MidnightCall Magazine
In this issue:
- The Consequences of the Rapture — By Ernst Kraft
- The Great Divide — By Daniel Peek
- Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied — By Wilfred Hahn
News From Israel MagazineIn this issue:
- Where Does Israel Get the Right to Claim Palestine? — By Wim Malgo
- ON THE HORIZON:
- Secret Jews Coming Out of Hiding
- Human Development Index (HDI)
- Muslims Thank Jerusalem Police
- Ultra-Orthodox Stalling Church and Mosque at Ben-Gurion Airport
Catholics and Muslims Open Landmark Talks
Vatican and Islamic scholars launched their first Catholic-Muslim Forum to improve relations between the world's two largest faiths by discussing what unites and divides them.
The three-day meeting comes two years after Pope Benedict angered the Muslim world with a speech implying Islam was violent and irrational. In response, 138 Muslim scholars invited Christian churches to a new dialogue to foster mutual respect through a better understanding of each other's beliefs.
In their manifesto, “A Common Word,” the Muslims argued that both faiths shared the core principles of love of God and neighbor. The talks focus on what this means for the religions and how it can foster harmony between them.
The meeting, including an audience with Pope Benedict, is the group’s third conference with Christians after talks with United States Protestants and Anglicans.
Delegation leaders Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric opened the session with a moment of silence so delegations, each comprising 28 members and advisers, could say their own prayers for its success.
“It was a very cordial atmosphere,” one delegate said.
Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French Catholic daily La Croix that the Forum “represents a new chapter in a long history” of often strained relations.
He said discussing theology was difficult because of different understandings of God. The closed meeting started with a Catholic official spelling out the Christian teaching that humans can only approach God through Jesus Christ.
Muslim theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr responded that such a view excluded non-Christians from salvation and suggested ways to see Islamic parallels to Christian views of God's love.
Delegates said the discussion that followed was friendly and respectful, not a clash of opinions. “We need to speak openly so we get to know each other,” said one Muslim delegate.
Christianity is the world's largest religion with 2 billion followers, just over half of them Catholic. Islam is next with 1.3 billion believers.
Saudi King Abdullah visits the United Nations to promote a parallel interfaith dialogue he launched last summer.
-www.news.yahoo.com, 4 November 2008
Religion is an inseparable part of modern society and will have to be dealt with on an intellectual and diplomatic level. How politics, commerce, and religions are united can be seen in Revelation 18:3: “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.”