Vatican greets Muslims for the occasion of end of Ramadhan

I have just come from a visit from my Muslim friends. They are very devoted to their faith and are wonderful people. We don't see Muslims like them often. At least not on television. It is always interesting when we discuss religion. We both discover something new we didn't know about each other's religion. For example, they didn't know until recently that catholic have daily prayers. Or that catholic women 'should' cover their head. The most recent discussion was particularly unique. That's because it discussed the authenticity of the Bible and their Injil. Muslims think that our Bible is incomplete. They believe that the four gospel are just story books, but they don't present the 'full' message of Christ which they believe they have in their Injil. I had to explain to them the question of authorship of the Gospel. The disciples. And the authority of Peter. It was a quite interesting discussion. In humility we both accept that we are learners, and we pray that God lead us to all truth. We always remind each other that the most important thing is love.

It is a good thing that the Vatican considered addressing the Muslim world to invite them for dialogue. Some people think that such dialogue can be harmful, but not if each part is really orthodox in their belief. I have experienced that dialogue with people of different faith always brought both of us to humility. Every time we reach a point where we got stuck, we always go to the last judgement. We both know that the last judgment we will not be asked whether or not we had the right formula of faith. But whether our heart is a good state. We will be asked about how we have loved. So at the end it is always a sort of examination of conscience. Do we love better than them? This is a question a person can only respond to.

These are some important points made by Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran as per CWNews (For the full text, click Here.):

In his message, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran says that all believers, regardless of their
faith, should share in "work in favor of peace, by showing respect for the
convictions of individuals and communities everywhere through freedom of
religious practice. " Enlarging on that theme, he calls for "doing everything
one can to reject, denounce and refuse every recourse to violence which can
never be motivated by religion, since it wounds the very image of God in man."

Cardinal Tauran's message makes a special point of condemning
terrorism, "which strikes blindly and claims countless innocent victims, is
incapable of resolving conflicts and leads only to a deadly chain of destructive
hatred, to the detriment of mankind and of societies."

The French
cardinal argues that dialogue between Christians and Muslims is "the tool which
can help us to escape from the endless spiral of conflict and multiple tensions
which mark our societies."