The Vatican has endured negative national press in recent years. Students and panelists discussed current issues and ways the church hopes to move forward Friday during a panel discussion, “The Vatican and the World in 2010."
Charles Kimball, director of OU’s religious studies program, said he thinks the church can serve as a model to the rest of the world to look past others’ religions.
“Christians and Muslims together make up ... over 40 percent of the world’s population, and these two large religious communities have traveled along often difficult, circuitous and pretty bumpy roads together for the last 1,400 years,” Kimball said.
He was pleased when Pope Benedict XVI, who he said faces major challenges as a leader in the Christian world, spoke up against the pastor in Florida who threatened to burn Qurans.
“I’m quite sure that there are many people in various parts of the predominantly Muslim world who could care less whether or not they actually burned the Qurans, but are taking just that incident to paint a picture of Christians as, ‘Here’s what Christians really do, here’s what they really want,’” Kimball said.
Bart Conner, OU graduate and 1984 Olympic gymnastics champion, said he thinks students are interested in helping underdeveloped countries through the Vatican.
“We have to set our sights beyond our borders if we are going to thrive and see our world on a bigger scale,” Conner said. “I’m sensing that there is a broad group of students that have much more interest in global issues that is only going to expand as the world becomes smaller.”
Conner also asked the panel what they thought students’ role in a larger global family could be and what role the church could play.
“We can take someone from Norman and send them to Haiti, so our system of parishes actually enables us to do just that, to prod young people into the wider world,” said the Rev. Jim Goins of St. Thomas More University Parish in Norman.
Goins said they could connect young people in Oklahoma to parishes all around the world to work on disadvantages in various countries.
Worldwide, the Vatican has 1.2 billion followers “and it engages in relations with governments, leaders and peoples all around the world,” said Suzette Grillot, associate director of the International Programs Center and professor of international and area studies.
Francis Rooney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, said the mission of the Holy See — which is viewed as the central government of the Catholic Church — is a unique and essential one.
“The fact that [the Holy See has] no territory makes them a particular useful instrument for the United States,” Rooney said. “Without a territorial agenda, we can work with the Holy See to advance the kind of issues we are both interested in that affect human rights, freedom, things like that.”
Goins said the Vatican’s concern over recent public issues has encouraged him, because it shows the church’s endurance. But he said he thinks the Vatican has not given enough priority to issues that still pertain to many.
“On a local level, that’s very concerning,” Goins said. “I think I would urge the Vatican to take seriously the decline of the family, the shifting sexual ethics of the western world, the sexual scandals; spend more time, more energy on that and perhaps less on lesser issues.”
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Ouanon 1 year, 7 months ago
If Pope Benedict XVI really wants to improve the Vatican's image, he could start by not covering up child molestation in his organization...
henryrok 1 year, 7 months ago
Don't think that's happening any more, but what he could do to really convince people he's truly working to end it would be to fire some bishops and leaders of religious congregations who unquestionably have hide this hideous behavior.