Pope Benedict XVI said he would
go to Assisi in October to mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul
II's interreligious prayer for peace, but he did not actually say
anything about praying with members of other religions.
Announcing the October gathering, he said he would go to Assisi on
pilgrimage and would like representatives of other Christian confessions
and other world religions to join him there to commemorate Pope John
Paul's "historic gesture" and to "solemnly renew the commitment of
believers of every religion to live their own religious faith as a
service in the cause of peace."
While Pope Benedict may be more open to interreligious dialogue than
some of the most conservative Christians would like, he continues to
insist that dialogue must be honest about the differences existing
between religions and that joint activities should acknowledge those
differences.
In the 2003 book, "Truth and Tolerance," a collection of speeches and
essays on Christianity and world religions, the then-Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger dedicated four pages to the topic of "multireligious and
interreligious prayer."
As a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, he was one of the very few top Vatican officials to skip Pope
John Paul's 1986 meeting in Assisi. He later said the way the event was
organized left too much open to misinterpretation.
His chief concern was that the gathering could give people the
impression that the highest officials in the Catholic Church were saying
that all religions believed in the same God and that every religion was
an equally valid path to God.
A few years later -- and after having participated in Pope John Paul's
2002 interreligious meeting in Assisi -- he wrote in "Truth and
Tolerance" that with such gatherings "there are undeniable dangers and
it is indisputable that the Assisi meetings, especially in 1986, were
misinterpreted by many people."
He wrote that church leaders had to take seriously the possibility that
many people would see Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs,
Hindus and others gathered together for prayer in the Umbrian hilltown
and get the "false impression of common ground that does not exist in
reality."
At the same time, he said, it would be "wrong to reject completely and
unconditionally" what he insisted was really a "multireligious prayer,"
one in which members of different religions prayed at the same time for
the same intention without praying together.
In multireligious prayer, he wrote, the participants recognize that
their understandings of the divine are so different "that shared prayer
would be a fiction," but they gather in the same place to show the world
that their longing for peace is the same.
U.S. Jesuit Father Thomas Michel, who was an official at the Pontifical
Council for Interreligious Dialogue in the 1980s and was involved in
organizing the first Assisi meeting, said, "It wouldn't make a lot of
sense to pray together when you don't believe in the same God," but
Catholics believe there is only one God and he hears the prayers of
whoever turns to him with sincerity and devotion.
In an e-mail response to questions, Father Michel said, "The only
confusion (surrounding the 1986 Assisi meeting) was among those who did
not understand Vatican II teaching and subsequent magisterium. They
expressed their confusion before the event, boycotted the event itself,
and expressed more confusion afterwards."
"Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council document on relations with
other religions, affirmed that Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in,
worship and pray to the same God.
When Pope Benedict went to Istanbul's Blue Mosque in Turkey in 2006,
some people believed he blatantly contradicted what he had written in
2003 about the impossibility of praying together.
At the mosque, a place of prayer for Muslims, the pope stood alongside an imam in silent prayer.
Days later back at the Vatican, the pope said it was "a gesture
initially unforeseen," but one which turned out to be "truly
significant."
"Stopping for some minutes for reflection in that place of prayer, I
turned to the one God of heaven and of earth, the merciful father of all
humanity," the pope said.
Muslims were touched by the pope's gesture, but some Christians went to
great lengths to insist that the pope's "turning to God" was not the
same thing as prayer, especially in a mosque.
People found it easier to accept the fact that Pope Benedict stopped for
prayer in Jerusalem at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site.
After visiting Jerusalem, Pope Benedict told visitors at the Vatican
that faith demands love of God and love of neighbor; "it is to this that
Jews, Christians and Muslims are called to bear witness in order to
honor with acts that God to whom they pray with their lips. And it is
exactly this that I carried in my heart, in my prayers, as I visited in
Jerusalem the Western or Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, symbolic
places respectively of Judaism and of Islam."
In a message commemorating the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul's
Assisi meeting, Pope Benedict said the 1986 gathering effectively
demonstrated to the world that "prayer does not divide, but unites" and
is a key part of promoting peace based on friendship, acceptance and
dialogue between people of different cultures and religions.
SIC: CNS/INT'L