…we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.
We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.
The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”
The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”
The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you.
Testo integrale del discorso dal Washington Post
Testo del discorso in italiano dal sito del Corriere della Sera
‘Remarkable congruence’ between pope and president on Islam
By John L Allen Jr, June 05, 200
If anyone is still puzzled about why the Vatican sat out the fuss over President Barack Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame — and more generally, why the Vatican has refused to allow its relationship with Obama to be defined by obvious differences over abortion — the president’s speech to the Muslim world yesterday in Cairo should go a long way toward clearing things up
Seen through Catholic eyes, perhaps the most striking thing about Obama’s speech is what Fr. James Massa, the U.S. bishops’ top official for inter-faith dialogue, called its “remarkable congruence” with Benedict’s own message to Muslims during his May 8-15 trip to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories
The coincidence of Benedict and Obama both visiting the Middle East at roughly the same time, and both delivering much the same pitch, hints at a beguiling geopolitical prospect: That just as John Paul II and Ronald Reagan joined forces a quarter-century ago to vanquish Communism, so a pope and president might stand shoulder-to-shoulder once again, this time to engineer a historic rapprochement between Islam and the West
Despite differences in frame of reference and rhetorical style (and despite the fact that Obama erroneously situated the Inquisition during the period of Muslim rule in Spain, a mistake Benedict presumably would not make), Benedict’s message to the Islamic world three weeks ago and Obama’s speech yesterday [1] nonetheless intersect on several important points
* Urging dialogue with Islam, calling for a new start after the divisions of the past;
* Proposing the Holy Land as a place of peaceful co-existence among Jews, Muslims and Christians;
* Seeing violence and extremism as a perversion of Islam;
* Backing the two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem;
* Calling for the protection of religious freedom and other human rights in Islamic societies, including greater scope for democracy and empowering women;
* Acknowledging that some corrosive features of Western modernity have given Muslims legitimate reason to be suspicious;
* Opposing militarism and the use of force to resolve disputes
What difference can such a tone from the world’s most important spiritual and political leaders make? Thursday night, I tracked down Bishop Thomas of the El-Qussia and Mair diocese of the Coptic Church in Upper Egypt, who had been in the audience for Obama’s speech at the University of Cairo, to ask what the impact has been in his part of the world. Referring to the combined effect of the pope’s trip and Obama’s speech, he was succinct: “It’s made the atmosphere much lighter.
Bishop Thomas, by the way, is no naïf about Islamic extremism. Last year he delivered a speech pointing out that there was a Coptic culture in Egypt long before Islam and the Arab language arrived, unleashing ferocious criticism that the bishop had attacked the Arab and Islamic identity of Egypt. One news service demanded that he be tried for sedition
While Obama’s outreach to Islam flows both from his biography and from his politics, Benedict XVI’s approach has been progressively refined since his controversial speech in Regensburg three years ago, which cited a Byzantine emperor linking Muhammad and violence. Although the pope has not backed away from his challenge to Muslims on terrorism and religious freedom — in theoretical terms, the need to integrate reason and faith — he’s far more adept at expressing a positive vision of an “alliance of civilizations” with Islam, which has become his top inter-faith priority and the leading example of his shift from “inter-religious” to “inter-cultural” dialogue. Benedict’s emphasis on Islam was palpable during his Middle East trip, which featured repeated expressions of “deep respect” for Muslims and the pope’s second visit to a mosque in four years
The intersection between pope and president helps explain rave Vatican reviews for the Obama speech.
The president hadn’t even left the building in Cairo before the Vatican spokesperson, Fr. Federico Lombardi, expressed “great appreciation” [2] for the speech back in Rome. Lombardi called it “very important,” not just for relations between the United States and Islam, but for international peace. Meanwhile, L’Osservatore Romano called the speech “a new beginning in relations between the United States and the Arab world,” and Vatican Radio enthused that the speech “exceeded expectations” and created “the foundation of a real common platform.”
Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, Georgia, who heads the U.S. bishops’ committee for inter-religious affairs, was equally upbeat, highlighting similarities between Obama and Benedict.
