatened anyone, but are rather the victims of those who in the name of religion carry out massacres and spread fear and death.

“Unfortunately  perceptions are radically different between one side and the another of the Mediterranean. In the West many feel under attack from Islam, while in the East many consider that it is Islam that is being attacked. The media are responsible for this too. However, we must keep to the facts: it is not the first time that  terrorists, claiming to act in the name of Islam, have carried out  abominable suicide attacks in a church where a group of Christian faithful had gathered to pray”.

Benedict XVI has asked for protection for all Christians. How do you explain that this position has been labelled as interference?

“The Pope is not asking for any special treatment for Christians. He asks for the respect of the fundamental rights of every man, among which there is obviously the right to live, to publicly profess a religion and to not  be driven out of one’s own country. As in the attacks in Alexandria, like in Baghdad in October and Nag Hammadi a year ago,  in Pakistan very frequently and in India or in China, it is the Christians that are hit, the Pope, who bears the responsibility of over one billion faithful, considered it his duty to call the world’s attention to the problem of the persecution of the Christians”.  

What is Europe’s role?

“Europe must act in a more clear-cut way for the respect of fundamental rights, and have the courage to not subordinate them to economic interests. Moreover, Europe can promote, through facts, a model of plural society in which the different members recognise each other starting with the practical good of being together. This is an idea on which the lay and the believers of the various religions can find a meeting point. An idea which, in the medium term, can be a paradigm for all countries”.

On the very same day as the terrorist attack in Cairo, the Pope had announced that he will take part in the interreligious meeting in Assisi in October…

“The meeting in Assisi has exactly this meaning: terrorism, even before being a problem of security and intelligence, raises an issue of experience and culture. There exists a violence that is perpetrated in the name of God. Religions must remove all legitimacy from these criminal acts. We must not only say it is wrong, but also why it is wrong”

The Islamic kamikaze terrorists consider themselves martyrs. For Christians too, martyrs are called upon to bear witness to Christ in the highest and most definitive way. What difference is there?

“The difference between a martyr and a suicide terrorist is radical. In his offering the first embraces his own persecutor beforehand. His prior forgiveness thus wins over an unjustifiable evil. The suicide terrorist prepares to die, but his gesture is aimed at the destruction of others. For this reason it is intrinsically an evil, a negation of the human”.

In the past centuries Christians and Jews were forced to live like ‘dhimmi’, subjugated, under Islam. Is this inevitable?

“Absolutely not. The words of the imam El Tayeb  in the interview that you mention were  quite clear. And to tell the truth, the imam had already expressed his position also in other circumstances, for example in an interview to the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar some months ago. I was able to read a preview of it prepared for the next Oasis newsletter. In the Muslim world a battle of ideas is going on, next to that of arms which  everyone can see: anyone who thinks that nothing is moving would be wrong”. 

(M. Antonietta Calabrò)

The Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation

FOYER NOTRE DAME DU MONT, THE LEBANON, 21-22 JUNE 2009

EDUCATION BETWEEN FAITH AND CULTURE: CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM EXPERIENCES IN DIALOGUE

EDUCATION AS PAIDEIA.

A PROPOSAL FOR OUR TIME

+ Card. Angelo Scola,

Patriarch of Venice

At the beginning of the deliberations of the Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation I believe that it is necessary to take an overall look at the pathway that has been followed over the last seven years in order to assess the importance of the initial insight that brought some of us together in Venice in 2004 and at the same time to reflect in a critical way on the steps that await us. In this way, in addition to making the numerous Lebanese invitees who are amongst us today (whom I would like to thank in a heartfelt way for their presence and my gratitude goes in a particular way to His Most Eminent Beatitude the Patriarch Sfeir, His Excellency Minister Tareq Mitri, the Nuncio, the kind speakers, the large number of Bishops, the rectors and the professors) informed about the origins and the goals of the Oasis Foundation, we will be able to renew our shared commitment to an undertaking that is not without complexity

However, in engaging in an assessment of our work in this glorious land of the Lebanon, we cannot but start, to be realistic, from a bitter observation: rarely as much as over the last year, and I would say above all over the last month, have we feared that we were coming very close to a point of no return. The Holy Father said this forcefully in Cyprus when he feared that in the Middle East there would be ‘greater bloodshed’ if an ‘urgent and concerted international effort to resolve the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land’, was not rapidly engaged in. Such a conflict – in the Lebanon this is well understood – would have disastrous consequences, first of all in terms of human lives but also because of its destabilising effects well beyond the boundaries of the States that might be involved. As is known, the bishops of the Middle East recently stated with painful severity in the Instrumentum laboris that was published prior to the imminent Synod: ‘For decades, the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, disregard for international law, the selfishness of great powers and the lack of respect for human rights have disrupted the stability of the region and subjected entire populations to a level of violence that tempts them to despair’. In the deliberations of this committee we cannot but take these words into account, unless, that is, we want to indulge in a deleterious abstraction which is, unfortunately, often characteristic of men of culture, to which category, indeed, many of us belong.

Faced with a challenge of such dimensions, and – to return to the overall activity of Oasis – faced with the enormous questions that the unprecedented mixing of peoples raises in every part of the world, what was the original insight from which we began? In extreme summarising form: the need to create a place of communion. The Foundation and its various tools (from its journal to the newsletter, and on to events, publications and the web site) exist for this purpose. The word ‘communion’, which was rediscovered and explored by the Second Vatican Council, has become rather widely used. And, as such, it runs the risk of being worn out. However, it is the very cloth of Christian existence and for this reason communion amongst us is an inescapable task that is still ahead of us. It is useless to add that this is not a general cause for inspiration but the principle and the method by which all the activities of the Oasis Foundation should be engaged in.

