Vatican City, Feb 28, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Not only is there a good deal in common between Muslims and Christians, but Catholics are called to respect and work together with those who practice the Muslim faith in recognition of truth and goodness they do possess, said Islam scholar Fr. Thomas Michel.
Fr. Michel, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Theology and worked under Pope John Paul II as head of the Vatican Office for Relations with Muslims, told CNA that Benedict XVI, like both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, have all repeated the same message regarding Muslims – that of the Second Vatican Council.
“The document Nostrae aetate says that the Church has ‘esteem’ for Muslims,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we should just tolerate Muslims or put up with Muslims. ‘Esteem’ means to try to see what people have that’s good and appreciate them for that.”
The major “common point” between Christianity and Islam, Fr. Michel said, is that both faiths believe in the existence of only one God, and that both are trying to do what this one God wants.
Therefore, “how can we be enemies with people who are also, like us, trying to worship the one God?” he said. “Since the time of the Second Vatican Council, we’ve seen that part of our work as Christians is to be in dialogue with people of other faiths.”
“And this means not only talking to them and listening to them, but it also means cooperating with them, working together with them for good.”
This dialogue, Fr. Michel emphasized, isn’t just about making peace with each other, although that is important, but is about “the kind of world we live in” and how that makes it important that we all come to know each other better.
Fr. Michel noted that when the Fathers of the Council taught us, they didn’t deny the past conflict and tension between Catholics and Muslims, but they did say that it is in the past, and “what we have to do now is work together for the common good.”
The document Nostrae aetate is the declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions from the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965.
Fr. Michel referenced a part of the document that says that the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”
“The Church, therefore,” it continues, “exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.”
Four ways we can collaborate with Muslims or those of other faiths, Fr. Michel said, is by together working to build peace, and to promote social justice, “true human values,” and “true human freedom.”
A Jesuit, Fr. Thomas Michel has lived and worked among Muslims himself for many years, particularly in Turkey. He first went to Indonesia, joining the order’s Indonesia Province, in 1969.
Fr. Michel worked in the Vatican under Pope John Paul II from 1981-1994 as head of the Office for Relations with Muslims. From 2013-2016 he taught religious studies at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University in Doha, Qatar.
For 2016-2017, Fr. Michel joined the teaching staff at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome, where he gave a lecture Feb. 23.
His lecture on Contemporary Islam, titled “A Christian Encounter with Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur,” gave a Christian analysis of the Risale-i Nur Collection, an interpretation on the Qur’an written by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi between the 1910s and 1950s in Turkey.
Summing up the teachings in what is a 6,000 page collection, Fr. Michel told CNA that Nursi “was trying to help Muslims live their faith in a lively way in modern terms.”
“He said you don’t have to live in the past, you don’t have to have nostalgia for earlier times.” The idea Nursi tried to convey, Fr. Michel explained, is that modernity is not the enemy of faith, “but a patient in need of the spiritual medicine faith provides.”
Nursi said, according to Fr. Michel, that “our enemies aren’t this group of people or that group of people.” Instead, he said our enemies are ignorance, poverty and disunity. And these are not only the enemies of Muslims, but of everyone.
Fr. Michel said that Nursi taught that to fight these common enemies everyone must work together, using both faith and reason.
According to Fr. Michel, there are somewhere around 5-12 million people who try to live the Qur’an according to the teachings of Nursi, depending on how you measure the level of commitment.
The majority of these Muslims are in Turkey, but some can be found in central Asia, places in Europe and even in the U.S. It isn’t a formal movement per se, but some people devote their lives to studying Nursi’s teachings and others try to study it in the midst of living their normal lives, he said.
If worried about Islamic extremists or that the Muslim religion will overwhelm Christian values in Western society, Fr. Michel said to try to remember that in the case of refugees, they “want the same things that normal Americans want.”
They want “to raise their children to be good God-fearing people, and to have a life, to have a job, to enjoy simple enjoyments. They’re no different than we are,” he said.
He said that in his experience, those who have negative attitudes about Muslims have only experienced the religion through TV or the newspaper, but that those “who know Muslims…have a very different attitude.”
“I’ve lived among thousands of Muslims…The people that I’ve lived with in many different countries, they go from birth to death, and from children to grandchildren, and there’s no violence in their lives,” he said.
“The average Muslim sees Islam as a religion of peace.”
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Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, itself an irrefutable truth whether one proceeds to identify God as truth itself. Doctor of truth, “A title that was proposed for her at the time was ‘doctor veritatis’ because of her relentless intellectual pursuit of truth, which after her conversion she recognized in the person of Jesus Christ”.
