Overcoming Conflicts Together, Love is Strengthened

Yesterday, Benedict XVI challenged Christians and Muslims of the world to work together to defend human rights and end discrimination and violence. The speech concluded a three-day meeting of the recently formed Catholic-Muslim Forum:

The commandments of love of God and love of neighbor are at “the heart of Islam and Christianity alike” and always go together, the pope told members of the Catholic-Muslim Forum . . . .

“The Christian tradition proclaims that God is love,” the pope told them. God created the universe out of love, and motivated by love he became human in Jesus Christ, handing himself over to death “in order to restore full dignity to each person and to bring us salvation.”

As people who recognize the one God, he said, “together we must show, by our mutual respect and solidarity, that we consider ourselves members of one family: The family that God has loved and gathered together from the creation of the world to the end of human history.”

Love for God and neighbor, he said, also requires believers to respect the dignity of each person and to work together to ensure that each person’s rights—especially the right to freely profess and practice one’s faith—are guaranteed . . . .

Mustafa Ceric, the grand mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, told Pope Benedict that dialogue is the key not only to justice and peace, but also to countering exaggerated forms of secularism that have led to “wealth without effort, pleasure without conscience, education without morality, business without ethics, politics without principles, science without responsibility, faith without sacrifice and religion without compassion.”

The mufti told the pope, “Love is strengthened by working to overcome conflicts together.”