To explain the reasons for this belief of mine I can do no better than refer to a tale which in its simplicity bears within it the power of an archetype: the Tower of Babel. The event narrated by the Book of Genesis in its eleventh chapter says that the need/wish for unity (for communion) represents the constitutive element of the experience of every man and exercises upon man a permanent appeal. However it also tells us that man cannot achieve it on his own. It is precisely for this reason that each one of us, when we encounter experiences of authentic communion, albeit incipien, is easily, although not automatically, conquered by them. We also well know that the figure of Babel is matched in the New Testament by the event of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:5-12), that is to say of the Church, and for we Christians communion is – mysterious but real – participation in the Body itself of the Lord. But because of the unstoppable internal dynamic specific to objective love, communion opens up to involve, in concentric circles according to due distinctions, all men, and, for Oasis, Muslims in particular. Again in Cyprus Benedict XVI called Muslims ‘brothers and sisters’, adding, almost to clarify that for him this was not a mere figure of speech, ‘brothers and sisters despite the differences’. Brothers and sisters, we are convinced, not only as men but also and in a specific way as believers, albeit in the variety and at times irreducibility of theological perspectives. The task of Oasis, which obviously should be declined in various fields of work, is to end everything here: to foster the dynamic of Christian communio which because of its very internal logic tends, to the extent that it finds acceptance, to expand ad extra as well. How does it do this? I can only refer briefly to this here because the analysis would lead us far away: through witness, understood in its fullest sense. Witness, therefore, not only as good example but more specifically as a method and communication of truth. This is what Jesus, the ‘faithful witness’ (Ap 3:14) taught us when in front of Pilate ‘I was born and came into this world for this purpose, to speak about the truth’ (Jn 18:37). Here I invite everyone to read the text that His Excellency Msgr. Luigi Padovese gave to us, just a few months ago, during the Second Church Assembly of the Patriarchate of Venice, which has the significant title ‘Christians in Turkey: the Value of Witness’. It is striking to re-read today his words which amongst other things demonstrate how well aware he was of the dangers to which he exposed himself: ‘If, as has happened in past decades, we accepted as Christians not to appear, remaining an insignificant presence within the fabric of the country, there would be no difficulties, but we are realising that, as is happening in Palestine, in the Lebanon and above all in Iraq, this is a road of no return which does not do justice to the Christian history of these countries in which Christianity was born and flourished, and which would not do justice to the thousands of martyrs who in these lands left to us as a heritage the witness of their blood’ (11 October 2009).

1. Tradition and Education

Please forgive me if in order to commence today’s deliberations I have moved from apparently far off, stressing again the proprium of our shared journey. This has led us over the years to speak about unity and diversity (Venice 2005); fundamental rights and democracies (Cairo 2006); the mestizaje of civilisations (Venice 2007); religious freedom (Amman 2008); and lastly the role of traditions (Venice 2009) in contemporary plural society. They emerged, amongst other things, as a concrete setting for the inevitable cultural interpretation of every religious faith. This is a central interest of Oasis. From tradition – to which we addressed ourselves last year – to education, to which this year’s meeting is dedicated, is but a short step, even though it is not one to be taken for granted. Education, as a first approximation, is specifically that process made up first and foremost of good relations and virtuous practices, of the transmission (traditio) of an overall interpretation of reality, offered to an assessment of the freedom of the person being educated. To speak about this in the Lebanon is an extraordinary opportunity for Oasis because this is a country – I believe I am not mistaken – that has chosen to link its destiny to the success or failure of the undertaking of education. Here education emerges as a serious case par excellence: where it succeeds it assures a ‘being-together’ – ‘coexistence’ seems to me to be a reductive and worn out term – which has gained the admiration of the whole of the world; but when it fails, it leaves the field open to the worst forms of violence.

And yet – and we should not conceal this fact – the undertaking of education is in difficulty in almost all latitudes. This is certainly the case in the West where by now reference is openly made to an ‘educational emergency’ and where not rarely the very idea of education seems to have been lost. But it is also the case in the rest of the globe. As the Algerian intellectual Mustapha Cherif, formerly the Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, wrote with critical lucidity in an article being published in Oasis: ‘In the Muslim world…Society falls between the anvil and the hammer: there are the ignorant who censor society and level it downwards and there are groups that practise a mimetic approach based on immoral modernism’. In many post-colonial societies the system of state and non-state schools has still not managed to assure mass quality education. And yet, Cherif goes on, ‘as regards the defence of its own sovereignty a country depends on its capacity to produce and assimilate knowledge’. In many cases it is the linguistic question that becomes a mirror of the difficult relationship with modernity. What does it mean for a student to receive a humanistic and religious formation in his or her own national language and a scientific education in English or French? Does one not insinuate the idea that the two areas of knowledge are incommunicable, opening thereby the road to schizophrenic attitudes that facile artificial concordances between science and faith cannot hope to heal? Let us not forget, for that matter, that it is specifically the linguistic question that led us to decide to publish the journal Oasis in its singular editorial formula.

However, our goal is not to indulge in critical aspects nor to formulate dubious classifications as regards the respective gravity of the educational emergencies of the East and of the West but, rather, to offer some lines of approach.

2. Rediscovering the Breadth of Reason

To educate we need an idea of man and above all practice of the humanum. Not an abstract idea, therefore, but an idea inevitably linked to the integral and elementary experience of every individual. Redemptor hominis states with conviction: ‘We are not dealing with the “abstract” man, but the real, “concrete”, “historical” man’. Unfortunately, however, the idea of man implicit in large part in current educational practice, certainly in the West but also at a global level, with respect, at least, to the formation of transnational elites, is increasingly that of a divided subject: on the one hand, it is said to be rational objectivism, and, on the other, in a complementary way, emotional subjectivism. Only the first sphere is said to pertain to education, which is thus said to consist in a correct transmission of information, techniques, abilities and skills. Education in this approach would thus become a synonym for training in the use of reason, for that matter reduced to its instrumental component. Outside the field of reason, and in the final analysis also of education, is said to lie, instead, the world of the affections, the exclusive dominion of a subject who constructs and invents himself or herself in an autonomy that tends to be self-referential and dangerously fragile. In addition, one should at the least refer to the fact that this dualistic conception of the human is increasingly giving way to an absolute positivism. That which, above all as a result of the amazing discoveries of the neurosciences and bio-convergences, refer back all the expressions of the emotional, affective and moral sphere to pure cerebral activities, which in the future could, according to some, even become artificial. We are thus confronted with a conception of reason limited to the empirical-instrumental sphere that does not take into account the detailed modalities by which the human logos is exercised but which must be at the base of an adequate idea of education.

