Twenty-five years after 9/11, where do Catholic-Islamic relations stand?
The problem of Islamist terrorism has certainly not disappeared. It is enough to remember only the beheadings in Libya or the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, to say nothing of the ongoing lethal attacks on Christians in Nigeria.
Yet there have also been important developments during the pontificates of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. The question of Islam was central to their papal legacies. Benedict gave a theological response; Francis a fraternal one.
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, received their fullest theological response 20 years ago on Sept. 12. Returning to his quondam academic home at Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the question of violence in the name of religion.
Benedict argued that the act of faith must be, by its very nature, a free act. To coerce, all the more so with violence, the act of faith was therefore contrary to reason — literally unreasonable. And because God is reasonable, what is contrary to reason is contrary to God.
To coerce faith in God by violence is illogical. The Holy Father traced out how such questions had been worked out in the Christian tradition, and
