Why Has the Vatican Gone out of Its Way to Condemn Samuel Huntington? https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/uncategorized/2014/10/why-has-the-vatican-gone-out-of-its-way-to-condemn-samuel-huntington/

October 20, 2014 | George Weigel
About the author: George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, where he holds the William E. Simon chair in Catholic studies. His To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II was published in October, 2022.

Much can be said about the “clash of civilizations” predicted by the late political scientist Samuel Huntington. But little of use was said by two Vatican officials in recent speeches attacking his arguments. George Weigel writes:

Huntington’s sensitivity to religion-and-world-politics ought to have commended his analysis to the Vatican for thoughtful consideration and serious discussion. Instead, Huntington-the-straw-man-who-prophesied-endless-civilizational-war is dragged out whenever it’s deemed necessary for officials of the Holy See to say that “a war between Islam and ‘the rest’ is not inevitable” (true, if the civil war within Islam is resolved in favor of those Muslims who support religious tolerance and pluralism); or that Christian persecution and dislocation in the Middle East must be handled through the United Nations (ridiculous); or that the path to peace lies through dialogue, not confrontation (true, if there is a dialogue partner who is not given to beheading “the other”).

Read more on First Things: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/10/clash-of-straw-men