I usually refer to this by using the classical term ‘paideia’ which was made famous by the studies of Werner Jaeger but which is here taken up in a broad sense suggested by Maritain. The notion of paideia, for our daily encounter of Christians and Muslims, has the great advantage of directing us back to one of the two traditions which in different ways we share: the classical heritage and more specifically the heritage of late antiquity, when, that is to say, the dialogue between Hellenic thought and the Biblical message began to take form.

In the famous ethical tract composed in Persia in the tenth century by Miskawayh, ‘The Refinement of Character’, one can read: ‘The perfection which is particular to man is twofold, for he possesses two faculties, one of which is the cognitive and the other the practical. With the one he desires knowledge and the sciences and with the other the organization of things and their arrangement in order. These two perfections are the ones which were indicated by the philosophers. They said: Philosophy is divided into the theoretical part and the practical part. When a man masters both parts, he gains complete happiness’. This quotation could be equally at home in Athens, Alexandria or Rome, not to mention medieval Latin. It well illustrates that ‘Agreement of Two Wisdoms’ – both Christian and Muslim – which in this, as in so many other fields, is not difficult to document.

However, to come to our time and taking advantage of the ineluctable acquisitions of modern and contemporary thought about original structure (foundation), we can state that always and in all cases ‘something gives itself to someone’. This formulation acts only to cut to the bare essentials the classical belief about the intelligibility of the real and the ability of man to host it.

If such is really the case, the task of the educator is that of introducing the person who is being educated to an integral experience of reality. He or she will guide him or her in deciphering its meaning because in offering itself to my freedom reality shows that it already possesses its own unity and thus a logos to be discovered.

3. An Encounter of Freedom

One could well illustrate the wealth included in this vision of paideia compared to an education reduced to mere training, that is closed because of an acritical reduction of the broad spectrum of reason to that question about ultimate things which, in line with the famous phrase of Comte, one should no longer pose.

Of great interest, instead, even though it is not possible to do this, would be to explore what it implies for Christians and Muslims to believe that not only does reality give itself to the subject that hosts it but that it itself is given (or to use a more precise terminological term, ‘created’) and therefore refers back beyond itself to a First Giver. Another line of shared research could be the process of research in which is manifested a certain unification of the multiple which in the view of some refers back to an antecedent Unity which is not of a so-to-speak merely gnoseological character. It would be advisable to discuss the possible role of knowledge about God (I do not dare to say of theology because of the known difficulties of translating that term into the technical language of Islam) as an overall interpretative hypothesis of the real. Furthermore, we could explore what is the meaning of the fact that our being in the world is located for the subject in the chain of generations: within, therefore, tradition. It is evident that one is dealing here with ineluctable questions for the work that awaits us.

But as I have just observed, the emphasis on the capacity of a subject to receive the intelligible real represents only one dimension of paideia. The other equally important dimension is its calling onto the stage the freedom, indeed the freedoms, of the educator and the educated who are always located within a fabric of social relationships. And here it is appropriate to speak about the educational risk. Introduction to a unitary existential hypothesis about the real does not take place without a dual risk. The risk first of all of the person being educated who cannot call any truth ‘his’ or ‘hers’ if he or she does not do this with his or her freedom, as indeed Goethe brilliantly observed: ‘What you have inherited from your fathers, make it your own, so as to be able to possess it’ (‘Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen’).

On the other hand the educator as well cannot get out of a self-exposition. The person who says ‘do that’ does not educate. He who invites the student with the words ‘do that with me’ does educate. Indeed, he or she communicates what is dearest to him or her and in doing this makes himself or herself, after a certain fashion, naked. Education – the Church has always taught – is a form of charity, an act of love where the educator offers the whole of himself or herself in witness to that truth that he or she lives as an adequate interpretative key of the real.

In the final analysis education is thus generation and constitutes in all cultures an experience of paternity and sonship.

For we Christians it has its roots in the intra-Trinitarian relationships – relationships that have the face of the singular experience of the relationship of Jesus with the Father and the Spirit.

When reflecting on this ‘encounter of freedom’ which constitutes the second dimension of paideia, we should recognise with great realism that religions, above all when they have acquired or have had imposed upon them the function of being a social glue, have not always known how to defend themselves from the temptation of seeing themselves as the bearers of a truth that is ‘so evident’ as to make completely extrinsic and thus superfluous the absent of freedom on the part of the freedom of the interlocutor. Thus today it happens that whereas, at least at the level of transnational elites, the tendency is spreading to celebrate a freedom detached from any reference to truth-good, there is manifested, as an equal and contrary reaction, the impetus to uphold a truth that is said not to require the involvement of the freedom of the subject in affirming itself as truth. Truth would not be vital gift but only a formal teaching. This is fundamentalism, a pathology of education as grave as forgoing a recognition of the objective ‘claim’ of truth. It can even come to use violence where a partisan spirit lacerates a community by destroying the political good of being together: that practical social good on which the Lebanon has wagered its own existence as a nation.

It is often repeated, and not without good grounds, that the best antidote to fundamentalism and violence is education. We should, however, add: not any kind of education but an education that knows how to keep truth and freedom together. And this last in its personal dimension and communal dimension (including therefore freedom of expression and criticism, even when this is painful, where necessary, and as regards religious freedom, conversion as well). Only an adequate anthropology, based upon I-in relation to God, with other people and with ourselves, will thus allow us to avoid a violent negative tendency, without giving way to an unsatisfactory agnosticism.

