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CNA attempts a summary of the debate provoked by the Holy Father's New year's Day announcement that he is calling an inter-religious meeting in Assisi next October to mark the 25th anniversary of the World Day of prayer for Peace called by John Paul II in 1986. much of it, and more, has been previously posted on this thread.
First, however, It is necessary to quote exactly what the Pope said when he announced Assisi 2011::
In the message for today's World Day of Peace, I underscored how the major religions can constitute an important factor of unity and peace for the human family, and I recalled, in this respect, that the year 2011 will be the 25th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace that the Venerable John Paul II convoked in Assisi in 1986.
Therefore, next October, I will go to the city of St. Francis as a pilgrim and invite my brother Christians of various confessions, representatives of the other religious traditions in the world, and ideally, all men of good will, to join me for the purpose of commemorating the historic gesture by my predecessor and to solemnly renew the commitment of believers of every religion to live their own religious faith as a service to the cause of peace.
Whoever is on the path to God cannot but transmit peace and whoever builds the peace cannot but come close to God. I invite all to accompany this initiative with your prayers from here on.
The statement does not specify that he will necessarily follow the format of the previous inter-religious prayer days in Assisi - he does not even say that they will pray together. But all who have pitched in their two cents' worth so far have shared a few erroneous assumptions:
1. They all simply assume that Benedict XVI will necessarily follow the format of John Paul' Assisi Prayer Days. The fact is we have not heard any specifics so far on Assisi 2011.
2. Especially on the part of the traditionalists, such as some Italian Catholic intellectuals who have called on Benedict XVI not to go ahead with Assisi 2011 at all, the assumption is that the features that made Assisi 1986 'theologically and doctrinally unacceptable' as promoting religious relativism and syncretism, were not at all remedied but even perpetrated in the two Prayer Days that followed it...
This is an insult to John Paul II, as if he had been incapable of learning anything from the unacceptable practices that spoiled Assisi-I. And this completely ignores the fact that Cardinal Ratzinger joined him for Assisi-III in 2002, and has written and spoken several times about the significance of the multi-religious prayers held in Assisi without the features that spoiled Assisi-I.
3. Many of those who have had their say only recall two Assisi Days with John Paul II (1986 and 2002), when in fact there were 3. The forgotten one is Assisi-II in 1993, called to invoke peace for Bosnia. Assisi-I was called in view of the threat of nuclear war that was posed then by a resurgence of Cold War confrontations. Assisi-III was called a few months after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Therefore, properly, Assisi 2011 will be Assisi-IV.
If all these basic facts were kept in mind, there would be no need to debate Assisi-IV at all, whose primary motivation is to advocate respect for religious freedom everywhere, following the wave of increasing Christianophobia around the world, but obviously also against Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and religious persecution of Buddhists in Tibet and Myanmar. All the issues raised by the CNA summary below can be answered by simply citing the facts about the Assisi Prayer Days.
Pope's call for interfaith day
of prayer provokes debate
EOME, Jan. 20 (CNA/EWTN News) - Pope Benedict XVI’s call for world religious leaders to gather in Assisi, Italy to pray for peace has touched off a lively debate among Italian Catholic opinion leaders.
Critics of the Pope’s plan charge that it will create a false impression that all religious believers pray to the same deity or that there is no real distinctions among religious faiths.
The Pope announced his desire to revive the "spirit of Assisi" in remarks made on New Year’s Day. [That is putting words into the Pope's mouth: He never even mentioned the phrase 'spirit of Assisi'!]
He said he planned to mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's “World Day of Prayer for Peace,” held in the hometown of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century saint known for his concern for peace and inter-religious dialogue. Pope John Paul also hosted a similar event in Assisi in 2002. [And in 1993!]
A date for the new celebration still has not been set, although Pope Benedict indicated that it would be held sometime in October.
Each of the two (3!) previous gatherings garnered a mixture of criticism and praise. Criticism came from those who thought the event transmitted the impression that all participants, among them Hindus, Muslims, animists and atheists, were praying to the same God. Detractors said it promoted relativism and religious syncretism, that is, a mishmash of contrary beliefs.
Before his election to the papacy, the future Pope Benedict may have had mixed feelings about the event as well. [A conscientious reporter would have cited what the cardinal actually wrote and said about the Assisi Days subsequently, because he was certainly not silent about it - but neither did he ever express himself as darkly as one would think from reported impressions of what he thought!] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not take part in the Assisi event in 1986, but attended in 2002 at the request of John Paul II.
Now that Pope Benedict has announced the third [fourth!] such gathering, a new wave of criticism and defense has rolled in. The arguments being heard today often seem recycled from the earlier debates.
Initiating the debate in Italy was a group of nine intellectuals who made a direct, and very public, appeal to the Holy Father in the pages of Il Foglio newspaper on Jan. 11. The group, all obvious supporters of the Pope and his teaching, pleaded with him not to revive the "spirit of Assisi." [An 'appeal' that is moot and unnecessary, as he never once invoked 'the spirit of Assisi' - he realizes how that phrase has become devalued and deprived of genuine meaning, and that it now has most unwanted connotations.]]
In spite of the words and intentions of those who promoted the inaugural event in 1986, the first encounter "had an undeniable repercussion, relaunching, precisely in the Catholic world, indifferentism and religious relativism," they said.
According to the group, it taught people "to archive" the teaching of the Church on Christ as the Savior and "had the effect of making many believe that everyone was praying to 'the same God,' only with different names."
Seeing Catholic priests sharing in certain rites with people of other religions conveyed the idea that "all rites are nothing but empty human gestures. That all conceptions of the divine are equal. That all morals ... are interchangeable," they argued.
