The Vatican has been having discussions with Muslim leaders for about 20 years now, but the talks have gotten nowhere and now Vatican leaders are reconsidering their relationship with Islam. Some are saying that the next pope should make stronger demands that the rights of Christian minorities in Muslim lands be protected and respected.

The Washington Post reports:

"There may be a greater insistence on religious liberty," said [Archbishop Michael] Fitzgerald, the church's point man on Islamic relations. "But I don't think we're going to go to war. The times of the Crusades are over. . . . I don't see any fundamental change in the way the church has been dealing with these questions." Justo Lacunza Balda, who heads the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, a Vatican research group, said criticism was focused on the lack of reciprocal goodwill gestures in many Muslim countries. "Humanly speaking, it is of course important to see some payback," he said.

Many people in the Vatican view Christianity as under siege in parts of the world. They say that Christian populations are shrinking in countries in the Middle East in part because of long-term discrimination and repression by Muslim majorities. Catholic churches in Baghdad have been the targets of terrorist attacks; Christian communities are under physical attack by Muslims in Nigeria and the Philippines. Sub-Saharan Africa, the fastest-growing area for Catholicism, is also the fastest-growing for Islam.

Christianity's relationship with Islam is probably one of the biggest issues facing the Vatican today. How Christian leaders deal with Islam will play an increasingly important role during the next century.

La Civilta Cattolica noted that Saudi Arabia refused to permit churches to be built on its territory but financed construction of mosques and schools in Europe, including Rome, "the very heart of Christianity." Early this year, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, head of the Jesuit order, warned against building up illusions in inter-religious talks, particularly with Muslims. "There is an unbridgeable gap between the religions," he wrote. "I repeat that this does not exclude meetings for the purpose of understanding each other better. But an awareness of the impediment makes these meetings become more honest. Otherwise there is a risk of treating the Muslim, theologically, as if he were a Christian of another confession."

"One has to accept history and go forward," Fitzgerald said at the time. "There are some Muslims who view Europe in major decline and have the goal and aspiration to Islamicize Europe."

It will be interesting to see just how things proceed between Catholic and Muslim leaders. Catholic officials aren't going to be all to passive in the coming future, I don't think...

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