Edith Stein as she preferred to be called identified Christ with his Cross, which is to identify him as love. Her history, a life story of discovering truth in Christ during a philosophical search for truth makes her a perfect model and source for grasping our teleological end in this life. From this writer’s perspective her writing has the depth and clear focus on the acquisition of truth that would benefit the reader.
I am unaware that Teresa Benedicta of the Cross preferred to be know by her secular name. At her Baptism she was named Teresa. At her clothing with the Discalced Carmelite habit she once again deliberately chose Teresa, added Benedicta in honor of St. Benedict whose monks were instrumental in giving her a deep love for the liturgy and matured her personal spirituality. The title “of the Cross” was in honor of St. John of the Cross for whom she had great devotion. She thought of it as Teresa “blessed by the Cross.”
I am often disappointed and simultaneously amused at the contrived use of photos of Sts. Therese and Teresa Benedicta before they took the habit. There was not much that they desired more than to be clothed in the habit of Carmel. Presently we even have to strip the saints of their religious habits in order to be post-conciliar. I don’t have to wonder what they would think of the confection.
Assuming a new name upon monastic investiture is a very personal and deeply spiritual act. Her religious name framed her existence as a Discalced Carmelite which fulfilled the deepest longing of her heart.
Edith Stein no longer existed
“I am often disappointed and simultaneously amused at the contrived use of photos of Sts. Therese and Teresa Benedicta before they took the habit.”
Weird Comment of the Day. Sigh.
How often do you see a book on John Paul using his image from a time before his papacy? Unless a photo is specific to a topic in the individuals life, why would use one that did not portray the person in the maturity? Or even his priesthood?
How often Padre Pio as a layman? Maximilian Kolbe in his civvies? How often a portrait of Ignatius in his armor?
The abandonment of the religious habit was instrumental eradicating religious life, particularly for women.
The attempt, frequent within the effort to justify the abandonment of the traditions of orders and congregations, to equate figures from their history assenting to the mutilation they have undergone is propaganda. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face fought hard to get that habit, Edith Stein sought for ten years to enter Carmel. Embraced in their spousal relationship with Christ the old woman was dead.
Therese of the Child Jesus died the Carmelite iron maiden, at the height of her religious maturity, no little girl.
Teresa Benedicta walked off to her death at the hands of the Nazis braced in her Carmelite habit, a nun, no longer the up and coming academic. What a comfort to her fellow prisoners, what a chill up a Nazi spine.
I understand the point you are making yet I have no problem with those two photos. In fact, I like them because they represent the development, the path of the person to God and this article does just that, outlines her path so two photos provide a good illustration. It is also very interesting and enlightening to see the transformation reflected on the face of the Saint.
I also disagree with “Edith Stein no longer existed”. She was incorporated. The academic did not disappear but very clearly seen in her last book, ‘The Science of the Cross’ (a discourse about St John of the Cross’s doctrine’.
I recently read ‘The Milestones’, Pope Benedict’s autobiography written while he was a Cardinal. I looked at his photos there, from the early age to older with great delight. By the way, his autobiography convinced me of his true and utmost humility and truthfulness = holiness. I think he is Blessed.
Yet you might well see books by Joseph Ratzinger from the time before he became Pope Benedict bearing photos of him from about the time he wrote the books. As Edith Stein, she wrote about philosophy, and, aside from her last days leading up to and including her martyrdom, these writings are what most people know about her.
To my understanding, Sr Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was not a martyr for Christian faith. She (so as her sister Rosa) was killed because she was a Jew. I have always thought that “Doctor of the Church” is the best title for her.
In connection to her, I also recall that the Discalced Carmelites organized a monastery on the territory of Auschwitz with the major purpose to pray there and make reparations and purify the place of horror, hell on earth. Unfortunately, they had to leave that place because of the pressure of Jews who claimed Holocaust as their own; they accused the nuns of “appropriating” the Jewish Holocaust. To settle the conflict, Pope JPII (I think it was him) ordered Carmelites to leave their house. Reportedly, many visitors of Auschwitz would drop into the monastery seeking some comfort after what they saw and so the removal of Carmelites was bad for everyone including non-Christians.
I think Sr Terresa Benedicta of the Cross would be appalled with the fact that some people of her race insisted on a removal of a group of the dedicated to God women from the sight the murder, of her and many others – Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Christians, communists. I studied her life, she was deeply Jewish and deeply Christian, her Jewishness found its completion in her Christianity. Her zeal for God is something I believe to be innate in the Jewish people. That utmost dedication to One True God to the point of death is very Jewish, like in the Prophets.