The "spirit of Assisi ... casts confusion," they concluded.
Political and state channels as well as dialogue might be followed to bring about peace, they said, but they cautioned about giving those desiring "to confuse the waters and revive religious relativism" a platform on the anniversary of the 1986 occasion.
[The world-view of these dissenters has apparently congealed around Assisi 1986, and their argument is fallacious and most unscientific since it ignores everything else that took place after Assisi-1986.]
In the Milan-based daily newspaper Corriere della Sera the next day, historian, philosopher and religion scholar Alberto Melloni [ultra-liberal who is habitually a critic of Benedict XVI and a leading advocate of ;the spirit of Vatican II' perrpetrated by the 'Bologna school] struck out at those who appealed against the meeting, calling them "zealous and disrespectful Catholics who seek to influence the Pope."
He called their appeal "attempted intimidation" that "aims to render the presence of Benedict XVI in Assisi qualitatively and quantitatively minimal."
It is an "audacious and mistaken move," he said, as "it's enough to know a little about the life ... of the intellectual character of Joseph Ratzinger to know that no conformism has ever tied his hands." [How strange to hear Melloni speaking up for Joseph Ratzinger!]
[A famous slogan of the traditionalists who opposed the Assisi Days in the past was 'The spirit of Vatican II begat the spirit of Assisi'. It is certainly true in the sense that ultra-liberals in the Church have fully exploited their interpretation of Vatican II as a rupture with a Church that has existed and continued uninterrupted since it was born on that first Pentecost, and who later bitterly attacked Cardinal Ratzinger - and only incidentally, John Paul II - for Dominus Iesus]
The debate raged on with another article in the Jan. 13 edition of Il Foglio, in which two of the scholars Melloni dubbed "zealous and disrespectful" called Melloni out as "brother censor."
One of the nine, Francesco Agnoli, whittled their appeal down to a single phrase. "We only posed a question: in going to Assisi does one run the risk of syncretistic interpretations? "The question seems legitimate to me," he told Il Foglio. [Agnoli is being intellectually dishonest! They were not just asking the question - they actually called on Benedict XVI not to proceed with Assisi 2011. Besides, one must go back to the initial criticism by less ideologically-blinded Catholics of the open letter by the nine intellectuals: Did they really think they could be more zealous and protective of the Catholic faith than the Pope himself, especially this theologian Pope? Did they not realize their open letter amounted to an insult to Benedict XVI?]
"Today Assisi means one thing for the people: the Pope who prays together with the representatives of other religions to a presumed 'one God.' It is an image that undermines the idea of the doctrine that Christ is the Savior." In this case, Agnoli is belittling the capacity of simple folk to discern anything! Besides, if the MSM in 1986 had only concentrated on reporting John Paul II's carefully chosen words about praying together and about the validity of the Christian faith (reviewed and revised, we now know the night before by Cardinal Ratzinger), instead of focusing on the chickens killed by animists on the altar of St. Clare's, the faithful would have been left in no doubt that the Vicar of Christ was not abdicating an iota of Catholic doctrine in participating with the leaders of other religions in a common event!]
Agnoli pointed to Islamic fundamentalists who "exterminate Christians," or Hindus who "burn" them while professing equality among men. "Blessed be medieval times, when you could argue among Catholics, in fidelity to Christ and the Church," he concluded. {That's typically bigoted thinking. Surely none of the Muslims or Hindus who attended Assisi were advocates of Christian persecution. And to continue to paint other religions in terms of terrible offenses committed in the past ignores the fact that the Church herself - her leaders and members -has not had a blameless past!]
The open debate has attracted its share of commentators. Among those was Vatican analyst Andrea Tornielli who pointed out through the online Bussola Quotidiana that the argument was partial. He found it strange that all reference to the Assisi encounter which followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, was omitted from discussion.
Appealing to the Pope on such a matter is a "hazardous" affair, he said. "The initiative, in the end, is not limited to being a concerned letter from those who ask the Pontiff that risks and bad interpretations be avoided ... rather, (it reads) as the will to dictate the line to the Pope to prevent him from leaving the programs of his own pontificate.
This means, at the end of the day, that “they have made an idea of Benedict XVI that does not correspond to the reality"
Tornielli quoted Cardinal Ratzinger's own words to the magazine "30 Days" after the 2002 experience. On that occasion, the cardinal refuted the idea that it was an encounter that made all religions equal.
"Rather," he said, "Assisi was the expression of a path, of an investigation, of the pilgrimage for the peace that is such, only if united to justice."
"With their testimony for peace, with their commitment for peace in justice, the representatives of the religions have begun, in the limits of their possibilities, a path that must be for all a path of purification."
Tornielli said that, in 2011, the conditions of religious freedom in the world could be the Pope's justification for running the "risks" of another "Assisi."
To those who would counter Pope Benedict's decision, the Vatican analyst said "you can be not in agreement with him, but it is unfair to seek to prove that the Pope is not in agreement with himself."
[My own clearer translation of Tornielli's statement - and what follows it, as a conclusion to his 1/14/11 article in BQ - is this:
One can disagree with the Pope but it is not right to try to affirm that the Pope disagrees with himself! If there is anyone about whom one can be sure that he won't say anything that leads to misunderstanding, that's Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. It is up to us who are responsible for providing information, as are most of the nine who signed the open letter to the Pope, to pass on the right information about the event.
That, of course, is one of the plagues infesting modern journalism - misreporting, both by omission and by commission.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2012 14:26] |