The newest substitute for confronting Islam: “reciprocity”

(See the new comment below by a former U.S. diplomat familiar with the Holy See.)

The Catholic Church, says Daniel Pipes, is getting more serious about the threat of Islam, particularly the persecution of Catholics living in Muslim lands who are being forced by harsh treatment to flee to the West, even as Western accommodation of Muslims has allowed a 20 million-strong, increasingly noisy Muslim population to be planted in the very bosom of the West.

The Church’s new, relatively hard line takes the form of a demand for “reciprocity.” Thus Vatican official Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran said in 2003: “Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well.” Another Vatican higher-up, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said “We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts.” Pope Benedict has spoken of the need to respect “the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all.” And this past May, the Pope said Christians must love immigrants, just as Muslims must deal decently with the Christians among them.

Pipes concludes: “Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican’s diplomacy toward Muslims.” While he is encouraged by the Vatican’s new realism vis à vis Islam, the policy has its obvious limits. Namely, what if—as Islamic doctrine and the entire history of Islam would lead us to expect—the Muslims do not reciprocate and do not show the same favor to Christians that the West shows to Muslims? What if Muslims do not allow Christians to build churches in Muslim lands (as it is impossible for them to do under the laws of their religion, regardless of how they may “feel” about the matter)? What then? Unless the demand for reciprocity has real consequences attached to it in the event of a refusal, it is just more meaningless verbiage, on the same level as some “conservative” pundit announcing that “immigrants must assimilate.” But if they don’t assimilate—and they won’t—the “conservative” pundit ends up embracing the immigration anyway. For this reason, short of the Vatican’s taking actual action against Islam, we must assume that its demand for a quid pro quo from the Muslims is a phony, designed to make the Vatican look tough even as it continues its surrender.

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Mark Richardson writes:

If the Catholic Church is seeking reciprocity with Islam, there is still much to do even in “moderate” Islamic countries like Malaysia where a woman has been told by the High Court that she can only convert to Christianity with the permission of the Islamic Syaria Court.

Vincent Chiarello, who was once Public Affairs Adviser to the Ambassador to The Holy See, is doubtful that the Vatican is going to take any hard-line stand vis à vis Islam. He writes:

For the most part, I have stayed away from responding to your and other contributors’ comments about the role of the Catholic Church in dealing with the steady rise of Islam. But Daniel Pipes’s remark that the Church has undertaken a new and more demanding approach toward Islam require a clarification, and I hope that I can shed some light on the subject. I have some basis for my opinions: I am a retired Foreign Service Officer whose last assignment overseas was to the US Embassy to The Holy See, sometimes incorrectly known as US Embassy to the Vatican.

At least as far back as 1991 the Vatican’s bureaucracy recognized what was happening in Europe because of Islamic immigration, but the previous pontiff thought he could “convert” (I jest) many of the Muslim clergy to a more rational approach with interfaith dialogue. Remember: JPII went to Assisi twice—the last time in ‘96—to show his openness to all religious bodies, including animists and pagans, something traditional Catholics, including yours truly, thought appalling.

The on-going ties between Islam and the Church have been in place since October, 1974, but were greatly expanded under John Paul II, who sought to modify Islam’s fiercely anti-Christian attitudes by creating additional “Institutes” that promoted inter-religious ties. For the last decade, I’ve spent the month of September in Italy, and, not far from our apartment in Rome, I could see the imams and priests walking arm in arm. The results of such efforts have been noticeably meager; the imams who came to Rome were not, by and large, representative of most Muslim clerics.

Nearly three years ago, Giacomo Cardinal Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, in a homily at the city’s cathedral, railed against the invasion of Muslim hordes into Italy. Biffi, who had been appointed by John Paul II, used France of as an example of what Italy will become if unfettered Muslim immigration were not slowed down or stopped. His views were overwhelmingly those of the vox populi; nonetheless, within two days, Biffi, at papal direction, apologized for his words. Where John Paul was concerned, labeling clerics homosexuals was characteristic of the work of the Communists in Poland in discrediting people, and criticizing Muslims in any fashion was unacceptable. We see the results of that mindset in today’s Church. One should remember that, in what many traditional Catholics saw as sacrilegious, JPII kissed the Koran at an ecumenical meeting in Assisi. When he passed away, I believe he recognized that his efforts to open up Islam had been a one-way street.

His successor, Benedict XVI, although as liberal in his theology as JPII, views Islam with a far greater suspicion. Whether he will act on that sentiment is uncertain, but the recent murder of a Catholic missionary priest in Turkey, the most secular Islamic state, provides another example of how the Church is caught in the bind of trying to excavate itself from JPII’s ecumenism, and the realities that exist. Pipes mentions Cardinal Tauran, who, in his talk with me (as Bishop Tauran) when I presented my credentials, spoke of the “challenges” that Islam presented in the early 1990’s. If Pipes believes that there will be a noticeable change in Vatican policy, he will be disappointed, for the Vatican’s institutional view is not to endanger more priests and faithful in Muslim territories. (It should be noted that Mormons do not send their missionaries to Islamic countries.)

The “Church militant” I knew as a child in New York City in the early 1950s has disappeared, so any posturing against Muslim malefactors (see Pius V’s Holy Alliance of 1570) is impossible. Unless I am gravely mistaken, the current pontiff will reduce the number of personnel at the aforementioned “Institutes” (if that), but will decline to authorize any further practical steps in dealing with the scourge of Islam in Europe. In his Harvard commencement address at Harvard in 1977, Solzhenitsyn noted: There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen…” To that list should we not also add, “courageous clergymen”?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 05, 2006 12:12 PM | Send