Alaska priest to engage Islam at national level

By Joel Davidson
6/24/2009
Catholic Anchor

Photo: a mosque and a church, side-by-side, in Beirut, Lebanon

...Born, raised and ordained to the priesthood in Alaska, Father Walsh will leave his home state to work for at least three years with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where his primary task will be to facilitate greater understanding between Catholics and Muslims across the country...

Those dialogues will generally include bishops, academic experts and prominent Muslim leaders. The aim of the gatherings is to foster mutual understanding and find areas where greater unity and cooperation are possible.

“It is important for us to be in dialogue,” Father Walsh explained in an interview with the Anchor. “We’ve seen what happens when those prejudices and antagonisms are allowed to run unchecked.”

For example, Father Walsh pointed to the mischaracterization of Islam that occurs when memories of the September 11, 2001 attacks are the primary perception that people have of the religion.

“Dialogue is especially important because of how skittish people are today,” Father Walsh said. “Most people, you talk to them about Islam and they are going to mention 9/11 somewhere within the first three minutes of the conversation because that is the image in their mind. And believe me, it is the image in the Muslim’s mind too. They live with that every day.”

...Interreligious work is very much dependent on building human relationships, Father Walsh explained.

“It is not just comparative religion,” he said. “Religion is never lived in a vacuum. We engage and live in the community in which we are a part.”

...On the international front, Father Walsh noted that Pope Benedict XVI has provided strong leadership in reaching out to the Islamic world and inviting them to dialogue.

Father Walsh pointed to the Common Word Project in which 138 Muslim scholars agreed to an interfaith dialogue with Christians on the topic of love of God and love of neighbor...

Catholics, Muslims begin to value how much they share across faiths

Catholics, Muslims begin to value how much they share across faiths
By Dennis Sadowski
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, Dalila Benameur and her Muslim friends in Bridgeview, Ill., were afraid to leave their homes even when their pantries ran low and their refrigerators emptied. The women felt threatened by the handful of intimidating drivers who would cruise past the town's mosque waving Confederate flags and shouting anti-Muslim epithets.

That's when Andreatte Brachman and her friends from St. Fabian Catholic Church stepped in.

Brachman and company offered to accompany the women on errands as a sign of solidarity to alleviate growing concerns that Muslims hated America...

Of course, it helped that the St. Fabian women had gotten to know their Muslim neighbors before the attacks as part of the Muslim-Catholic Women's Group that had evolved from the two faith communities several years earlier...

In their discussions the women have explored what jihad truly means to Muslims -- an internal struggle to serve God -- and how each religion views Jesus. For Catholics, Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of the world; for Muslims he is a wise prophet who helps reveal God. At the group's Jan. 9 meeting, the women shared their common concern for the poor, rooted in the tenets of their two faiths, when they volunteered at a local shelter for homeless people...

Three official Catholic-Muslim dialogues have been occurring since the 1990s: on the West Coast, in the Midwest and in the mid-Atlantic. These annual meetings have been sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Muslim leaders, particularly the Indiana-based Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America in New York...

Father Francis Tiso, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said emphasizing the common beliefs and shared values in the dialogues is fruitful, but just as much can be learned by participants acknowledging and discussing differences.

"When dialogue is about differences there is a certain high relief that emerges that enables both sides to appreciate one another precisely for the differences," said Father Tiso. "There's an appreciation process ... when you really listen to the other side, what they're really saying or trying to communicate...

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0900556.htm