Tag: Common Ground

We Believe in One God . . .

What does the believing Christian think about the believing Muslim?
The Second Vatican Council, in its declaration, Nostra Aetate, taught:

The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding.

Reading history, it is clear that the message of Islam often was accompanied by political conquest — as happened with the message of Christianity. When the Byzantines and other Christian nations resisted, there was open warfare, but not always. For example, the introduction and penetration of Islam into Christian Egypt took place gradually over a period of several centuries.

Through the years, Christians in Muslim lands adopted a defensive cast of mind and retreated within themselves. Until recently, the Christian and Muslim worlds had remained very separate with little mutual comprehension.
How should the believing Christian approach the believing Muslim?
The first challenge is to find a common ground and vocabulary. There are many aspects of Christian faith that Muslims share but many they do not understand and reject. It is difficult to say whether they reject them having fully understood them or whether they reject them because of their misunderstanding. The reverse also holds true.
Take prophets, for example. A prophet is one who speaks the word of God. Christians may not accept that Muhammad is “the Seal of the Prophets” as Muslims believe. But, if almost one billion people in the modern world are striving to find their way to God and live a life of prayer, fasting, and sacrifice because of the teachings of Muhammad, can not and should not Christians consider Muhammad as a prophet, as one whom God uses to bring his word to many of humankind?
Once John said to Jesus, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow in our company.” Jesus said to him, “Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you.”


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 20:5, September 1994)

Misplaced Pride

When I started school at P.S. 33 in the Bronx, I had a tough time responding to the question, “What are you?” The answer expected was my “nationality.” (It was unacceptable, by the way, to say “American.”)
My parents were born in Manhattan, my mother of Irish descent (and Catholic), my father of German descent (and Jewish). I did not have a simple answer.
As a priest, when I used to visit my Spanish-speaking Salvadoran compadres and their families in New York City, my three-year-old godson was the only one who spoke to me in English! Early on, he was choosing his identity.
Pastoral work with inner-city Hispanic youth surely taught me how important it is to know who you are and to take pride in your roots.
Now, here’s the rub! How much pride in one’s roots is good? It’s the Goldilocks problem. Too little pride is bad; it starves self-confidence and cripples our lives. Too much pride is bad; it exaggerates our importance and can destroy our well-being and our neighbor’s too.
In the world CNEWA serves, balance in national or religious pride is part of the solution of many problems.
Eritreans are proud of their identity and heritage, as are the other peoples of Ethiopia; but the war for independence and rights went on for 30 years.
The peoples of the former Soviet Union are proud of their ethnic roots, but the union has dissolved into several republics, and many have internal conflicts among their peoples. Even when nationality is the same, e.g. Ukrainian, religious differences trigger division.

India is organized into national states. In Kerala, the Malayalam people are Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. The Christians are divided into Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. The Catholics are separated into Malabar, Malankara, and Latin.
The Iraqi Kurds want to form a separate country. Armenians and Azeris fight each other in Azerbaijan. Palestinians want sovereignty and resist Israeli occupation. Lebanon is a patchwork of feuding Christian, Muslim, and Druze clans.
Sometimes what’s wrong is not too much or too little pride in one’s roots; it is that the pride is too superficial and shallow. We do not really know our roots profoundly. If we go down deeper, below the levels of political division, law, language, customs, and all the other obstacles that cause dissension, we reach common ground.
St. Paul put it to the Galatian Christians this way (Gal 3:26-28):

For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus . . . There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

What a world it would be, if only all peoples, whether Christian or not, could be fiercely proud of being made in the image and likeness of the one God, of being sons and daughters, of being brothers and sisters.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 18:3, July 1992)

The Pontifical Mission — for Palestine?

“Why doesn’t the Vatican recognize the State of Israel?” many ask, especially Jews. Hardly ever asked, but in the same category is, “Why doesn’t the Vatican recognize the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?” And now there’s another possibility, “Why doesn’t the Vatican recognize the newly proclaimed Palestinian State?”
They’re really all political questions. Technically, they concern the mutual exchange of ambassadors. That the Holy See has diplomatic relations with sovereign nations goes back centuries — to a time when the pope was not only a temporal ruler in his own right, but was considered supreme over all the rulers of Western Christendom.
The United States re-established full diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1984 after a lapse of 117 years. For over a century the Holy See didn’t recognize the United States!
But, what the Holy See never fails to recognize are people, especially those suffering and afflicted.
In 1949 Pope Pius XII recognized the special needs of people in the Middle East, victims of discrimination, violence, and war. He established the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, a mission of compassion, concern, and relief for the people of Palestine and neighboring areas — i.e. for Arab Palestine (Gaza and the “West Bank”), Israel, and Transjordan, and for Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.
This Pontifical Mission was to express and translate into action the charity of the pope and of the church of the West for their sisters and brothers in need in the Middle East.

Who are these brothers and sisters?
– Arab Catholics? Yes, and Armenians, Chaldeans, Copts, Ethiopians, Latins, Melkites, Maronites, and Syrians.
– Other Arab Christians? Yes, Orthodox and Protestant.
– Muslims? Yes, Sunni and Shi’ite.
– Druze? Yes.
– Jews? Yes, Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
– Those with no religious profession? Yes, believers, agnostics, atheists, all.
The greatest number of beneficiaries of the Pontifical Mission over the years has been Muslim. Why? Because the greatest number of people in need happened to be Muslim. If there were mostly Jews in need, the Pontifical Mission would be helping mostly Jews.
It was that Greek-speaking Orthodox rabbi from Cilicia, Paul the apostle, writing to early followers of Jesus in Asia Minor who said “There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus.” Charity and love know no ethnic or national bounds.
We help where we can: Amman, Bethlehem, Beirut, Gaza, Haifa, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Tyre, Zerqa.
Please God, the Pontifical Mission will continue to serve all the peoples of the Middle East and to support them in their quest for food and shelter, health care and education, dignity and security, justice and peace.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 15:2, Summer 1989)