This morning Diana West has a superb column on the Vatican's extraordinary new statement on Islam and dhimmitude, about which I have written before here and at Front Page.
West recounts a conversation with an official at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which indicates that dhimmitude is still alive and well there. Charity and openness to dialogue are still being equated with glossing over and ignoring unpleasant truths, as is the case with many Catholics and others in the West today.
But Rome seems to be abandoning this willful naivete — perhaps because Vatican officials simply can't ignore the world situation any longer. West says that "Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, suggests that the new frankness in Rome may be linked to the increasingly dire plight of Christians at the hands of Muslims in Sudan, Nigeria and other parts of Africa. The situation in Europe, where immigration policies have created large, unassimilated Muslim communities within traditionally Christian, secular societies, could also be influencing Vatican thinking. 'Before the 1990s,' Ms. Shea said, 'the biggest persecutors of Christians were communist countries.' With the fall of the Soviet Union, radical Islam took communism's place. 'We're still very naive,' she said. 'We need to educate people.'"
As for charity and openness being equated with ignoring unpleasant truths, this sounds like what abused people do, which leaves them unable to defend themselves.