Posted on 03/19/2009 7:43:26 AM PDT by kellynla
Pope Benedict XVI told Muslim leaders on Thursday that true religion rejects violence, and he held up peaceful coexistence between Christianity and Islam in Cameroon as "a beacon to other African nations."
In Cameroon's capital, a clapping, swaying crowd of 40,000 faithful from Africa's expanding, vibrant Catholic flock later welcomed him to a football stadium where he celebrated Mass. There, he delivered a message of encouragement for Africa and expressed compassion for the children being forced by paramilitaries to fight in some countries.
To these children he said: "God loves you, he has not forgotten you."
Child soldiers, often kidnapped, have been used by rebels in eastern Congo and by Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. An estimated 3,500 children are still with armed groups in Congo alone.
The open-air Mass was Benedict's first occasion as pope to be among a great crowd of faithful on the continent that is witnessing the church's biggest growth.
In the morning meeting with 22 representatives of Cameroon's sizable Muslim minority, Benedict said religion is the basis of human civilization and he returned to one of the key themes of his papacy, saying there is no incompatibility between faith and reason.
"Genuine religion ... stands at the base of any authentically human culture," he said. "It rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith but also of right reason."
The pope said that "religion and reason mutually reinforce one another" and urged Catholics and Muslims to work together "to build a civilization of love."
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
ping
That may be true, but Islam isn’t a religion, it a code of ethics, a system of laws, a way of life, and only very incidentally a religion. Mostly, it’s about exterminating others, which doesn’t get into the religious questions of how the world came about and whatnot.
I “think” the pope is just be nice and patting the muzzies on the head... no one, except the muzzies, reeeeeeeely believes that Islam is anything but a cult. Personally, I believe sooner or later we are gonna have to give the muzzies the jihad they so desperately want. Annc Coulter had the right idea.
In a way, the Pope is saying that those strains of islam that are violent and totalitarion...are not genuine religion.
Agreed!
I guess the Pope was saying that Islam is the false religion then.
With all due respect, your Holiness, that is not a religion, but a world-domination movement cleverly disguised as a religion.
Islam is as un-American as Nazism. We should immediately end all Muslim immigration.
Exactly,
just like “Scientology” is a bar bet gone bad.
thanks, bfl
Thank God for Pope Benedict XVI. He is a beacon of truth and courage in a world of gutless appeasers. I hope he leads the Church for a long time.
“ecumenical” dhimmitude bumpus ad summum
Next day BUMP!
Meeting With Representatives Of The Muslim Community Of Cameroon
Address Of The Holy Father Benedict XVI
Apostolic Nunciature of Yaoundé
Thursday, 19 March 2009
My Dear Friends,
Grateful for this opportunity to meet representatives of the Muslim community in Cameroon, I express my heartfelt thanks to Mr Amadou Bello for his kind words of greeting extended to me on your behalf. Our encounter is a vivid sign of the desire we share with all people of good will – in Cameroon, throughout Africa and across the globe – to seek opportunities to exchange ideas about how religion makes an essential contribution to our understanding of culture and the world, and to the peaceful coexistence of all the members of the human family. Initiatives in Cameroon, such as the Association Camerounaise pour le Dialogue Interreligieux, illustrate how such dialogue enhances mutual understanding and assists in the building up of a stable and just political order.
Cameroon is home to thousands of Christians and Muslims, who often live, work and worship in the same neighbourhood. Both believe in one, merciful God who on the last day will judge mankind (cf. Lumen Gentium, 16). Together they bear witness to the fundamental values of family, social responsibility, obedience to God’s law and loving concern for the sick and suffering. By patterning their lives on these virtues and teaching them to the young, Christians and Muslims not only show how they foster the full development of the human person, but also how they forge bonds of solidarity with one’s neighbours and advance the common good.
My friends, I believe a particularly urgent task of religion today is to unveil the vast potential of human reason, which is itself God’s gift and which is elevated by revelation and faith. Belief in the one God, far from stunting our capacity to understand ourselves and the world, broadens it. Far from setting us against the world, it commits us to it. We are called to help others see the subtle traces and mysterious presence of God in the world which he has marvellously created and continually sustains with his ineffable and all-embracing love. Although his infinite glory can never be directly grasped by our finite minds in this life, we nonetheless catch glimpses of it in the beauty that surrounds us. When men and women allow the magnificent order of the world and the splendour of human dignity to illumine their minds, they discover that what is “reasonable” extends far beyond what mathematics can calculate, logic can deduce and scientific experimentation can demonstrate; it includes the goodness and innate attractiveness of upright and ethical living made known to us in the very language of creation.
This insight prompts us to seek all that is right and just, to step outside the restricted sphere of our own self-interest and act for the good of others. Genuine religion thus widens the horizon of human understanding and stands at the base of any authentically human culture. It rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith, but also of right reason. Indeed, religion and reason mutually reinforce one another since religion is purified and structured by reason, and reason’s full potential is unleashed by revelation and faith.
I therefore encourage you, my dear Muslim friends, to imbue society with the values that emerge from this perspective and elevate human culture, as we work together to build a civilization of love. May the enthusiastic cooperation of Muslims, Catholics and other Christians in Cameroon be a beacon to other African nations of the enormous potential of an interreligious commitment to peace, justice and the common good!
With these sentiments, I once again express my gratitude for this auspicious occasion to meet you during my visit to Cameroon. I thank Almighty God for the blessings he has bestowed upon you and your fellow citizens, and I pray that the links that bind Christians and Muslims in their profound reverence for the one God will continue to grow stronger, so that they will reflect more clearly the wisdom of the Almighty, who enlightens the hearts of all mankind.
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