And it is at this level, in my view, very much prior to the question of the exegesis of Holy Scriptures, which is so often evoked and yet central, that the decisive future of religions will be played out.

4. The ‘Craft of Living’

In this paper of mine I have not been able to refer to fundamental issues that will be addressed at this morning’s and this afternoon’s sessions: indeed, we will hear religious education and the formation of religious discussed, we will allow ourselves to be guided by the great experience that the Catholic Church and the other Christian communities, as well as the Muslim communities, of the Lebanon have developed in this field, and we will discuss the relationship between education and the creation of national identity. All of these are central aspects for our subject which because of their importance go well beyond the horizons of the Lebanon.

Allow me, however, to end my paper by inviting you to fix your gaze on the fascination of the undertaking of education. A great Italian writer of the twentieth century, Cesare Pavese, gave his diaries the title ‘The Craft of Living’. To teach the craft of living, to teach man to be man, freely able to adhere to truth, is the unfinished task of education. It presents itself afresh to every generation because, as Benedict XVI acutely observed, ‘Unlike what takes place in the field of technology and economics, where the progress of today can build on that of the past, in the ambit of the moral formation and growth of persons such an accumulative possibility does not exist, because human freedom is always new and therefore each person and generation must make their own decisions in their own name’.

And it is once again the philosopher Miskawayh who teaches us, with the whole of the authentically humanistic tradition, the supreme dignity that is inherent in this attempt: ‘Man is the nobles of [the] existents, but, when he does not perform the actions distinctive of his substance he resembles […] the horse which, if it ceases to perform completely the actions distinctive of a horse, is uses as a donkey for carrying loads or as cattle for slaughtering and is better dead than alive. In view of this, it must follow that the art which is concerned with the betterment of man’s actions so that he may perform them completely and perfectly in accordance with his substance […] is the noblest and the most honorable of all the arts.’.

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’.

N.B.: The traditional press conference will be held at the end of the proceedings at 1.15 pm, on Tuesday 23 June.

Here you will find the programme of the two-day event and the list of participants.

Programme

Fondazione Cini – Venice

Monday, 22 June 2009

First Session

9.30 am – 9.40 am Introduction by Dr Martino Diez, director of the Fondazione Internazionale Oasis.
9.40 am – 10.00 am Address by H.E. Card Angelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice. About the inevitable cultural interpretation of faith
10.00 am – 10.20 am Dr Paolo Gomarasca, Tradition/testament/inheritance, for a hermeneutics of tradition
10.20 am – 10.40 am Fr Michel Cuypers. The role of tradition in the Islamic faith
10.40 am – 11.00 am Prof Malika Zeghal. Tradition and traditions in contemporary Islam

11.00 am – 11.30 am Break

Second Session

11.30 am – 11.50 am Prof Azzeddine Gaci, Islam in Europe, a tradition in the making.
11.50 am – 12.10 pm Prof John Milbank, Rethinking religions’ public place
12.10 pm – 13.00 pm Open discussion on the various papers presented

13.15 – 14.45 pm Lunch

Thirds and fourth sessions

15.00 – 16.30 pm Discussion
16.30 – 17.00 pm Break
17.00 – 18.45 pm Discussion

Tuesday 23 June 2009

First Session

8.45- 9.00 am Introduction by Dr Roberto Fontolan, Oasis editor
9.00- 11.00 am Open discussion

10.00 – 11.30 am Break

Second Session
11.30 am – 12.30 pm Open discussion
12.30 pm – 12.45 pm Closing address by H.E. the Patriarch

13.15 pm Press conference by Card Angelo Scola and other international guests

Speakers who will open the committee’s proceedings:

Paolo Gomarasca is a Researcher in Moral Philosophy and teaches Institutions of Anthropology in the Faculty of Sociology at the Università Cattolica in Milan His latest book is Meticciato: convivenza o confusione? (Métissage: Coexistence or Confusion) (Marcianum Press, 2008).
Michel Cuypers is a Brother of Jesus. After living in Iran he moved to Egypt in 1989 where he is a member of Dominican Institute for Eastern Studies (DIES). His focus has been on the study of the Qur‘anic test.
Malika Zeghal is Associate Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion and Islamic Studies in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In her work, Gardiens de l’Islam (Guardians of Islam), she analyses the influence of the ulamā of Al-Azhar University.
(Alasdair) John Milbank is a Christian theologian and Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Nottingham.
Azzeddine Gaci heads the Islamic Regional Council of the Rhône-Alpes Region, France

For more information about Oasis, its resources (journal, newsletter, website, books, research and events) and committee, check out its website www.oasiscenter.eu

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/19/oasis%e2%80%99-international-network-is-back-in-venice/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:21:20 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=70 The nexus between truth and freedom is for man one of the always resurgent questions because in the ultimate analysis it cannot be mastered or deduced in purely conceptual terms. The journey of Oasis, which on more than one occasion in recent years was near to touching upon this subject, by then suggested dedication to a broader and more precise approach. However, the characteristic attention to the data of reality that constitutes the inescapable method of our common project led us to privilege in this edition an approach to the question that would contextualise in today’s world both reflection on the intrinsic direction of freedom towards truth and reflection on the truth of freedom. These arguments, indeed, find in the burning question of the freedom to convert, as a culminating expression of the freedom of religion and conscience, a decisive terrain of examination.

Two Opposing Difficulties
At the meeting of the scientific committee that was held in Amman on 21-25 June 2008 we had already observed that from the point of view of Western societies, religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom to convert cohabit with a paradox. They are certain recognised by juridical systems and the common mentality. However, two facts point to the frailty of this recognition. On the one hand, conscience is conceived in terms that we may define as ‘creative’ in an equivocal sense [cf. Veritatis splendor, n.54], whereas conscience does not have the power to ‘actively’ establish of its own accord what is good and evil. On the other hand, these freedoms are substantially thought of as a mere prerogative of the individual: ‘something’ that refers to the sphere of the private and thus that cannot seek to have public relevance. The risk is that these two declinations of religious freedom (and freedom of conscience) become emptied of real contents in their practical exercise. In this way, indeed, one neither recognises the intrinsic dimension of truth of the religious experience nor admits that the religious experience expresses itself as a fact of a community and a people.