I am not sure why I am writing about this. Probably because figures like Edith Stein highlight the tragic idiocy of humanity (“this is mine” – “no, this is mine”) making it truly unbearable.
No offense, but I would like some clarification on what it now means to be a “Doctor of the Catholic Church”. For centuries, the title seemed to designate a saint who had ALREADY had a remarkable influence on the Church as a whole, but more recently it seems to indicate someone whom the Pope then reigning HOPES will at some point in the near future have a larger influence on the Church. Sts. Athanasius, Anselm, Ambrose, and Augustine fall into the former category; St. Hildegard into the latter.
Wikipedia can be useful: “Doctor of the Church (Latin: doctor “teacher”), also referred to as Doctor of the Universal Church (Latin: Doctor Ecclesiae Universalis), is a title given by the Catholic Church to saints recognized as having made a significant contribution to theology or doctrine through their research, study, or writing.”
This certainly describes Edith Stein, even in her earlier writings on phenomenology which she wrote under her preceptor, Edmund Husserl.
“This certainly describes Edith Stein, even in her earlier writings on phenomenology which she wrote under her preceptor, Edmund Husserl.” At best, that is like saying that Lars Onsager is a famous physicist. He kind of is, but unless you are a physicist (or maybe a chemist, since he won a Nobel prize in chemistry), I’m pretty sure you’ve never heard of him.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the other hand, is basically a nobody that everyone has heard of. You might not think physics had the equivalent of a Paris Hilton, but that’s kind of what he is.
Then there are people like Einstein and Newton; physicists who are genuinely important and actually well-known. These are the physics equivalents of Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas; they need no introduction.
If you really want to see what something means, sometimes you have to dig deeper than Wikipedia.
God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us – Mahatma Gandhi
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross has been an object of devotion for me since I was a boy sixty years ago. What a heroic woman…she continues to leave me speechless. I made sure I was at her canonization. Her witness to Jesus Christ has been an anchor for my faith for many decades.
She was an impressive philosopher. I have found her theological and devotional writings rewarding. Do they support her being declared a Doctor of the Church? I think not. That sort of theological reflection was not her vocation.
Let us be honest in our recognition of heroic virtue and of superior theological contributions to the faith. There is no need to patronize any individual over and above their accomplishments achieved by cooperation with Grace. For some time now we have been canonizing individuals who, while good, very good even, are not exactly examples of heroic virtue.
The ambition to bestow the doctorate upon St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is, honestly, merely an ecclesiastical DEI job because of her identity as a woman, a Jew, a scholar. It has nothing to do with groundbreaking exceptional theological reflection. It is a vacuous effort, it is ultimately dishonest.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross would not approve. She was a profoundly honest woman of exceptional common sense and virtue. Not a theologian. Her contemplative reflection does not rise to the level of Teresa, Catherine, Therese…
Well said. We need great theologians like St. Augustine, but we need great prayer warriors like St. Monica even more. St. Monica will never be a Doctor of the Church, nor should she, but she might be greater in the Kingdom of Heaven than her son, and we can be sure that for every famous theologian, there are hundreds or thousands of St. Monicas known only to God.
Profoundly insightful, and wonderfully unsettling. Puts things in their supernatural perspective.
I too greatly admire the writing and the life of St. Teresa Benedicta together with her fellow Carmelite saints Teresa, Therese, and John of the Cross. I’ve read much of their work, some more than once. Teresa Benedicta wrote a treatise on St. John (The Science of the Cross), but she very meticulously repeated and clarified what St. John had written. She has a brilliantly detailed work on ’empathy’ which is philosophy, not theology. I believe she wrote biographical notes or essays on some other notable Carmelites. She also has some wonderfully thoughtful and insightful essays on womanhood.
Her heroic virtue in her arrest, time in the concentration camp and facing death was apparent to all. Her love for her natural family, particularly her mother, was heart-rending to us folk who shared Edith’s anguish on the days leading to the day in the parlor. There we share Edith’s sorrow at informing her Jewish mother of her wish for Catholic Baptism. Her biography inclines her to sainthood. But what inclines the Church to name her one of its doctors? Nothing that I know.
Correction: The days of anguish for Edith occurred not prior to her Baptism but prior to her entrance into convent.
Would that St. Benedicta and St. John of the Cross would help me reserve my exuberant sharing of inaccurate memory!
Why the bigotry of calling her by the wrong name? She is St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross.
I don’t think anything ill is meant by it. We tend to call recently departed saints by the names they were best known by when they were alive. We’ll be saying “Mother Teresa” instead of “Saint Teresa of Calcutta” and “Padre Pio” instead of “Saint Pio of Pietrelcina”, which is not quite the same thing, but somewhat related.