| There was a time when dialogue
between religions had the laudable goal of international peace and understanding.
In the past decade, however, a new and potentially dangerous form of interfaith
collaboration has emerged.
From the 14th to 17th November
religious leaders from different traditions gather in Geneva for the World
Congress of Families II. The aim of the event is to affirm that ‘the
natural family is the fundamental social unit, inscribed in human nature
and centred around the voluntary union of a man and a woman in a lifelong
covenant of marriage.’ Its specific purpose is to ‘discuss ways to
counter…anti-family initiatives advanced at the UN and other world bodies.’
Key items on the menu include ‘the myth of overpopulation’, preserving
traditional roles for men and women, the exclusive rights of the traditional
family, parental rights, the struggle against legalised abortion and the
dangers of the rights of the child, all served up with a generous helping
of anti-gay propaganda
Costing $1.5 million and
expected to attract two thousand delegates, the Congress is the most important
manifestation to date of this new form of interfaith collaboration based
on the deeply conservative values which unite the most reactionary believers
of different faiths – in particular fundamentalist Christians and Muslims.
According to Allan Carson of the Howard Center, a conservative American
think tank, one of the two sponsoring bodies of WCFII, ‘the contemporary
“coming together” of religious people occurs only among the most orthodox
of each group, people that are the least likely to compromise on basic
doctrine.’ They are united not only by their moral principles
but also by the fundamentalist rejection of separation between church and
state; they are therefore committed to imposing their views by political
means.
It comes as no surprise to
find that Christian traditions represented at the Congress include evangelical
Protestants and Mormons : the Mormon NGO Family Voice is the second major
sponsor (entertainment for the event is provided by Ma and Pa Osmond).
It is disturbing , however, at this showcase of international fundamentalism,
to find that the Catholic Church is strongly represented – and at the highest
level: the opening speaker is Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, the President of
the Vatican’s Council for the Family and one of John Paul II’s right-hand
men. Furthermore, the planning committee of the Congress included
three members of Lopez Trujillo’s Council.
Although the Holy See now
prefers to appear as a simple participant in this new form of interfaith
collaboration, in fact it was the Vatican, under the direct instigation
of John Paul II, which first enlisted the support of fundamentalist Muslim
nations for its conservative policies in the run-up to the Cairo UN Conference
on Population and Development in 1994. Determined to oppose woman’s
rights, reproductive rights, sex education, contraception, and gay and
lesbian rights in the Conference document, Rome was desperately short of
allies among Western nations. With fundamentalist Muslims, however,
they saw eye to eye on all these issues. The Vatican claimed that,
with the backing of Islamic and other Third World nations, it was speaking
for the majority of humanity, while those advocating a liberal approach
were a small band of American and European extremists.
Following Cairo, the Vatican
launched a vast programme of contacts with fundamentalist Muslim countries,
based on commonly-held moral values. The alliance was further strengthened
at the Beijing Women’s Conference of 1995 when personalities from the US
Christian right, such as Allan Carlson and James Dobson of the powerful
Focus on the Family organisation, added their enthusiastic support.
Carlson, in particular, took on board the Catholic ‘natural law’ ideology
in support of traditional morality.
Two years later, the World
Congress of Families I was held in Prague in the presence of a host of
Vatican dignitaries. Conservative groups from all over the world
sent delegates. Amongst participants from the UK were Valerie Riches,
spokesperson for Family and Youth Concern, much-quoted by the Daily Mail
on moral questions, and Dr Majid Katme, the Muslim co-ordinator for the
pro-life organisation, SPUC.
Katme has played a key role
in lobbying Muslim nations on behalf of the Vatican at UN conferences and
is therefore an authoritative spokesperson for the new multi-faith coalition.
His was one of the most extreme voices at the 1997 Congress. In a
speech entitled ‘Practical Lessons from the Cairo, Beijing and Istanbul
Conferences’, he launched a blistering and bizarrely-worded attack on the
UN, condemning the promotion of ‘new, perverted types of family without
mention of marriage, such as two men together or two women together (homosexuals)
or single-parent families’ and ‘the devaluation of womanhood, femininity
and motherhood; and the facilitation for mothers and wives to go like the
men to the labour market, with the neglect of her natural, great job as
a mother and a wife.’ Responsible for ‘all these destructive, disease-ridden,
immoral, anti-God, and anti-family values’ in UN documents were ‘a gang
of extremist feminists who are sick and twisted in their minds, perhaps
having had very bad life experiences’. Katme advocated the need for
‘A BATTLE PLAN [emphasis in original] to be on the offensive and not on
the defensive in order to oppose and expose this filth.’
Vatican officials cannot
be unaware of the potential dangers of the explosive cultural brew they
have concocted. In this country we recently witnessed the direction
the new interfaith co-operation could take when British Islamic leaders
declared a fatwa against the American writer Terrence McNally for depicting
a homosexual Christ-figure in his play Corpus Christi. Anti-abortion
killings in America which have been linked to the teachings of Catholic
pro-life groups are another troubling precedent.
The official Church has washed
its hands of this kind of violence in the past. Currently, however, the
protagonists of the World Congress of Families are loudly proclaiming their
unanimity. Having fanned the flames of intolerance, it will be difficult
for Rome to disclaim responsibility for an eventual conflagration. The
Vatican’s behaviour appears at the best opportunist and at the worst dangerously
irresponsible.
Gordon Urquhart |
