Too many Christian-Muslim dialogues, Vatican says

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - There are now so many efforts to improve relations between Christians and Muslims that they risk overlapping and creating confusion, the Vatican's top official for interfaith contacts says.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said a conference between Catholics and Muslims last week was a fresh bid for mutual understanding that could become a "favoured channel" for the Vatican.

But there is now so much interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue that it is getting hard to see where it is going, said Tauran, who was preparing to fly to New York for United Nations talks linked to another drive led by Saudi King Abdullah.

"In my opinion, there are too many Christian-Muslim initiatives. Everybody's doing it," he told Reuters in an interview. "One doesn't know where this will go. That proves there is a great interest, but it sows a bit of confusion.

"There's a risk of overlapping... It may be the price to pay for all this interest that interreligious dialogue incites."

Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is nothing new, but the Sept. 11 attacks and sharpened tensions between western and Muslim states have given it a new urgency and sparked concern about a growing gap between the world's two largest religions.

A Common Word, an informal group of religious leaders and scholars across the Muslim world, gave interfaith dialogue a new impetus last year by inviting Christians to examine how both faiths have shared core principles of loving God and neighbour.

On Nov 4-6, a Common Word delegation held an unprecedented meeting at the Vatican called the Catholic-Muslim Forum, a bilateral exchange due to be held every two years.