The pope and the Vatican can also do more. For the past two years, Benedict has been a no-show at interfaith gatherings in Assisi, begun 20 years ago by his predecessor, John Paul II. Last year, he issued an edict revoking the autonomy of Assisi’s Franciscan monks, a move that was seen as a reaction against the monks’ interfaith activism. On the occasion of this year’s gathering, he issued a statement about religion and peace that was read by an envoy, but his absence spoke louder than his words.

The pope also recently reassigned the Vatican’s former head of interreligious dialogue, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an expert on Arab affairs, to a diplomatic post in Egypt. According to a report in The Times by Ian Fisher, the move was interpreted by some church experts as reflecting Benedict’s skepticism of dialogue with Muslims. As his unfortunate comments show, the pope needs high-level experts on Islam to help guide him. ~The New York Times

Via Rod Dreher

Rod calls the editorial “ignorant and objectionable,” which is probably too generous, and does a good job demolishing the better part of it point by point.  Rod points out the excesses that went on at the ecumenical love-fests at Assisi, which should surely make even the most dedicated ecumenist blush with shame.  Rather than go into my usual refrain about Why Ecumenism Doesn’t Work, I would like to mention briefly an episode from the career of Francis of Assisi that his latter-day brethren have either forgotten all together or choose not to remember.  This was the moment in 1219 during the Fifth Crusade at the siege of Damietta, which was the main Ayyubid fortress protecting the approaches to Cairo and preventing the Crusaders from advancing inland, when Francis came and challenged the Ayyubid ruler of Egypt to a trial by fire in an attempt to convince him of the truth of Christianity.  Francis’ intentions were pacific (he desired to remove the need for violence between the two sides), but his conviction in the rightness of the Faith was no less powerful for all that. 

It does Francis of Assisi dishonour to associate his birthplace with the sort of ecumenism that makes no such attempt at evangelisation and gives the impression that the legacy of Francis is one of compromising the Faith or cruelly pretending that those who stumble in the darkness of religious error should be allowed to remain in the ditches into which they have fallen.  Francis was far too noble and compassionate a Christian to have endorsed anything of that kind, and those who bear his name today do him a disservice when they engage in dialogue with a “zeal not according to knowledge.” (Rom. 10:2)  Pope Benedict was right to avoid these meetings in the past, and he has been right to discipline the Franciscans for these excesses.  That The New York Times finds value in such meetings is almost a guarantee that they ought not to take place.