“The president’s address touches on many important points that were made by Pope Benedict XVI during his recent visit to the Holy Land,” Gregory said in a written statement to NCR. “Both the pope and president concur that a dialogue of civilizations must supplant the specter of a clash of civilizations … All Catholic Americans who hope for a more secure world, and peace among the religions, can feel grateful that the president underscored the indispensable role of religion in advancing educational, economic, and scientific goals.”
Several experts sense something important afoot.
“This clearly seems to be a turning point,” said John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. “You’ve got the head of the largest Christian church in the world, and the most powerful nation in the world, both offsetting the strong sense among Muslims that they’re not respected as equal partners.”
“That’s a pretty impressive one-two combination,” Esposito said.
To be sure, Benedict and Barack are not entirely singing from the same hymnal. For Benedict, one primary objective of an “alliance of civilizations” is for Muslims and Christians to join forces against Western secularism. In part, that means joint opposition to some of the liberal social policies Obama embodies — on abortion and contraception, on gay rights, and so on. Any partnership between pope and president, therefore, may have a limited shelf life.
On the other hand, the fact that Benedict and Obama represent such different faces of the West — Obama the ultra-chic progressive, Benedict the voice of traditional religious and moral conviction — may offer the best possible proof that their opening to Islam is not a fad, or a partisan wedge issue, but rather a deep movement of the historical plates.
Jesuit Fr. Daniel Madigan, an Australian and longtime veteran of Catholic-Muslim dialogue, says there are intriguing signals that mainstream Muslim leaders are willing to meet the pope and president halfway. He pointed to the “Common Word” initiative spearheaded by Jordan, in which a cross-section of Muslim scholars and clerics responded positively to Benedict XVI’s controversial lecture in Regensburg, and to a recent inter-faith summit in Madrid organized by the Saudi-based Muslim World League, which brought together Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.
Putting it all together, Massa suggested the parallel with John Paul and Reagan.
“The last time a pope and a president were allies in one of these titanic shifts going on in the world, it was Reagan and John Paul II vis-à-vis communism,” Massa said. “That alliance proved to be very, very effective.”
Imam Yahya Hendi [3], a native Palestinian who serves as the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown, agreed.
The outreach from Benedict and Obama “may not change the minds of the terrorists,” Hendi said, “but it will influence young Muslims who aren’t sure what to think,” and it “gives the moderates in the Islamic world some ground to stand on.”
Hendi said that he paid careful attention to Arab discussion following both the pope’s trip and the president’s speech, and in both cases he found that even hard-line Muslim clerics, traditionally skeptical of both the Catholic church and the United States, praised what they called a “tone of reconciliation.”
Of course, whether Benedict and Obama will actually trigger a “velvet revolution” in Islam remains to be seen. Already, some observers have warned that momentum will be wasted if it isn’t matched by progress on the ground, especially on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was the gist of a June 4 letter to Obama signed by a cross-section of American Christian leaders [4], including five Catholic bishops and the heads of the major umbrella groups for men’s and women’s religious orders in the country.
“The window is rapidly closing” for a peaceful resolution, the letter warned, asserting that among other things, prolonged conflict threatens the viability of Christianity in the Holy Land.
At a minimum, however, the tantalizing prospect of a partnership between the pope and the president on Islam helps explain why the Vatican isn’t ready to join the most ardently pro-life Catholics in America on the anti-Obama barricades. When a President of the United States travels to the heart of the Muslim world and essentially echoes the pope, or so the thinking seems to go, he can’t be all bad.
National Catholic Register (il fratello destro di National Catholic Reporter) contesta l’analisi.
Common Ground vs. Dialogue
BY Tom Hoopes
Sunday, June 07, 2009 4:00 AM
Yesterday, I noted that Obama’s vision, spelled out at Cairo and Notre Dame, is radically different from Benedict XVI’s.
Benedict wants religions to acknowledge their differences in search of truth. Obama wants them to acknowledge their sameness in search of peace.
Obama is very cleverly, with fine intentions, proposing relativistic secularism as the world’s common ground.
(This continues what I started yesterday in “Obama, Notre Dame and Islam”) At both Cairo and Notre Dame, Obama identified the Golden Rule as the point of agreement of all religions.
