PILGRIMAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE

Catholic Online, CA
America ()
Nov 14 2006

With the exception of his appearance before his old faculty at the
University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI’s travels have been
quiet affairs. Even a trip to Spain last July, which threatened to
erupt into controversy over policy differences with that country’s
Socialist government, transpired so uneventfully that some Vatican
officials were surprised. The pope’s upcoming trip to Turkey,
Nov. 28-30, may be a different matter. It will be his first visit to
a Muslim country, where hostility toward Christianity has been growing.

In the last year, one priest has been killed in Turkey and at least
two others attacked. Various individuals have threatened the pope’s
life if he persists in his mission. Earlier this month a gunman was
arrested for firing at the Italian consulate in protest of the visit.

Memories of the pope’s public opposition, when he was a cardinal,
to Turkey’s admission to the European Union on the grounds that
it does not share Europe’s culture are still raw; and his use of
a controversial quote about irrational violence in Islam in his
Regensburg lecture has unfortunately further inflamed those who oppose
the visit. Still, the Turkish government has continued to extend its
invitation, and the pope has bravely held to his commitment.

A principal purpose of the trip is to strengthen relations with the
Orthodox Church and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I by attending the
celebration of the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (Nov. 30), patron
of the see of Constantinople. How fraught with difficulty the journey
may be is evident from the tensions between the Turkish government and
the patriarchate over constraints Turkey has imposed on the religious
freedom of the Greek Orthodox Church. Following a recent meeting, the
North American Orthodox Catholic Theological Consultation identified
several of the difficulties faced by the ecumenical patriarchate.

The group’s statement declared: "By decisions reached in 1923 and 1970,
the government imposed significant limitations on the election of the
Ecumenical Patriarch. Even today, the Turkish state does not recognize
the historic role that the patriarch plays among Orthodox Christians
outside Turkey. The Turkish government closed the patriarchate’s
theological school on the island of Halki in 1971 and, in spite of
numerous appeals from governmental and religious authorities, still
does not allow it to reopen, severely limiting the patriarchate’s
ability to train candidates for the ministry."

Pope Benedict’s pilgrimage offers an opportunity not only to express
solidarity with the Orthodox in their straitened circumstances,
but for all sides to find ways out of these historic difficulties.

The Turkish situation is not, as some wrongly imagine, a
straightforward Islam-versus-the-West scenario. Turkey is a bridge
between Europe and the Middle East – and not just geographically. It
is an Islamic country with a moderate Muslim party now leading the
government, but its constitution, vigorously upheld by the military,
involves an especially stringent form of Turkish secularism that
struggles to hold down religious fundamentalism among the population.

Since the time of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder and first
president (1923-38), the country has struggled to modernize – that
is to say, Westernize – by adopting European fashions, technology
and economics as well as the forms of parliamentary government; but
it has often fallen short of adopting the deeper Western values of
respect for human rights and the rule of law.

Among Turkey’s elites there is profound fear of political and
cultural fragmentation, particularly of secession on the part of the
sizable Kurdish population. Intellectual dissent from the standards
of official Turkish identity – by acknowledging, for example, the
Armenian genocide-remains a criminal offense. Though members of the
Greek Orthodox Church make up only a minuscule group, Turkey, as heir
to the Ottoman Empire, clings to a centuries-old enmity toward Greece
and in particular the Greek Orthodox Church, as the custodian of the
Hellenic soul.

The pope deserves credit for supporting the Orthodox Church on such
hostile terrain. In choosing to visit Turkey, he has taken on a
Herculean challenge that combines Turkish-European, Muslim-Christian
and Orthodox-Catholic relations. At the heart of each problematic
relationship lie questions about the status of human rights and
religious liberty.

God willing, even if the trip provides no immediate breakthroughs,
the pope’s journey will prepare the way for peaceful progress on
these issues in the future.

– – –

See also this week’s America book reviews "Everyday Renewals," on the
book District and Circle: Poems, by Seamus Heaney, "The Maturation
of Medical Ethics," on the book Health Care Ethics: A Catholic
Theological Analysis, by Benedict M. Ashley, OP, Jean deBlois, CSJ,
and Kevin D. O’Rourke, OP.

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