Catholic-Muslim discussions in Vatican
Vatican City: A group of Muslims and Catholics have met at the Vatican and exchanged views about their relations "in the current situation of the world".
According to a Vatican statement, the Vatican's top inter-faith dialogue official, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and president of the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue, Hamid bin Ahmad Al-Rifaie, chaired the meeting.
Tauran is president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.
Participants at the meeting "exchanged views about the relations between Christians and Muslim in the current situation of the world", according to the statement.
A second, two-day meeting has been scheduled in Rome in July next year whose theme will be "Believers in front of Materialism and Secularism", the Vatican said.
Eight Muslim and eight Catholic representatives will take part in the meeting.
The Vatican began regular inter-faith meetings with Muslim scholars after 138 Muslim experts wrote a letter in 2007 advocating dialogue with Christians.
The Vatican Information Service gives an account of the meet:
Vatican City, 11 July 2012 (VIS) - The Islamic-Catholic Liaison Committee held an extraordinary meeting in Rome on 10 July 2012, corresponding to Shaban 20, 1433. The meeting was presided over for the Catholic side by His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and for the Muslim side by H.E. Prof. Dr. Hamid bin Ahmad Al-Rifaie, president of the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue.
The participants exchanged views about the relations between Christians and Muslim in the current situation of the world. In order to continue their deliberations and in the continuity of the dialogue existing since 1995, the two parties agreed to hold the next meeting of the Committee in Rome, in the first week of July 2013, corresponding to the first week of Shaban 1434, for two full working days. Eight participants from each side will participate in the meeting, which will have the theme "Believers in front of Materialism and Secularism",
Source: ABNA
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We, as leaders of faith communities, need to develop a more inclusive view of the religious other, to recognise the humanity of the religious other as a starting point. We need to recognise the essential equality of all human beings regardless of religious beliefs. We need to affirm the mutuality and interdependency of all people... We may need even to extend this and recognise that religious other may, just may, have at least some access to the Truth. We may need to accept that the religious others also adopts more or less the same set of essential universal ethical-moral principles we share; that the religious other has feelings of pain and pleasure just like us; that the religious other has similar expectations about their children and family and the preservation of life, property and security; and that the religious other has the same fears and anxieties about the world and the future, just like us.