One Denomination or One Direction?

Sometimes, writing on religion gets basic facts--not just what is written in creeds, catechisms, or codes of religious law, but facts of what actually happened when a religious figure spoke or acted--so horribly wrong that it can only properly be considered entertainment, not news.  A good example of this is this piece on Inquistr.com about Pope Francis's most recent message for World Day of Peace (known to non-Catholics as New Year's Day).

Inquisitr begins innocuously enough by noting, accurately, that Pope Francis chose to focus his speech this year on the continued existence of slavery in the world, despite its having been outlawed by the laws of nearly every country as well as by the United Nations' Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and by noting, equally accurately, that the Pope urged the leaders and laity of other world religions to work together with Catholics to bring an end to enslavement and human trafficking.  Later, however, Inquisitr veers off into the deep end by suggesting that the Pope urged the formation of one world denomination--a suggestion that was not made in the Huffington Post piece Inquisitr directly quotes and that is equally absent from the Vatican's webpage publication of the Pope's speech.  Inquisitr even quotes--but does not name--"responses" (presumably readers of the Huffington Post) as asking "how [members of other faiths[ would...feel if someone suggested that al [sic] people become a different religion…like say Buddhism" and stating that "Muslims in general will never agree to anti-slavery, at least not in practice, else they’d have to edit their [holy] book[, the Qur'an]."

Quoting this reader, without raising any questions about his or her comments, is doubly troubling because it implies that Inquisitr accepts at face value the idea the Qur'an unambiguously endorses slavery, or at least that all Muslim clerics accept interpretations that validate slavery.  In fact, the issue of slavery has had as long and complicated a history within Islam as it has had within Christianity.  While the Qur'an does contain passages that can be read as supporting slavery, this is within the context of the enslavement of prisoners of war, and in fact all Islamic countries have abolished slavery--the most recent being Mauritania, in 1981. Clearly, no alteration of the Qur'an, which traditional Muslims regard as a God-given and thus unalterable miracle--was necessary to make this happen.

Thus, the Pope was not suggesting that the world ought to become one denomination--only that it ought to continue moving in the one direction of ending, in fact as well as in law, the enslavement and trafficking of human beings.