If we now turn our attention to the experience of countries that have Muslim majorities, we are faced with a situation that is completely different. Both the dimension of truth of the religious experience and the popular dimension belong to the DNA of these peoples. They demonstrate great attachment to their own tradition. And yet one cannot deny the existence of a grave deficit in the sphere of religious freedom: one may think here of restrictions on worship in some countries and on citizenship for non-Muslims in others, and one may think above all else of the decisive question of the possibility of changing one’s religion. In some situations it would appear that whereas one can tolerate a certain level of diversity for those already born to another faith, the request for religious freedom becomes intolerable if the person who asks to convert is a Muslim. The way out that not rarely is implicitly imposed on these people is illuminating here: if you want to leave Islam you have to abandon the country in order to avoid the ‘scandal’ of a public gesture.

The ‘Serious Case’ of the Relationship between Truth and Freedom
The gravity and urgent importance of the questions raised in the short and necessarily incomplete picture that I have outlined indicate how much the question of religious freedom touches upon the heart of man. Without any doubt, access to the ‘foundation’ or better to the desire to enter into a relationship with it constitutes one of the most powerful stimuli that animate man’s heart. As the famous phrase of St. Augustine observes: ‘quid enim fortius desiderat anima quam veritatem?’. Man is made for truth, he is directed towards it, as in various forms the religions of the world never cease to remind us and as the Muslim faith in a particularly insistent and positive way stresses. In it, so perceived is the decisiveness of the nexus between man and truth that the German orientalist Franz Rosenthal was able to describe the whole Arab-Islamic civilisation beginning with the category of ‘knowledge’.

Here I was very struck to learn that in Arabic one word alone (haqq) means at the same time ‘true’ and ‘real’. If one adds that the same term in the Jewish Bible designates law (hoqq, ‘ordinance’, ‘precept’), one cannot but be amazed by the vastness of the reflections that are thrown open beginning with this evocative polysemy. The life of mankind is truly an incessant return to the great questions connected with the Truth.

However, the equation ‘true’ and ‘real’ that the etymology of this Arabic term would suggest, if interpreted in a rationalistic fashion, betrays a possible risk, that of deducing truth in a conceptualistic way, understanding it as a complete and formally consistent system of conceptual propositions. The act by which conscience relates to reality, that is to say the affirmation of truth, is thus ‘the fruit, of a representative character, of a mere conceptual operation’. And as a consequence an action is said to be ‘the carrying out of this previously known ideal’.

A practical variant of this approach, which is well described in the Gospel story of the young rich man, is the legalism that ‘has it that freedom is possessed before being expressed in an act, arguing that its meaning has already been given once and for ever in the norm’. This vision of truth in the ultimate analysis is a form of idolatrous gnosis, because it conceals the claim that man possesses through his limited outlook the complete physiognomy of God. But as we read in the last edition of Oasis, ‘praise be to He who had given to his creatures no other way of knowing Him than their inability to know Him’. These are the words of Abû Bakr, the first successor to the Prophet of Islam, which the author of the article rightly puts side by side with the si comprehendis, non est Deus of St. Augustine. A relationship of possession with truth, almost as though we could dispose of it as just one thing amongst others, is not possible; in essential terms it is not even thinkable. Both Islam and Christianity well know why this is: truth is not a packet of notions but a living and personal reality which continually calls freedom into play. Its manifestation cannot be inserted a priori into the narrow boxes of a reason understood geometrically.

In other words, the Truth itself, which is transcendent and absolute, requires, in order to be attested to man, the act of his decision. Reflecting in the past on this subject, I emphasised that ‘truth places man in the need for a free decision not only because it opens up to him the area of the answer but because it requires it because man by his origins is destined for truth’.
There thus emerges in evident fashion the importance of modern reflection on freedom, not only in a political sense (the freedom of peoples and nations) but first of all in relation to its intrinsic relationship with truth. The truth of freedom implies freedom to adhere to truth. If this is true for our Western history, one can equally say the same of the Arab-Islamic world.

The Community Dimension
Benedict XVI in his recent address to the United Nations stated that ‘The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature. The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order’.
These words of the Holy Father oblige us to bear in mind the community dimension of religious freedom. Objectively, this is a critical point: indeed, what happens to the identity of a community if a sizeable number of people begin to call it into question either because they come from another religion or because they convert to another religion? It is not difficult to understand that this fact is potentially a source of tensions.

The teaching of the protagonists of the Catholic orientalism of the twentieth century demonstrates that the Catholic Church does not have as its goal that of placing at risk the bases of shared social life in countries with Muslim majorities. It does not identify with an aggressive proselytising approach that demonises non-Christian cultures and religions. Father Anawati, a great Egyptian Dominican, a theologian and a philosopher, confessed at the end of his life: ‘I do not study Muslim culture in order to destroy it. What should I destroy it? It is something that is beautiful in itself. It should be appreciated’.

At the same time, however, respect for the identity of the community cannot be pushed to the point of violating the human freedom of the individual. Today this should be borne witness to in a decisive way in relation to our Muslim interlocutors. Catholic doctrine on the subject certainly does not think of religious freedom as an option in an imaginary ‘supermarket of religions’. It stresses that religious freedom is a consequence of the absolute and incumbent duty of everyone to adhere to the Truth, but with an objective and suitable conscience. It is this obedience mediated by the conscience that is the foundation of religious freedom, which should not be limited to the mere possibility of engaging in worship but which also includes the right to change one’s religion. Here as well a clarification is required: in doing this the Church does not state that every choice in this sphere is good. Error in itself does not have rights but a person with an upright conscience who falls into error possesses this freedom. Certainly not before God but before other people, society and the State. Only God is the judge of the choices of the individual in this field. Only He can know what is to be found in the heart of man and why he decides to abandon one religion to join another.

