 VATICAN CITY: In its search for better relations with the Islamic world, the Roman Catholic Church is turning a spotlight on the role that culture can play in fostering understanding between peoples of different faiths.
| Ummm... Yeah. Civilization versus Arabian death cult... |
Pope Benedict, launching a streamlining of the Vatican bureaucracy earlier this month, has given his culture minister, Cardinal Paul Poupard, the additional responsibility of heading the department for dialogue with non-Christian religions. The move is more than a simple reshuffling of portfolios. A leading theologian before becoming Pope last April, Benedict has long thought contact with non-Christians should not focus only on religion, where agreement can be difficult if not impossible. Culture - not just art but the sum of a society's values, thoughts and behaviours - provides a rich field for people of different backgrounds to learn to understand each other. "Culture plays a fundamental role for relations between Christians and Muslims," said Poupard, 75, who now heads the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue in addition to the Pontifical Council for Culture, which he has led since 1988.
| Culture forms the way you look at life. Those of us who've grown to adultery in Judaeo-Christian civilization have imbibed the ideas of chivalry — the strong protecting the weak — and romantic love with mother's milk. Islam's roots are in Arabian civilization, where princes and holy men have oppressed the common folk for the past 5000 years and where women are breeding stock. We have more in common with the Japanese, who've explored various forms of oppression since Amaterasu, but still managed to retain a fondness for a pretty face and a comely bosom. We have more in common with the Chinese, who've evolved a 5000-year-old civilization of their own with various levels of oppression of the common folk, but with a likewise an appreciation of a lady's pretty face and graceful figure. That suggests to me that the absolute root of the Clash of Civilizations™ isn't so much the princes and holy men, who're after all susceptible to being hung by their own turbans, but that elemental fear and loathing of women in a monosexual society. If we paid attention to them, we'd probably have more in common with the Hottentots or Jivaro headhunters, neither of whom is scared of women. I'm just not positive the Catholic church is the mechanism for bridging that particular gap, though they're welcome to try, in their own monosexual way. |
"When he put me in charge of both departments, Benedict XVI clearly told me we had to develop the dialogue of men of culture with representatives of non-Christian religions," the French cardinal said in written response to questions from Reuters. He recalled that the Pope told Muslim leaders in Germany last August that Christian-Muslim dialogue was "a vital necessity on which in large measure our future depends".
| I think I'd concentrate on getting them used to the sight of titties. And derrieres. And comely thighs. And pretty faces, fergawdsake. |
Senior Catholic officials have spoken in recent years with growing frankness of their concern about Islam, which immigrants have made the second-largest faith in many European states and radicals invoke to justify suicide bombings and other violence. Cardinals at the Vatican for last Friday's consistory to elevate 15 more men to their exclusive group discussed the issue at a closed-door session on Thursday. Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard of France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, said they talked about values they shared with Muslims but also "human rights, the situation for Christians in those countries and the worrying sides of Islam". Dialogue with Muslims can be complicated because Islam has no central authority and feels it has superseded Christianity. |