Last year, St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Orchard Park presented their third "Discussion and Dessert" featuring Father Francis Mazur, diocesan chairman of the Ecumenical Interfaith Commission, and Dr. Othman Shibly, who offered a discussion on "Islam and Catholicism: What
We Can Learn from the Other." – Patrick McPartland/Staff Photographer

Last February, an Islam-Catholic program designed to educate people about good interfaith relations took place at St. Bernadette Parish in Orchard Park, but the event grew particularly heated when someone in the audience essentially called the Muslim speaker a liar.

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Bishop Edward U. Kmiec called for greater respect and understanding of other faiths. As the February incident shows, there is still work to do, and now a local chapter of the organization Pax Christi is looking to do just that.

A peace advocacy organization that formed after World War II, Pax Christi is an international group with about 300 chapters in the United States. Some of the chapters are based in parishes, while others are more independent. A local chapter meets in Batavia on a regular basis for prayer, study and calls to action. William Privett is the regional coordinator for Pax Christi.

“(We) actually work on an interfaith basis,” said Privett, who also serves as co-chair of the Interfaith Peace Network of Western New York. “Everybody in the group understands the roots and origins of the Catholic peace movement, but our membership includes a Baptist minister, a Presbyterian minister, a Buddhist and a couple of people from the Presbyterian Church.”

Privett says the group now is looking to become even more active in local interfaith dialogue. When it comes to interreligious dialogue in Western New York, there are no Catholic priests as revered as Father Francis “Butch” Mazur, who has frequently worked with other denominations, is the chairman of the diocesan Ecumenical Interfaith Commission and serves as the Catholic representative to the Network of Religious Communities.

Father Mazur became interested in interfaith dialogue years ago as a pastor at St. Amelia Church in Tonawanda. With a neighborhood filled with Jewish children and young adults, Father Mazur began receiving calls about couples looking to enter into interfaith marriages. 

Curious, Father Mazur began researching the topic, and soon found himself appointed as the diocesan chairman for ecumenical affairs. He also studied interfaith dialogue and other denominations at various educational institutions, including Loyola University in Chicago. He was also active on a national level with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, working with other religious leaders to sponsor retreats and workshops about the topic.

“I just kept going farther and farther,” he said. “It’s exciting work, challenging work. I feel very comfortable with our religious leaders here in Buffalo. We can pick up the phone and talk about anything. We can challenge one another. Sometimes things happen on a national or international level that we have no control over, but we’ll talk about that.”

Over the years as Father Mazur has served as an advocate for interfaith dialogue, Buffalo’s religious community has become quite diverse. In addition to the Catholic Church, Christian denominations and Judaism, there are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other small communities throughout the area. Father Mazur tries to integrate the other denominations into the larger religious community by attending their services and speaking to their leaders. Father Mazur works with ecumenical groups of other Christian denominations, as well as interreligious groups, which cover non-Christian religions.

“Ecumenical and interreligious relations happen on a local level,” Father Mazur said. “That’s where you establish relationships. These are the people you work with, live with and play with. In Buffalo, we’re way far ahead than a lot of the other parts of the country. It takes a lot of work, a lot of massaging and a lot of outreach to establish these relationships. You have to be persistent.”

Beyond the differences in religious faith, Father Mazur deals with cultural differences as well, because many of these people come from countries in Africa and Asia. He believes the Buffalo medical community has drawn many immigrants to Western New York. 

“We have people from Bhutan,” Father Mazur said. “Most people cannot even locate Bhutan on a map. It’s a mixed community (of) Hindu, Buddhist and Christian.”

In addition to religious and cultural diversity, Father Mazur believes these people bring new skills and ideas into the marketplace.

“That diversity is a wonderful thing for us,” he said. “It’s an asset to the community. Economically, it’s an asset because people who are immigrants come with a particular trade that perhaps has been lost here in Buffalo. We have people who are cabinetmakers and shoemakers. They add to the economy and they bring their culture and bring their food. I wish we could import more immigrants here, because they add to the well-being of the community.

“There’s a great myth that says when these immigrants come here, they use the social service network for their survival. That’s not true. They come here and work hard.”

Interfaith groups have promoted various workshops to promote dialogue among religions. Pax Christi has done interfaith workshops in the past, including a three-part series called, “Understanding Islam for the 21st Century,” based on the book “What Non-Muslims Should Know.” The Interfaith Peace Network of Western New York picked up on the idea and ran three sessions of their own, including one at St. Joseph University Parish in Buffalo.

“It was a reflection on the five pillars of Islam,” Privett said of the series. “I recall one (person) sharing what the morning prayer was. I recall (thinking) I could pray those words. I’m Catholic. Those are the same words I use in the morning.”