One could object that the State, even though it is evidently not able to enter the hearts of men, is nonetheless interested in maintaining the cohesion of the community. In this critical reservation truth is to be found and to such an extent that the fathers of the Second Vatican Council chose to add to the declaration on religious freedom contained in Dignitatis Humanae the restrictive clause ‘Provided the just demands of public order are observed’ (n. 4). However, granted this clarification, one cannot but ask oneself what good can follow for the truth from keeping people in a religion in which they no longer believe. Is it really more deleterious for a community to have an explicit abandonment of a religion than a profession of that religion which is only a façade? One of the fathers of modern Islamic reformism, the Egyptian Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905), answered in the negative, inviting people to distinguish between the very early moments of Islam – where in his view the embryonic nature of that movement justified the use of coercion – and its subsequent epochs where such a need declined.

The Primacy of Witness
In presenting these questions for the reflection of our readers, I would like to end by recalling the short analysis (to which I referred at the beginning of this paper) of the opposing difficulties that the West and the world of a Muslim majority encounter in engaging in a correct approach to religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and the freedom to convert. These difficulties, in fact, well demonstrate that a due assent to truth is always dramatic because freedom must decide always and once again in every individual act.

How?
By the at times impervious pathway of witness understood as an approach that is both practical and speculative, and from which nobody, and even less Christians, can withdraw. Witness understood in these terms for us obliges us to present to our Muslim interlocutors what we believe to be the authentic cultural interpretation of Christian faith. And this is possible only through mutual involvement.

H.E. Card. Angelo Scola

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/05/24/ciao-mondo/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/05/24/ciao-mondo/#comments Sat, 24 May 2008 09:36:04 +0000 ufficiostampa http://1654984976 “This is a problem typical of our globalized society. We’re seeing an unprecedented encounter of people, cultures and religions, which is what I have in mind when I use the phrase meticciato di civiltà - a “hybridization of civiliations.” It’s a historical process currently underway, and its results are by no means certain. There are blendings that work, and blendings that don’t.

The critical point is this: What happens to our identity as a people if a significant bloc begins to call it into question, either because they belong to another religion or because they convert? In some majority Muslim nations, a certain degree of diversity can be tolerated for those who are born into another religion, but the feeling is that the identity of the country would be threatened if those who are born Muslims had the possibility of converting. It’s interesting to note the choice frequently presented to these converts: if you want to leave Islam, you also have to leave the country. The assumption seems to be that the personal dimension of faith interests us up to a point, but we want to avoid the ‘scandal’ of a public gesture”…

John Allen, Jr. is a National Catholic Reporter and analyst for the CNN.
Though the parallel shouldn’t be pushed too far, in some ways Christian/Muslim relations today might be compared to where things stood with personal computers back in the early 1980s. Everybody knew PCs were the future, but they wouldn’t change the world until a simple, appealing, and reasonably standard way of making them work emerged.
Then Apple released the Macintosh in 1984, followed by Microsoft’s first version of Windows a year later. Overnight, personal computing went from a hobby to a necessity, and we woke up in the digital age.
In a similar fashion, everybody knows today that dialogue with Islam is critical to the future. The “market,” however, has not yet settled on a clear model for how it ought to work – who we should be talking to, what we should be talking about, and what we should expect from those conversations. Until that happens, Christian/Muslim relations will remain a bit like the early days of computing … the rarefied pursuit of experts typing in strings of DOS commands to run even simple operations.
So, is there a potential “Windows” of Christian/Muslim relations out there?
One intriguing candidate is the “Oasis” project of Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, an attempt to foster a global network of contacts among Christians and Muslims, attaching special importance to the voices and experiences of Christians who live in majority Muslim nations across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. While Oasis sponsors academic conferences and a journal, it’s also devoted to giving voice to real-life experiences of ordinary people, not just intellectual experts and the professional artisans of dialogue.
In light of the fact that Scola, 66, is widely considered a rising star in Catholicism, his patronage alone makes Oasis worth watching.
Launched in September 2004, Oasis is also sponsored by four other cardinals: Philippe Barbarin of Lyon, France; Josip Bozanic of Zagreb, Croatia; Péter Erd of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary; and Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria. None are identified with what one might consider “soft” positions on Catholic teaching or practice. That distinguishes Oasis from some other initiatives, which bring the avant-garde of different traditions into conversation, but not the mainstream. Among other things, Christian leaders who gravitate around Oasis are often willing to challenge Muslims on issues of reciprocity and religious freedom more forcefully than one sometimes finds in other inter-religious forums.
Scola has said that his aim is not primarily to reach out to “moderate Muslims,” but rather to “popular Islam,” meaning ordinary believers deeply attached to Islamic traditions who nevertheless do not subscribe to radical forms of jihad.
In June, the “scientific committee” of Oasis will meet in Amman, Jordan. The theme is “the relationship between truth and freedom,” with specific attention to freedom of conscience and religion, and how the value of religious freedom can be reconciled with respect for the religious tradition of a given people.
Information about Oasis can be found here: http://www.cisro.it/pages/home_en.html
I recently had the chance to talk with Scola about Oasis and the Amman meeting. The following are excerpts from our exchange.
* * *
Your meeting in Jordan will focus on two values, religious freedom and the traditional identity of a given people. The tension between those two values seems steadily more acute in today’s world. In your view, what are the basic principles for striking the right balance?

