Dissenters: Gov't promotes dialogue but avoids commitment

Opposition alliance Unified Democratic Panel (MUD) proposed some terms for holding talks: a thorough agenda, a mutually agreed methodology, and the good offices of designated officials, either national or international".

Venezuelan opposition umbrella group Unified Democratic Panel (MUD) complained in a statement that the Venezuelan government has not sent any signals of being interested in promoting true dialogue in the country.

"The government shows itself as the promoter of dialogue without committing itself to anything," said the MUD. They questioned the fact that authorities are seeking to send opposition leader Carlos Vecchio to prison even though officers of the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin) are allegedly involved in the events of February 12.

"We have insisted on saying that respect is essential for holding talks, but this must be done with a serious, firm and respectful approach to meet the minimum requirements for trust," Aveledo remarked.

"We ratify our willingness to hold dialogue and propose establishing real bases for its achievement with a thorough agenda, a mutually agreed methodology, and the good offices of designated officials, either national or international."

Source: El Universal
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Maduro: Students' reply to the call for dialogue was aggressive

"We will designate a flexible, promoting team of open doors, not at all sectarian or closed"

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro chaired on Friday a roundtable within the framework of the Peace Conference, an initiative implemented last Wednesday. He reasserted his call to the student movement for rapport.

"I called upon the right-wing student movement. (...) I received the reply of some of them yesterday (Thursday). It is a very aggressive, violent wording, more than before. The answer was very bad; they have bad advisors; who knows? I keep on calling upon them in whatever form they want to attend." Maduro noted that students could meet with him, with Vice-President Jorge Arreaza, or in the context of the Peace Conference.

During the meeting, Maduro appointed a promotion and coordination team "for things not to remain in the air, not to be lost." He announced the set up of peace conferences in the province. "It will be as ample as possible in the states of Táchira, Mérida and Miranda."

Maduro praised the message to Venezuela by Pope Francis: "His message to Venezuela is perfect; we fully welcome it."

"We will designate a flexible, promoting team of open doors, not at all sectarian or closed."

Calling Henrique Capriles


Maduro reaffirmed his invitation to opposition leader Henrique Capriles to join the National Peace Conference. "I keep my call to Miranda state government; I suggested a meeting with state governors of Lara, Amazonas," he said at Miraflores presidential palace, before an audience including top authorities of the government branches.

Source: El Universal

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The dangers of Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue

This extraordinary article explains exactly why it is unwise and ultimately self-defeating for Catholic leaders (and Christian leaders in general) to engage in “interfaith dialogue” with Muslim leaders without knowing much of anything about Islam, or, for that matter, about the goals for the dialogue of their Muslim counterparts. The author, William Kilpatrick, author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for The Soul of The West, includes a succinct summary of the smear campaigns by Reza Aslan’s Aslan Media that got me canceled from a couple of Catholic events last year by bishops who did not trouble to inform themselves of all the facts of the case, and did not deign to allow me to defend myself from the charges. Kilpatrick shows how these incidents were part of a larger pattern of naive accommodation on the part of Catholic leaders that is ultimately not just self-defeating, but suicidal.
“Has the Church in the U.S. Succumbed to the Charms of Islam?,” by William Kilpatrick in New Oxford Review, January 2014:
…New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan paid a visit last summer to the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville on Staten Island, where he met with a large group of Muslim leaders. As is often the case when Catholic prelates meet with Muslims, his theme was the common ground shared by the two faiths.
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