No rift seen in local
Catholic-Muslim dialogue
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 22, 2006
Detroit – Local Muslim-Catholic dialogue should be able to survive the controversy over a quotation used by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech during his trip to Germany, said Catholic and Muslim participants.
But a prominent local Muslim said he hopes Cardinal Adam Maida will make a special effort to reach out to the Muslim community in order to put the controversy to rest.
Cardinal Maida issued a statement Monday noting that the Vatican had issued a clarification of Pope Benedict's remarks made in Regensburg, Bavaria.
"The Holy Father himself offered an apology to those who may have been offended. Here in the Archdiocese of Detroit, we have built a solid foundation, and we remain committed to dialogue and collaboration with Christians, Muslims and Jews," the cardinal said Monday.
Msgr. Patrick Halfpenny, archdiocesan ecumenical and interfaith adviser, echoed those sentiments Monday, saying he had been contacted by some Muslim leaders seeking clarification of the pope's remarks, but also expressing confidence that local Catholic-Muslim dialogue would continue.
"The relationship here between the Catholic community and the Muslim community has a firm foundation, and is on such a positive track that it would be difficult to derail it," said Msgr. Halfpenny, who is also pastor of St. Paul on the Lake Parish in Grosse Pointe Farms.
Msgr. Halfpenny participated in discussions involving Catholics and Muslims when Auxiliary Bishop Francis Reiss hosted the Midwest Muslim-Catholic Dialogue Sept. 12 and 13 at St. John Center in Plymouth Township. He described the discussion as "very amicable and reasonable."
"That's typical of the Muslim community and the Catholic community in metro Detroit – people who are looking for an opportunity to come to a deeper appreciation and understanding of each other's faith," he said.
While there is no question that Catholics and Muslims differ on many things, they also acknowledge there "are some things where we can find common ground, and we can build a relationship on that," Msgr. Halfpenny continued.
Among those are shared moral values, the importance of the family and respect for human life, in addition to a basic belief in the same God.
Eide Alawan, a Muslim layman involved in the Muslim-Catholic dialogue, and who took part in the event at St. John Center, agreed that local Muslim and Catholic leaders have a good relationship, but he said there needs to be some gesture of outreach from the Catholic side to the local Muslim community.
"No question about it, themcommunity is frustrated with the pope's comments, and hopefully we can meet with the cardinal in the next few days," said Alawan, who heads the Office of Interfaith Outreach at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.
He said Cardinal Maida was the leading Catholic bishop in America in the area of building good relations between Muslims and Catholics, since his historic visit to a local mosque for Friday prayers in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Alawan said he, too, was frustrated and upset by Pope Benedict's remarks: "I read the transcript, and I think he could have used something else. I know the pope is a scholar, and I can't figure out why he said what he said."
But Alawan said he was also very unhappy with the response to the pope's remarks from many places in the Muslim world. "No house of God should be destroyed – this is not what the (Prophet Muhammad) taught. And I'm very upset about the nun who was killed (in Somalia)," he said.
"We have a closeness to Catholics, I think, more than to other Christians. I hope that Muslim-Catholic dialogue will continue here, and that it will continue elsewhere," Alawan added.
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