This is a problem typical of our globalized society. We’re seeing an unprecedented encounter of people, cultures and religions, which is what I have in mind when I use the phrase meticciato di civiltà – a “hybridization of civiliations.” It’s a historical process currently underway, and its results are by no means certain. There are blendings that work, and blendings that don’t.
The critical point is this: What happens to our identity as a people if a significant bloc begins to call it into question, either because they belong to another religion or because they convert? In some majority Muslim nations, a certain degree of diversity can be tolerated for those who are born into another religion, but the feeling is that the identity of the country would be threatened if those who are born Muslims had the possibility of converting. It’s interesting to note the choice frequently presented to these converts: if you want to leave Islam, you also have to leave the country. The assumption seems to be that the personal dimension of faith interests us up to a point, but we want to avoid the ‘scandal’ of a public gesture.
On the other hand, the modern liberal state is equally unprepared for this question, because it regards only the individual as an interlocutor, and thus thinks solely in terms of individual rights. It’s far more difficult to consider the social implications of individual choices. In the end, this leaves many people unprepared for change and disconcerted by it. We see this clearly on the issue of immigration, where it’s as if many people today are saying: ‘What’s happening? You told us that it was all a question of the individual ideas of immigrants, and everyone is free to think whatever they believe. All of a sudden, however, these individuals have become a foreign body, and we don’t recognize them anymore.’
If we want to overcome this impasse, the solution, it seems to me, must be sought in the recognition of a good that’s also at the basis of every difference, which is the good of relationship. We have to emphasize our common humanity, and to do that, we need to expand the scope of both reason and freedom.

How does the issue of ‘reciprocity’ enter into the discussion?

In majority Muslim nations, [Christians] certainly don’t want to put the dominant social tradition, the social fabric, at risk. To be clear, we [in Europe] ask for the same respect for our traditions from those who arrive to live among us.
Respect for the identity of a given community, however, shouldn’t be invoked to violate the human freedoms of single persons. In the end, what’s the point of compelling people to remain in a religion in which they no longer believe? Is explicitly walking away truly more damaging to the community than a false profession of belief? This is the kind of frank discussion we hope to have with our Muslim interlocutors.

Why the choice of Amman? Do you believe that Jordan has something to teach us on the question of religious freedom and traditional identity?

Jordan is a country that’s 97 percent Muslim, but where the Christian minority faces a situation that, despite some shadows, is without a doubt basically positive, especially compared to other parts of the region. It’s a country that’s fairly poor in terms of natural resources, yet it has a higher standard of living compared to several of its neighbors which are theoretically more endowed with natural wealth. In many ways, therefore, it’s a living example of what the Middle East could be, if the logic of recrimination were abandoned and the path to modernization were opened. In this regard, the support that various members of the Royal Family are giving to dialogue among Muslims, as well as Christian-Muslin dialogue, is universally recognized and appreciated.

In the Middle East today, there’s great fear for the Christian future, above all in the Holy Land. Do you see any signs of hope?

The situation is certainly very difficult. Despite that, every time that I have the chance to meet with our Christian brothers in the Middle East, for example during our Oasis meetings, I’m struck by their tenacity and their willness to keep going. In various editions of our magazine, we’ve amply documented the notable exodus of Christians [from the Middle East], but we don’t want to surrender to the logic of lament or regret. The local bishops have repeatedly affirmed that a Christian who doesn’t understand the special role providence has assigned to him or her, being born and growing up in a prevalently Muslim environment, is potentially a Christian who will emigrate. We want to do our part to build up such an understanding.

Oasis has a ‘preferential option’ for Islam. Today’s threats to religious liberty, however, go well beyond the borders of the Islamic world. There are serious problems, for example, in India and China. Is there a risk that in the West, religious freedom has come to be seen almost exclusively as an ‘Islamic problem,’ thus contributing to the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’?

Certainly religious freedom – which is a fundamental value, and can’t be reduced simply to liberty of cult – must be defended everywhere, and therefore not just in majority Muslim nations. At the same time, it’s true that religious freedom represents an important unsolved dilemma in the relationship between Islam and modernity. For this reason, I believe it has to be faced in an urgent way by Muslims themselves.

You’re committed to dialogue with Islam. In particular, you’ve said in various ways that your interest is not so much ‘moderate Islam,’ but ‘traditional Islam.’ How is this effort to build bridges with traditional Islam going?

I think it’s too early to start drawing conclusions. In any event, our option is rather for the Islam of the people, which can’t be understood exclusively in terms of the category of ‘moderate Islam.’ The term ‘Islam of the people’ simply designates as clearly as possible with whom we’tre trying to speak. Moderate Muslims have the possibility of exercising influence only if, and to the extent that, they accurately interpret (and perhaps stimulate an evolution in) the sense of the faith held by common people, meaning the grassroots religiosity that really sustains the life of populations facing situations that are often very difficult. Anyone who’s spent even a little time in the Middle East understands this.

Oasis has been around now for almost five years. What fruits do you see so far?

The most beautiful fruit is the gradual construction of a community that embraces Christians from West and East who have intense ties, even though of widely varying sorts, with Muslims. Our hope is that this community will continue to mature.

* * *
Source: John L Allen Jr’s blog http://ncronline.org/users/john-l-allen-jr

«The document is certainly an encouraging sign», Cardinal Scola tells Il Foglio. «Above all what is of note is the number and quality of those who have signed the document. This is not only a media event, because consensus is for Islam a source of theology and law. The redactors of Oasis have told me that even if those who have signed avoided a juridical formulation to the document, it is still true that no text produced by the most extremist salafi groups has ever been able to claim a consensus equal to that witnessed by the 138 signatures at the bottom of the open letter. The approach is realistic, ‘if Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace’, and at its core it simply aims to ‘say to Christians that we, as Muslims, are not against them and that Islam is not against themso long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their
Religion’. In that sense, the Muslim leaders willingly identify themselves with those ‘others’ of whom Jesus says: ‘who is not against us is with us’».

