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The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue

“Upon Muslims, too, the Church looks with this esteem.” – Nostra Aetate

“And nearest among them in love to the believers thou wilt find those who say: ‘we are Christians.’” – Q 5.85

From the Christian perspective, it seems that there is little dispute over the necessity of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam, the world’s two largest religious denominations. In Cologne on August 20, 2006, Benedict XVI said, “Interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends.” At the Vatican on March 22, 2013, his successor, Francis I, said, “It is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.”

This study will begin with a look at 20th-century and more recent Vatican and papal pronouncements on the subject of dialogue with Muslims. What are the reasons for it? What can it hope to achieve? And what reservations have been expressed regarding its limitations? This study will then consider the potential problems for dialogue in the context of the historical background of the predominant Islamic theological school, as it has developed from the 9th century till today. This is extremely important, because this school, Ash‘arism, defined reality for a large part of the Muslim world, and still does. Next, with this perspective in mind, we will analyze the contemporary Muslim responses to Benedict’s statements on Islam, particularly from the Regensburg Lecture. The paper will conclude with a critical assessment of the prospects for dialogue, with a special focus on how dialogue has been conducted in the United States by the three regional conferences of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops.

In Guidelines for Dialogue between Christians and Muslims, from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Fr. Maurice Borrmans, one of the pioneers of dialogue, wrote that “…Christians and Muslims seem now to have entered a time of respect and understanding in which Christians, for their part, try to appreciate Muslims on the basis of the best in the latter’s religious experience.” This perspective is essential for any appreciation of Islam. If approached in this manner, a great deal in the Muslim way of life can be grasped with sympathetic understanding.

Consider, for instance, this entreaty: “O God, I ask of you a perfect faith, a sincere assurance, a reverent heart, a remembering tongue, a good conduct of commendation, and a true repentance, repentance before death, rest at death, and forgiveness and mercy after death, clemency at the reckoning, victory in paradise, and escape from the fire, by your mercy, o mighty One, Forgiver. Lord, increase me in knowledge and join me to the good.”

Certainly, not much, if anything, would need to be changed in this prayer for a Christian to say it. Yet it is what Muslims recite at the seventh circumambulation of the ka‘ba during the haj in Mecca. The spiritual impulses and hopes that this prayer expresses make more or less immediately apparent to Christians what they may share in common with Muslims in the best of their religious experience. One must begin, therefore, in any appraisal of the prospects for dialogue with an understanding that Muslims sincerely seek the will of Allah.

What the Catholic Church Says

Perhaps the most compelling impetus for dialogue is charity. Several recent popes, including Benedict XVI, have quoted Gregory VII’s missive in 1076 to Al-Nasir, the Muslim Ruler of Bijaya (present day Algeria): “Almighty God, who wishes that all should be saved and none lost, approves nothing in so much as that after loving Him one should love his fellow man, and that one should not do to others, what one does not want done to oneself. You and we owe this charity to ourselves especially because we believe in and confess one God, admittedly, in a different way, and daily praise and venerate him, the creator of the world and ruler of this world.”

Needless to say, charity has not been the principal feature of Catholic-Muslim relations over 1,400 years. However, efforts for dialogue began in earnest some 50 years ago, inspired by two church documents. They were preceded in August, 1964, by Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter on the church, Ecclesiam suam, in which he commended “adorers of God according to the conception of monotheism, the Muslim religion especially, [as] deserving of our admiration for all that is true and good in their worship of God.” Then, four months later, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church announced that the “plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind” (Lumen Gentium 16).

The second and most extended Vatican II reference to Islam comes in the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (Second Vatican Council, October 28, 1965), which makes clear what “is true and good in their worship of God”:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. 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. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

These are, no doubt, ambitious goals. They have been, more or less, repeated since then. John Paul II expressed the wish that interreligious dialogue would lead to many forms of cooperation, reflecting the mutual “obligations to the common good, to justice and to solidarity.” Reflecting upon his trip to Turkey in 2006, Benedict XVI said, “Christians and Muslims should collaborate together on issues like justice, peace and life.”

However, do the Church and Islam share similar conceptions as to what constitutes the common good and justice that could undergird such cooperation? Do they even have the same epistemologies? Is there a general acknowledgment, on both sides, that Catholics and Muslims should be “in partnership for the good of the human family”?

The urge to answer in the positive is so great as to make these questions seem almost rhetorical. However, they are not. They require careful examination in order not to lose sight of essential principles. In an address to organizations for interreligious dialogue, Benedict XVI cautioned that “truth makes consensus possible, and keeps public debate rational, honest and accountable, and opens the gateway to peace.” If dialogue is a necessity impelled by charity, it nevertheless cannot exclude the obligation to truth. With this in mind, one must wonder over the prospects for its success. How is such dialogue to be conducted and with whom? What are its grounds? Of course, there are provisional answers to these questions, since some kind of dialogue has been officially conducted since the time of Paul VI.

Reservations Concerning Dialogue

As frequent as papal exhortations to dialogue have been, they are almost always accompanied by the cautionary requirement “to defend freedom of religion, which is the right of every human being” (John Paul II’s address to Christians and others in Bangladesh, November 19, 1986). In addressing Muslims on numerous occasions, Benedict XVI repeatedly emphasized “the dignity of the human person and of the rights ensuing from that dignity” (Regensburg, September 25, 2006), and “the sacred character and dignity of the person” (Turkey, November 28, 2006). In Turkey, Benedict also said that “freedom of religion, institutionally guaranteed and effectively respected in practice, both for individuals and communities, constitutes for all believers the necessary condition for their loyal contribution to the building up of society…” In Jordan, on May 9, 2009, Benedict XVI spoke of “our common human dignity, which gives rise to universal human rights.”

To Muslims in Berlin, on September 23, 2011, Benedict stated, “This mutual respect grows only on the basis of agreement on certain inalienable values that are proper to human nature, in particular, the inviolable dignity of every single person as created by God.” Benedict believed there could “be fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims,” but only if common ground can be found in recognition of “inalienable rights that are proper to human nature and precede every positive formulation.” As the Second Vatican Council said, religious freedom “has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself” (Dignitatis humanae, No. 10). It is particularly the latter source of this knowledge – “reason itself” – that Benedict XVI emphasized in his colloquies with Muslims, as reason is what makes this knowledge universally available.

These statements might seem so standard as to be harmless, almost boilerplate, but they are, in fact, very pointed and loaded with meaning. They go to the heart of a very fundamental disagreement between Christianity and Islam, which, if left unresolved, may substantially undermine the prospects for any real dialogue.¹