Strange Bedfellows
Gaia Pianigiani of the NY Times (online) quotes a statement from the Holy See and personally signed by the free-love Pope Francis himself in reference to Muslims as they celebrate the Feast of Id al-Fitr and the end of their Ramadan month of prayer and fasting. The " Who Am I To Judge " Pope wrote: We are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values. We have to bring up our young people to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers, to avoid ridiculing or denigrating their convictions and practices. The last pope to address the Muslim world in such a direct way was John Paul II in 1991 following the Gulf War. Pianigiani continued to recount the 2006 statement by Pope Benedict XVI when he quoted a Byzantine emperor calling Islam “evil and inhuman”; only to later apologize. Of course interreligious dialogue is not new hav...