Advertise in this spot on CatholicCulture.org. View all ads.

Catholic World News News Feature

Outgoing Vatican official questions Pope on interfaith talks March 30, 2006

Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who was recently replaced as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, has indirectly criticized Pope Benedict XVI for underestimating the importance of interfaith discussions.

Inter-religious dialogue should not be considered merely as an aspect of cultural discussions, Archbishop Fitzgerald told a Rome seminar on March 29. Pope Benedict apparently thinks otherwise. On March 11, Pope Benedict announced that Cardinal Paul Poupard, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, would double as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. Although that appointment was described as temporary in an official Vatican announcement, many informed observers believe that the Pope intends to merge the two offices.

Speaking at an evening meeting of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI), Archbishop Fitzgerald said that "one cannot reduce relations between persons of different faiths to a cultural matter." He argued, for instance, that Italians who convert to Islam do not leave their Italian culture behind.

In discussions between people of different religious backgrounds, the British archbishop said, the starting point is always a religious vision. The goal, he continued, is to gain a better understanding of the other's faith. Speaking about discussions with Islamic religious figures, he said, "the dialogue is not done to change Islam, but for us to change ourselves." Discussions with Islam in particular, he said, should be understood not as an effort to reach some agreement-- which he judged unlikely-- but as a search for better mutual understanding.

Having worked for nearly 20 years in the field of inter-religious dialogue, Archbishop Fitzgerald expressed misgivings about the notion that Islam and the West are engaged in a "clash of civilizations." Rather, he argued, "we are in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world." Islam is not a monolithic force, he observed; there are many different approaches to the faith.

The archbishop even questioned the accuracy of complaints about "fundamentalist" Muslims who incite contempt for Western culture. "On the Christian side, too," he said, "there are preachers who preach without respect for the culture." This, he said, is another illustration of the need for inter-religious dialogue, to help advance mutual understanding.

Archbishop Fitzgerald was named by Pope Benedict in February to become the new apostolic nuncio to Egypt, and the Vatican's envoy to the Arabic League. He was the first head of a Vatican dicastery to be reassigned by Pope Benedict to a new post outside Rome. The apparently downgrading of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue was underlined a few weeks later, when the Pope announced that Cardinal Poupard would oversee the office, along with the Pontifical Council for Culture, in order to "favor more intense dialogue between people of culture and exponents of different religions."