An emerging Catholic dialogue with Muslims aims to show public support for Islamic American communities.
The dialogue stems from concerns expressed by U.S. bishops in the
wake of “a serious uptick in violence against American Muslims … to make
sure that they are sensitive to what is going on in the (Muslim)
communities,” said Anthony Cirelli, associate director of the
Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The dialogue, underway since last February, will build on three
already existing regional Catholic-Muslim dialogues, also overseen by
the secretariat. Those gatherings have involved Muslim and Christian
scholars and religious leaders and have focused largely on academic
discussions and comparisons of their respective religious texts, Cirelli
said.
The regional dialogues - mid-Atlantic, Midwest and West Coast - have
been effective in creating a better understanding among Muslim and
Catholic leaders on a theological level, Cirelli explained.
The national dialogue also will help Muslim leaders to better
advocate for current concerns, “especially with the incoming (U.S.)
administration,” said Cirelli, referring to calls by President-elect
Donald J. Trump and others to monitor American Muslims and limit entry
of Muslim visitors from abroad.
“While our meetings will still have as a central component the
all-important theological conversation, right now there is an urgency to
engage more in a kind of advocacy and policy in support of the Muslim
community,” Cirelli told Catholic News Service.
Cirelli cited statistics documenting a higher number of anti-Muslim
activities nationwide as well as a recent study by The Bridge
Initiative, a Georgetown University research project on Islamophobia,
showing that Catholics who regularly obtained information from Catholic
media were more likely to unfavorably view Muslims than those who did
not.
“The bishops’ priority at the moment is to listen to (Muslims’)
concerns, their fears, their needs … and so discern how we as Catholics
can help them achieve their goals of full participation in their
communities,” Cirelli said.
He said Muslim counterparts to the dialogue were still being identified.
“At this point in our nation’s history, we, the bishops, are mainly
concerned with listening to and, when appropriate, coming to stand with
our Muslim colleagues in their own difficult work of addressing the
fears of ordinary Americans with respect to Muslims as well as their
work in trying to change the negative narrative surrounding Muslims in
our popular media,” Cirelli said.
The creation of the dialogue was motivated by the call of “Nostra
Aetate,” the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on the relations with
non-Christian religions.
“As the national conversation around Islam grows increasingly
fraught, coarse and driven by fear and often willful misinformation, the
Catholic Church must help to model real dialogue and goodwill,” Bishop
Mitchell T. Rozanski of Springfield, Massachusetts, chairman of the
bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said at the
time the dialogue started in February.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago was designated as the dialogue’s
Catholic chairman and assumed the position Jan. 1, Cirelli said.
He said that as part of the dialogue’s launch last February, Bishop
Robert W. McElroy of San Diego held a public discussion with Sayyid M.
Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America’s
Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances.
During the widely publicized event at the University of San Diego’s
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, Bishop McElroy challenged
U.S. Catholics to take an active role in combating “the scourge of
anti-Islamic prejudice.”
The next dialogue is set for March 7-9 in Chicago.
On March 8, Bishop
McElroy will discuss the common good tradition in the Catholic Church.
An Islamic scholar, who has yet to be named, will address the Islamic
understanding of hospitality in the Quran.