At Notre Dame, he stressed that the Golden Rule amounts to service and love:
To Catholics: “For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule—the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. “
At Cairo, he stressed that the Golden Rule is our common ground:
To Muslims: “There’s one rule that lies at the heart of every religion — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. (Applause.) This truth transcends nations and peoples — a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.”
He transitions nicely to a call for peace:
“We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.
“The Holy Koran tells us: ‘O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.’
“The Talmud tells us: ‘The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.’
“The Holy Bible tells us: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’
“The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth.”
Now, no one doubts that it’s a very good thing indeed to call for peace based on the Golden Rule we all share. I, for one, am glad Obama did so in a speech carefully watched by Muslims.
I would bet Pope Benedict XVI appreciates that, too.
But Benedict is a deep thinker, and it is striking that he specifically mentioned government calls for peace through dialogue when he spoke about dialogue at his interreligious meeting April 17 in Washington last year.
“There is a further point I wish to touch upon here. I have noticed a growing interest among governments to sponsor programs intended to promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue. These are praiseworthy initiatives.
“At the same time, religious freedom, interreligious dialogue and faith-based education aim at something more than a consensus regarding ways to implement practical strategies for advancing peace.”
Pope Benedict sees limitations in government common ground initiatives that try to find ways for competing worldviews to tolerate each other.
For him, dialogue isn’t an attempt at coexistence, but a search for truth.
“The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the truth. What is the origin and destiny of mankind? What are good and evil? What awaits us at the end of our earthly existence? Only by addressing these deeper questions can we build a solid basis for the peace and security of the human family, for ‘wherever and whenever men and women are enlightened by the splendor of truth, they naturally set out on the path of peace.’”
See the important difference here:
Obama’s desire for common ground (and I believe its aims are well-intentioned) wants to minimize differences so we can all get along. He focuses on the horizontal: The Golden Rule.
Benedict’s desire for dialogue wants to define differences to bring more people to the truth, which leads to deep-seated, lasting peace. He focuses on the vertical: Eternal Truth.
The desire for religions to ignore their differences is a secularist’s desire. It’s the desire of someone who doesn’t think there’s a discernable truth. Someone who says faith is always assailed by doubt.
When someone tells you, “Relax. Don’t make such a big deal of your questions about God,” you know that they don’t think questions about God are a big deal. Benedict’s desire for dialogue, on the other hand, starts from the assumption that questions about God are at the very center of our lives. He also has a great confidence in God’s ability to offer clarity in answer to our questions.
As Benedict put it to his interreligious audience:
“Dear friends, in our attempt to discover points of commonality, perhaps we have shied away from the responsibility to discuss our differences with calmness and clarity. While always uniting our hearts and minds in the call for peace, we must also listen attentively to the voice of truth.
“In this way, our dialogue will not stop at identifying a common set of values, but go on to probe their ultimate foundation. We have no reason to fear, for the truth unveils for us the essential relationship between the world and God. We are able to perceive that peace is a ‘heavenly gift’ that calls us to conform human history to the divine order. Herein lies the ‘truth of peace’.
“As we have seen then, the higher goal of interreligious dialogue requires a clear exposition of our respective religious tenets.”
Benedict doesn’t want to stop at finding a “common set of values” but at the “essential relationship between the world and God.”
Last comparison of Obama’s words to Catholics and to Muslims:
Obama told Notre Dame students that the Golden Rule calls us “To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.”
He told his Cairo audience: “All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort — a sustained effort — to find common ground.”
That “brief moment” is signficant.
Benedict is well aware that his own life is but a brief moment on earth. But Catholicism isn’t a brief moment. Judaism and Islam aren’t a brief moment. They’re focused on God and the world in all times.
Obama is focused on the individual person here and now. “We have but a brief moment,” he says, “so relax and make the most of it.”
Benedict’s scope is broader. He’s focused on the Church, on souls, on eternity. “We have all time and all eternity,” he says, “so let’s buckle down and make the most of it.”
Given what is at stake, it’s not enough for religious people to simply find a way to get along with each other in a world run by secularists.
We must find a way to help the world better understand the constant, enduring source of peace who Benedict didsn’t hesitate to name in his interreligious address at Washington: Christ.
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