Father Mazur still performs many multi-faith weddings in the area. When a couple contacts him about an interfaith marriage, Father Mazur will often recommend they speak to another married couple with a similar background, instead of the traditional Pre-Cana sessions Catholic couples would attend.

“One of the things we honestly do is that we throw up a lot of obstacles for them,” Father Mazur said. “We say this is not going to be easy, because you both come from two different religious traditions. How are you going to celebrate high holy days? How are they going to bring up their children? How do your parents or grandparents feel about this? It’s a challenge for them.”

Father Mazur often participates in Festival of Faith events, where religious representatives from different denominations come to a location and give a presentation about their faith, followed by a question and answer session. The most recent event took place at St. Gabriel Parish in Elma and drew about 200 people.

“We’ve done them around the diocese,” Father Mazur said of the Festival of Faith. “We’re looking to expand that. If there’s a need where people need to know about other religions, we’ll come and bring a team of people with us.”

The Network of Religious Communities also participates in a class at the University of Buffalo Medical School called “Spirituality in Medicine,” where students learn how the doctrines of different faiths affect how they treat their patients.

“We meet with them, talk about what our religion teaches, but the second part of that is in terms of medical care for a patient from a particular religious tradition,” Father Mazur said. “We get into some of the religious and cultural norms. It usually comes up with end of life decision-making. If somebody is on a respirator or critically ill, how do you approach that person with religious tradition? That’s probably the biggest part of what we teach to students.”

As a Pax Christi representative, Privett also reacted after five Orleans County teens were arrested for firing a gunshot near a mosque in Waterport, as people were leaving an evening service. Privett helped an interfaith group in Albion organize an event that brought people from Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths together. 

“It was really well done,” he said. “It was good sharing for those kids to come to those types of understanding.”
Some issues have less to do with violence and anger, but rather misunderstandings. Father Mazur related an issue that occurred on the West Side of Buffalo, when a group of Evangelical Christians was trying to convert a small community of people who emigrated from Nepal. 

“Those (Nepalese) leaders came to us and told us, ‘This is who we are,’” Father Mazur said. “Our faith is dear to us, why are they badgering us. That was a real concern for us, so we went to that (Evangelical) group and said we need to respect them. We can profess who we are, and that’s all we should do. We should profess our own beliefs, just as they should profess their own beliefs, so we understand who we are.”

Despite their efforts, you can watch the news virtually any given week to see the battle to promote religious tolerance has a way to go. There was significant controversy last year over a plan to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York City. Last month, a group called the Florida Family Association successfully petitioned the home improvement chain Lowe’s to remove ads from TLC’s television show “All-American Muslim” because “the show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values.” A recent study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 39 percent of white Catholics believe Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

“I was originally born in a nation that, since 1941, has been to war on foreign soil 11 times and has financed wars in other countries as well,” Privett said. “Many of the people of that country say they’re Christian, so others outside the Christian-faith can look at that country and say, ‘Wow, who’s more likely to precipitate violence?’

“And by the way, I was born in Rhode Island.”

There have been preliminary discussions about the Network of Religious Communities and Pax Christi working more closely together in the future. Privett invited Father Mazur to meet with the Pax Christi council.

“The key is to get these discussions out into the community,” Privett said. “We have a great possibility through our parish structures to play an important role in Western New York with our understanding of people of other faiths as children of God. They search for God, as we are searching for God.”

For his part, Father Mazur said he wants to get Pax Christi involved in his interreligious community and introduce them to the leaders of various faiths.

“They will find, in this community, that they are very much interested in issues of peace and justice,” he said.
Interfaith advocates seem invigorated after Bishop Kmiec’s 9/11 comments and are hopeful incidents like the one that occurred at St. Bernadette’s in February is an attitude of the past.

“It was challenging,” said Father Mazur of the St. Bernadette’s event that he attended. “It was a good crowd, but there was somebody not from the parish who was an Evangelical and was very disruptive. Finally I got her out of the room. I tried to tell her that this is part of the teaching of our Church. We establish relationships with other religions and we try to understand and respect them. She found that very difficult.”

“I encounter people, not often, who have a misunderstanding of what Islam teaches. I’ve made presentations myself on Islam to Catholic groups, and now I take along a Muslim scholar. It’s very rare that we’ll encounter dissent when we make presentations. That was the only time that I could ever recall that somebody dissented so harshly.”

“For white Catholics to attribute that violence to Muslims is exactly like Bishop Kmiec said: We need to promote greater dialogue and understanding of each other’s faiths,” Privett said. “We’ve got these small activities, (but) we need to do so much more at the community level.”

SHARE TOOLS:

OTHER STORIES:

Local Felician sisters travel south to help those in need

Occupy movement and Catholic social teaching share common traits