June 26, 06

Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People published conclusions June 22, 2006, from its May 15-17, 2006, meetings here, focusing attention on the theme "Migration and Itinerancy from and towards Islamic majority Countries."

"Catholics, in particular, are called to practice solidarity with Muslim immigrants” in countries with Christian majority, the document says, “to be open to sharing with them and to know more about their culture and religion.”

“At the same time,” it adds, members of the Catholic Church “are to bear witness to their own Christian values.”

The council affirmed “the necessity of mutual respect and human solidarity, in an atmosphere of peace, based on the centrality of the human person.”

“Each one's human rights and freedoms,” the document states, “go hand in hand with those of others.”

Interreligious dialogue becomes necessary as religious, social and political tensions grow with greater migration of Muslims to countries with Christian majorities and greater migration of Christians to Islamic dominated nations, the document says.

“The phenomenon of human mobility... raises a number of problems, religious and spiritual, besides social, economic and political ones,” it says.

The Vatican proposed “a model of religious dialogue which is not only conversation, nor just listening to one another, but which reaches a mutual revelation of each one’s own profound spiritual convictions.”

The plenary meeting participants expressed the hope that where Christian and Muslim communities live together to “unite their efforts… to guarantee everyone, without distinction of religion, the full exercise of his/her rights and individual freedoms, personally and as a member of a community.”

The Vatican document notes the plight of Christian immigrants who find themselves “poor and without real contractual power” as “second-class citizens” in some Islamic-majority countries, “have great difficulty in having their human rights recognized” and “can easily be punished or deported.”

The Catholic Church is called “to help Christian migrants in those countries, as well as in the whole world, in a context of due respect for legality and an interest in the formulation of just legislations concerning human mobility and the legal protection of all those involved," the document says.

It stressed that Christian and Muslim organizations and leaders have a responsibility to work together to ensure tolerance, respect and peace. “Collaboration between Christian and Muslim institutions to bring aid to individuals and populations in need, without any discrimination, is an effective sign that destroys prejudices and closure," the council participants stated.

The document underlined the importance of education as the key toward future generations “overcoming the conflict of ignorance and prejudices, and to have a correct and objective knowledge of the other's religion, with special attention to the freedom of conscience and religion."

Great care should be taken to ensure that school textbooks and historic representations of religions are free of references that promote religious and cultural prejudices.

The document also said, "The growing extent to which Muslims and Christians live together can provide an opportunity for collaborating together in view of a more peaceful world, respectful of each one's identity and more united in the service of common good, seeing that we all constitute one human family, which is in need of hope."

The council said that it is “necessary to work hard everywhere so that what prevails would be a culture of 'living together' between host and immigrant populations, in a spirit of mutual civic understanding and respect for everyone's human rights. It is also necessary to search ways for reconciliation and of purifying memories. We must also become advocates in defense of religious freedom – our constant imperative – and of common good, and procure respect for minorities, which is an unquestionable sign of true civilization."

The text concludes with a call for Muslim and Christian intellectuals and leaders to work in the forefront "to avoid the abusive use of religion to inculcate hatred for believers of other religions or for ideological and political reasons” and thereby lessen the chances of violence “perpetrated in the name of their religion."