The clash of civilizations?

There are a lot of “newness” around these days.  We have a new president of the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC), Dr. Arturo Chavez, a new seminary building was just dedicated, now there is a new director of the Pontifical Council for Culture.  Read the story below, the new director had some great comments which I have highlighted in bold. 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The new head of the Pontifical Council for Culture said he wants to help turn the duel between different cultures and religions into a harmonious duet of dialogue and understanding.
Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, a noted biblical scholar and former prefect of the Milan Archdiocese’s Ambrosian Library, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI Sept. 3 to replace the long-serving council president, French Cardinal Paul Poupard. Msgr. Ravasi will be ordained an archbishop in late September.
The pope accepted the resignation of the 77-year-old cardinal, who was a leader of the council since its creation by Pope John Paul II in 1982.
Pope Benedict also appointed Archbishop-designate Ravasi, 64, president of the pontifical commissions for the Cultural Heritage of the Church and for Sacred Archeology. Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, who was appointed secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy in the spring, had headed both commissions.
Archbishop-designate Ravasi said he would continue the council’s work of using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of other faiths and traditions.

The concept of a clash of civilizations has to be abandoned, he said in a Sept. 3 interview with the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana.
Instead of cultures and religions engaging in a “duel,” they should be part of a “duet, like in music, when two voices remain different, but harmonious,” he said.
The great urgency today is to rediscover unity in a fragmented and sectarian world, he said. Just as one diamond has numerous faces, today that diamond has been “shattered, (and) everyone is looking at his fragment convinced of possessing the truth.” 

 Archbishop-designate Ravasi said he also would like to boost dialogue through the use of the Internet.
He wants to put the council’s quarterly magazine, Cultures and Faith, online and revamp the council’s Web site “with blogs and other tools of this kind since I think that these are the modern tools” for getting people of different cultures and religions to meet and engage in dialogue.A noted expert on Scripture recognized for his ability to make Christianity understandable in today’s world, Archbishop-designate Ravasi is a prolific writer and a longtime host of a religious program on a major national Italian television station. Pope Benedict chose him to write the 2007 Good Friday Way of the Cross meditations.