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It's Time To Speak Truth

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  • It's Time To Speak Truth

    IT'S TIME TO SPEAK TRUTH
    By Bishop Fred Henry

    Calgary Sun, Canada
    Oct 1 2006

    Death threats issued to Pope Benedict XVI, Muslims burning the Pope in
    effigy, promises to conquer Rome and slit the throats of Christians,
    at least seven churches in the region of Palestine torched, a nun
    murdered in front of a children's hospital.

    This state of affairs is sadly ironic -- violent protests from a
    religion of peace!

    We all have to move to a position where it is not sufficient to
    reject violence generically, nor to attribute such violence to "a
    few radicals," nor sit back in silence. Even brothers can be wrong.

    Many of us cannot help but ask where is the outrage, condemnation
    and apologies from Muslims?

    The position of the Pope concerning Islam is unequivocally that
    expressed by the Vatican Council document Nostra Aetate: "The Church
    regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God, living
    and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of
    heaven and earth, Who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit
    wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham,
    with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself,
    submitted to God."

    The Pope's option in favour of inter-religious and inter-cultural
    dialogue is equally unequivocal. Dialogue is not an option but
    a necessity.

    In his first encyclical letter, Pope Benedict defended the truth that
    "God is Love." At Regensburg, he was defending the foundation truth
    that "God is Logos -- Reason." This is not simply the result of
    enculturation or the "hellenization of Christianity" but something
    that is always intrinsically true.

    Pope Benedict criticizes attempts in the West to "dehellenize"
    Christianity by the rejection of the rational component of faith (the
    sola fides of 16th century reformers); the reduction of reason to the
    merely empirical or historical (modern exegesis and modern science);
    and by a multiculturalism which regards the union of faith and reason
    as merely one possible form of enculturation of the faith. All this
    is a Western self-critique.

    To highlight the inability to engage with the other in our modern
    world, Pope Benedict chose an example, drawn from the resources
    of history, which also demonstrates one of the pressing issues of
    our time.

    It is true one could argue over whether he should have considered
    how his carefully crafted prose could be misread and manipulated by
    the ignorant to fan the flames of religious intolerance.

    Nevertheless, the dialogue between the emperor of Constantinople,
    Manuel II Paleologus, and a Muslim scholar from Persia on the
    irrationality of spreading the faith through violence was not a mere
    academic exercise.

    Byzantium was increasingly threatened in the 14th century by an
    aggressive Islamic force, the growing Ottoman Empire.

    The Byzantine Emperor seems to have committed the dialogue to writing
    while his imperial capital, Constantinople, was under siege by the
    Ottoman Turks. It would fall definitively in 1453. Muslims were
    military enemies, engaged in a war of aggression against Byzantium.

    Yet even in these circumstances the Christian Emperor and learned
    Persian Muslim could be candid with one another and discuss civilly
    their fundamental religious differences. As Benedict described the
    dialogue, the subject was "Christianity and Islam, and the truth
    of both."

    The Emperor was able to engage his Muslim interlocutor by appealing to
    a shared, natural human reason and its ability to apprehend the truths
    of God. As the Pope summarized, the Emperor was able to articulate
    "the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something
    unreasonable."

    He continued: "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and
    the nature of the soul."

    The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion
    is this: "Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's
    nature."

    I also think his lecture ought to be read in the context of the
    Pope's coming visit to Turkey and absence of religious freedom and
    the persecution of Christians in Turkey.

    The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Barthlomew I, invited
    the pope in mid-2005.

    The Turkish government formally invited the pope February 2006. But
    shortly before this, on the 5th of the same month, there was the
    killing of an Italian priest, Father Andrea Santoro, in a church in
    Trabzon, on the Black Sea. After this, other priests were the targets
    of threats and attacks.

    For a few months, a number of the representatives of the Catholic
    Church in Turkey have been living under the protection of unarmed,
    plainclothes police. Their phone conversations are monitored, and their
    mail is often open when it is delivered. More than being protected,
    they have the feeling of being watched.

    Last June, another important Church leader, the "Catholicos" of the
    Armenians, Karekin II, visited Turkey. A reference he made to the
    massacre of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire during its
    final phase earned him a penal trial for offences against Turkey,
    brought against him by the magistrate of Istanbul.

    Religious liberty is largely lacking in Turkey. This is also true for
    the non-Sunni Muslims, the Alevi. Their places of worship are still
    downgraded as "cultural centers."

    There is growing hostility in the Turkish media toward everything
    that is Western, European, and Christian.

    Secular opinion is outstripped by opinion with an Islamist imprint,
    which is increasingly more combative.

    An extremely mediocre book of political fiction published in Turkey
    at the end of August, written by a journalist who specializes in
    intrigues, Yuecel Kaya, has had spectacular commercial success.

    The title says it all: Attack on the Pope: Who Will Kill Benedict
    XVI in Istanbul?

    In the view of Benedict XVI, the heart of the question is always
    the same one the emperor of Constantinople and his learned Persian
    counterpart discussed in 1391:

    "Not acting according to reason is contrary to the nature of God."

    http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists /Henry_Bishop_Fred/2006/10/01/1930106.html
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