Pope's eyes focused on religious European union

Ken Endo / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

During a talk with a Catholic priest, I mentioned that the Self-Defense Forces had 250,000 personnel. This prompted him to cite the number of Japanese Catholics as "500,000 in all." (To be exact, there are about 440,000.)

With this incident, I felt I had learned about the subtly tense relationship a religious community can have with the state and the existence of a "psychological map" barely visible to nonbelievers.

Generally, when we refer to Catholicism, it is in the pejorative "Roman Catholic" view of Protestantism and Marxism, which have been influential, imported ideologies for modern Japan.

Pope Benedict XVI is not only the head of the Catholic Church with 1.1 billion followers worldwide, but also the sovereign of the Vatican City State, and his influence extends beyond the sphere of the spiritual to international politics.

His predecessor, John Paul II, came from Poland. For nearly 30 years at the seat of power, much of his political energy was directed at the Soviet Union, the general headquarters of communism and atheism.

In Poland, then under the yoke of the Soviet Union, Solidarity--an independent self-governing trade union with the support of the Roman Catholic Church--gained its power.

On the other hand, John Paul II paid respect to the Virgin Mary and greatly valued inner faith in a transcendental deity. As an extension of that belief, he promoted cooperation with Islam, which also has a transcendental deity.

These structures were compatible with the Cold War in terms of antagonism to the Soviet presence in such countries as Afghanistan.

The current pope has often been caught up in controversy. For example, he criticized an Islamic jihad (holy war), while reversing the excommunication of a bishop who had denied the Holocaust.

Before ascending to the Papacy in 2005, he was long John Paul II's right-hand man.

A subtle but important difference between the two is that Benedict emphasizes man's inherent rational faculty to understand God's voice and expounds its mutually supplementary and reinforcing roles with the belief.

In addition, if harmony between rational faculty and belief is considered to be at the very root of the European Union, it suggests that there will be slight difference of opinion in the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-European world, particularly the Muslim world.

This is consistent with the international political environment after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, after which Islamic fundamentalism became a major point of dispute.

Of course, the present pope does attach importance to the dialogue with other religions. Yet such efforts do not lead to mutual understanding in terms of doctrine, but belong to a category of pragmatic cultural diplomacy.

Pope Benedict, who became a university theologian in Germany when he was younger, is also an European intellectual with great confidence.

His eyes are now focused on integrating with the Anglican Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. This is supported by his strong will toward Catholic doctrine. At the same time, this is nothing but an effort to construct a religious European union in which rationality and faith harmonize to counter the strong currents of secularism.

Endo, an expert in international politics, is a professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo and a senior fellow of the European University Institute in Florence. He lives in Italy.