The Vatican on Muslims and Jews

Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to the United States has offered him a chance not only to celebrate his birthday on the White House lawn but to publicly mend a few fences, as well. On several occasions the pope has admitted to being "deeply ashamed" by the clergy sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church here, forceful public statements that observers called an important step for the pope.

But after visiting President Bush and a group of American bishops yesterday, Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal elected to the papacy three years ago, may have some other, equally important, fences to mend. This evening, the pope was to meet with representatives from several other religions, including Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu leaders, at a Washington, D.C., cultural center. And once again, experts say, the pope will probably have some explaining to do.

Benedict, after all, since taking over from his predecessor, John Paul II, has stumbled spectacularly several times over his own pointed, occasionally inflammatory, references to other faiths. In 2006, while giving a speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Benedict offended many Muslims when he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's harsh description of the prophet Muhammad: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new," Benedict quoted the emperor saying, "and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The pope's comments were met with outrage in parts of the world: Pakistan's parliament voted to condemn him, and Lebanon's top Shiite cleric demanded an apology. After saying he was "deeply sorry," the pontiff seemed to stumble again less than a week later, this time over the church's relationship with Judaism, when he quoted St. Paul in another speech describing the crucifixion as a "scandal for the Jews."

His comments might have been dismissed as momentary gaffs, experts say, if they hadn't been accompanied by more subtle shifts in the language emerging from the Vatican. Last year, Benedict permitted the use of an old Good Friday liturgy, shelved since the early 1960s, that had anti-Semitic overtones, calling for the conversion of the Jews, in their "blindness" and "darkness," to Christianity. Benedict has raised eyebrows among some Christian leaders, as well, with his renewed emphasis on the centrality of the Eucharist and the apostolic succession. To be fair, Benedict has also tried to ease some of the religious tension he has created: He agreed to remove the questionable references from the Good Friday prayer this year, and, after his comments at Regensburg, he made a point of reaching out to Muslims by praying with the imam of the Blue Mosque in Turkey and organizing a series of dialogues with leading Muslim scholars.

Still, experts say, there seems to be little doubt that this pope, in both style and substance, has proved to be a decisive departure from his sunny, hands-across-the-Vatican predecessor. "Since Benedict's pontificate, some of the rhetoric [coming out of the Vatican] has seemed to be sharper, and that has caused some concern and dissatisfaction on the part of other churches and faiths," says the Rev. Thomas Rausch, a Jesuit priest and professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University. Benedict may have chosen his words poorly in Regensburg, and his formal, stilted locution may be part of the reason he has occasionally been misunderstood. But experts inside and outside the church still believe Benedict's comments reflect a shift in the Vatican's relationship with other faiths—and offer a glimpse into the new direction Benedict intends to take the church.

Benedict is the head of a church that has been grappling for decades with how it should treat other religions. After the reforms of the 1960s, the Vatican moved, at least rhetorically, into a much more liberal era, recognizing publicly that all religions represented some form of fundamental truth, seeming to leave some of its more conservative theology behind. John Paul II, for one, carried this rhetoric into his papacy, meeting not just with Jewish and Muslim leaders but with members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well, while writing and speaking about the activity of the "spirit" beyond the confines of the church itself and implying that other religions, too, might offer a path to some form of salvation.

Benedict seems to want to clarify this position, experts say, and to re-emphasize the primacy of the Catholic Church, and Jesus Christ, among faiths. He took his most visible step in this direction in 2000 when, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican organization tasked with safeguarding church doctrine, he oversaw the release of a church document, Dominus Iesus, that sought to restate the church's theological position. The document acknowledged that the "Church of Christ" was present in other Christian churches but insisted, in spite of John Paul's friendly words, that the Catholic Church was the only one where it existed in its fullest form. A theological line was drawn in the sand: "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace," the document said, "it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."

These statements, religious scholars say, may not have represented a theological shift in the Vatican, where Catholic supremacy was always assumed, but they did signal a rhetorical one—a return, of sorts, to a more forthright defense of Catholicism. John Paul, when he was pope, emphasized a "unity of faith" across religions, starting the "World Day of Prayer" and meeting other religious leaders for peace vigils in Assisi. "A lot of progress was made on that front," says the Rev. Paul Crowley, a Jesuit priest and chair of the religious studies department at Santa Clara University. "But in some ways, those are the easier steps. When you get to the more substantial theological issues, then it's more difficult to move beyond the desire for dialogue to actual substantive agreement."

That is where Benedict appears to find himself today. "Eventually, after you start talking, you start to face hard issues," says Frank Flinn, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of the Encyclopedia of Catholicism. "What do you do about converting people? What do you do about spreading your faith? It's a challenge." Benedict seems likely to continue to reach out to other religious groups—he's making a special trip to visit a synagogue in New York this week—but he appears equally comfortable emphasizing the differences between faiths, even among Christian churches. "In sharpening the focus on some of the differences, he's really encouraging all of the churches to address things more seriously [than they have in the past], rather than settle down to a more happy truce," says Rausch.

This is also true of the Vatican's relationship with Islam. "In the relationship between Catholicism and Islam, under John Paul, there was a tendency to avoid some of the very difficult issues," says Rausch. "One thing the Regensburg address made very clear is that Pope Benedict is challenging Islam to deal in a more explicit way with the relationship between faith and reason. I think it's unfortunate that he used that quotation, but he was trying to raise the question of religion and violence and the role of reason in dialogue with faith, and I think he did that." Many observers also give Benedict credit for challenging predominantly Muslim nations to be as accepting of other religions, particularly Christianity, as western nations have been of Islam. The Gulf state of Qatar has recently permitted the building of a Catholic church within its borders, and Saudi Arabia is at least debating the possibility of doing the same.

Especially when he talks about Islam, scholars say, it is important to understand where Benedict, a German, is coming from. "Benedict's approach to Islam is really deeply shaped by the fact that he is a European, and the experience of Islam in Europe is so different than it is here," says Crowley. Benedict has genuine concerns about Islamic fundamentalism and the use of violence, along with the decline of Christianity in Europe—and the rise of Islam there. According to one estimate, between 25 million and 50 million Catholics stopped going to church during the papacy of John Paul II. Benedict, in his words and even his choice of papal names (St. Benedict is the patron saint of Europe), seems determined to try to revive the church on the Continent, and that means pushing back, in some way, against Islam. "He says we need to be more than simply polite to each other; we need to talk about real differences between us," says Rausch. "He's pushing for a more honest airing of some of these issues, which have to do with human rights and the whole question of church and state. He's challenging other traditions to face these same questions."

Whether Benedict takes this challenge into his meetings in New York and Washington this week or saves it for when he returns to Rome, there will very likely be more frank talk from the pope—and more bruised egos and offended sensibilities as a result. That is the price, it seems, of having a pontiff who's not just mending fences but trying to put some old ones back up, as well.