For the first time a large number of scholars of Islam seem to break with the culture of rejecting the West and non Muslims. «The document, in the prospective of that double love, of God and one’s neighbour, underscores a vein of the Muslim tradition which has been partially placed in the shade due to the growth of fundamentalism. The text affirms that man has ‘mind or the intelligence, which is made for comprehending the truth; the will which is made for freedom of choice, and sentiment
which is made for loving the good and the beautiful’. On the other hand, one notes between the lines a condemnation of terrorism: ‘to those who nevertheless relish conflict and destruction for their own sake or reckon that ultimately they stand to gain through them, we say [...] to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony’. The fact that the text is rooted in the Muslim tradition is very important and makes it more credible than other proclamations expressed in a more western language».

In the introduction the 138 record that “together we represent 55 per cent of the world’s population”, a very tactical and political approach. Also for this reason Cardinal Tauran stated that the letter opens new roads, but it needs to be studied thoroughly in order to make it more objective and not selective, more universal and less political. Instead of criticizing the letter, Scola however prefers to speak «of a possible necessary limitation of perspective. One cannot ask of this document more than it can give. It is only the prelude to a theological dialogue, which, in an atmosphere of greater reciprocal esteem, proposes to investigate the contents of the two pillars (love of the one God and love of neighbour) in the two religious traditions».

A year ago in Cairo the Patriarch organized a meeting of the biannual journal, Oasis, with the title, “Fundamental Rights and Democracy”, in collaboration with the University of Al Ahzar, Catholic dignitaries, western academics and members of the World Jewish Congress. «This theological dialogue is in no way possible if there is not a preceding respect», continues Scola. «I had the occasion to discuss publicly at Cairo and in the USA with three signers of the document: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Muzammil H. Siddiqui, and I was able to ascertain that this reciprocal esteem is real. The hope is that this document might be read and widely diffused in the Muslim world and in the West».

Can one sustain that the letter is a demonstration that Benedict XVI opened a great debate at Regensburg? «Certainly, the intervention of the Pope provoked a dynamic of great interest within Islam. As the same signers recognize, the interconnection between Christians and Muslims in the contemporary world is such to make it impossible not to take a position concerning the coexistence between different faiths». Dialogue with Islam seemed to have stopped to the point of death. «The document indicates an important point of departure for an authentic dialogue. That always requires two conditions: the revelation of self in testimony and the search for a life that is good (vita bona). It seems to me that the signers of the letter are decidedly going in this direction from the moment that they invite Christians to a type of ‘spiritual emulation’, in a task to do the best: ‘Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works’».

NEW YORK – Despite difficulties, Christianity, Islam and Judaism can work together for peace, but only by each remaining faithful to its own beliefs.
That’s the view of leaders and scholars from the three religions who shared a podium at a Jan. 17 forum at the United Nations. “We live in a desert,” amid the growing secularism, religious divisions, and other conflicts that plague the world, said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author and professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, one of the panellists. “The words ofJesus Christ, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ were at no time as true as today.”
Religion can help foster that peace, “but only if it continues to be religion,” remaining faithful to its own identity, the Iranian-born Nasr said. “We must not relativize our path to God, but we must accept the validity of other paths.
Nasr spoke along with Cardinal Angelo Scola, patriarch of Venice, and Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress, and the Venice, Italy-based Oasis International Studies and Research Center.
About 200 people filled the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Auditorium for the forum, which was held to introduce the work of the Oasis Center and its publications. Oasis, a bi-annual magazine that deals with issue of Christian, Muslim and other interfaith concerns, is being given a U.S. editions for the first time.
The Jan. 17 forum included the three “Abrahamic” religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Cardinal Scola founded the Oasis Center and its journal to forster dialogue among Christians and Muslims, beginning with Christian communities living in Muslim countries.
In addressing the audience, Cardinal Scola emphasized the need for dialogue beyond scholarly circles to included individuals in their daily lives.”Listen to the experiences of people”, he urged.
Father James Massa. director of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, who met Cardinal Scola when he was in Washington the previous day, called Oasis a “marvellous instrument” that offers was to “bridge the divides” between Catholics and Muslims.
Fahter Massa noted that the name comes from a comment by Pope John Paul II that “the place of prayes is dear to both Christians and Muslims ad an oasis in which one meets with the merciful God along the walk toward eternal life and with one’s brothers and sisters in the bonds of religion.”
Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and who works closely with the Oasis Cener, moderated the panel.

‘Misunderstandlngs’

Nasr noted that “many profound misunderstandings need to be overcome,” especially the miss-association between Islam and violence.
Both Islam and Christianity have, at different times in their history, practiced violence “in the name of religion,” he said. While Judaism has less of a record of violence, “for most of its history ii hasn’t had the power” to inflict violence.
“You can’t compare your favourable periods with the unfavorable periods of other religions” or confuse the influence of religion with the influence of the civilization in which a people of faith live, Nasr said.
In understanding the differences in history and theology of each religion. “the freedom to be oneself,” and not be subject to coercion, whether military or economic.
While recognizing the differences among the three religions, Nasr said, “Look at how much they have in common. They all believe in the same God”, as well as “the beginning and end of human history, the immortality of the soul and responsibility for one’s actions before God.”
“Let up hope and pray that all those who believe in God, in his mercy and his wisdom” Nasr continued, “will be able to speak together as a single family in a world so alienated from the divine.”
Rabbi Singer also shared that hope for all religions. He found encouragement from the closer relationship between the Church and Judaism since the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 document Nostra Aetate (The Relation of the Church to better relations with Judaism. Yet dialogue between Jews and Catholics went far beyond what was imagined in Nostra Aetate, Singer said.
He cited the leadership of Pope John Paul II for fostering the healing. Jewish-Catholic dialogue can be a model for reconciliation, he said.
“If Jews and Catholics can get along,” Singer said, “almost anything can happen.”
Singer praised Islamic figures who have denounced violence, in particular Shaykh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti in Egypt and one of the highest-ranking clarics in e Sunni Muslim world.
The rabbi read a statement in which Ali Gomaa repudiated violence committed in the name of Islam as “the actions of e misguided criminal minority” who “contradict the central theme of peace in Islam.”

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