Vatican impedes interfaith dialogue … CTAers, cardinals, theologians respond

Church leaders and theologians throughout the world have reacted swiftly to repair the damage dealt to interfaith dialogue by Dominus Jesus, the major Vatican document released Sept. 5 by Cardinal Ratzinger. The declaration called other world religions “gravely deficient,” denied that other religions can offer salvation independent of Christianity, and said non-Catholic Christian churches have “defects” and are not “churches” at all in the proper sense.

Martini: Love saves

Cardinal Carlo Martini of Milan, often mentioned as a candidate to succeed the present pope, distanced himself from the combative tone of the document. Asked by reporters whether people can be saved outside the Catholic Church, he said, “Certainly! And the document says so clearly. Salvation is possible for all, outside any Church, if one follows the grace of God, the moral conscience and the Holy Spirit,” noting that this is the clear teaching of Vatican II. “When one is saved,” he said, “it is not simply thanks to a religion, but thanks to the fact that one lives with love.”

Mahony: Dialogue here to stay

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles said Dominus Jesus “may not fully reflect the deeper understanding that has been achieved through ecumenical and interreligious dialogue over the last 30 years.” He pledged “unyielding support” to “our partners in dialogue,” and said the document should be viewed in the context of the ongoing dialogue both with other denominations and with other faiths. He cited Pope John Paul II’s own irenic approach to the leaders of world religions on many occasions.

Fiorenza: Respect all faiths

Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, President of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, nuanced his official welcome of Dominus Jesus, saying it restates church teaching but “in no way diminishes the sincere respect we have for the religions of the human family or our conviction that their followers can receive divine grace.” He too invoked the pope’s example of respect for world religions: as when he invited their leaders for shared prayer at Assisi in 1986, and embraced Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Middle East last year.

Weakland: 35 years in vain?

Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, a veteran of ecumenical dialogues, said many dialogue partners would find the tone of Dominus Jesus “heavy, almost arrogant and condescending.” He said it “ignores all of the ecumenical dialogues of the last 35 years, as if they did not exist. None of the agreed statements are cited. Has no progress toward convergence of theological thought occurred in these 35 years?” Archbishop Alexander Brunett of Seattle, who is Catholic co-chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Dialogue, agreed: “This declaration does not further the cause of mutual understanding and dialogue.”

Ratzinger’s target is Asia

Dominus Jesus is widely viewed as the latest salvo in the continuing attack of Cardinal Ratzinger and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on theologians and Catholic leaders in Asia for their openness to religious pluralism. At the Sept. 5 press conference, Ratzinger claimed CDF had consulted with the Asian Church in preparing the document, but Fr. Donald D’Souza, secretary general of the Bishops’ Conference of India, discounted such claims. The Vatican had tried but failed to force the 1998 Asian Bishops’ Synod to place more emphasis on Christ as unique savior when relating to Buddhism and Hinduism. Belgian Jesuit theologian Jacques Dupuis, who worked in India for 36 years, is currently under CDF investigation for his 1997 book, Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. Sri Lanka’s Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, a CTA colleague and conference speaker, was excommunicated in 1997 after CDF accusations of heresy, but reinstated in 1998 after worldwide protest.

Balasuriya: Vatican’s two faces

A week after Dominus Jesus was released, Balasuriya told the Asian press it represents only one face of the Vatican curia toward interreligious dialogue. Another face is that of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), headed by African Cardinal Francis Arinze, whose report on its 1999 assembly of 200 leaders from 50 countries and 20 religious traditions, warmly hosted by John Paul II, also came out recently. Balasuriya said CDF starts with the theoretical, dogmatic assertion of the uniqueness and superiority of Catholicism. PCID starts with the real-life situation in which religions must collaborate to create what the pope calls “a civilization of love.” The PCID assembly said interreligious dialogue is “the accepted path of collaboration to form a better society for humankind.”

Pope more open than CDF?

Many commentators are noticing the contrast between the harshly exclusive tone of Dominus Jesus and the more conciliatory words and deeds of John Paul II himself toward non-Christian religions. Indeed, two days after Ratzinger released the statement, the pope greeted a new Egyptian ambassador by repeating his wish for a new era of religious and cultural dialogue between Islam and Christianity.

Laura Grindstaff and daughter Sarah share a smile with Lena Woltering of CTA board at regional and Next Generation leaders' meeting Sept. 17 in chicago. (Photo: John Ahlhauser)

Other Christians react

While Dominus Jesus seems aimed mainly at dialogue with non-Christians, it is also having a chilling effect on ecumenical relations among Christians themselves. It hit the headlines shortly after another Ratzinger/CDF directive telling bishops’ conferences not to call Protestant or Orthodox bodies “sister churches,” arguing that the Catholic Church is not sister but mother of all the others. (Salesian Fr. Angelo Amato reportedly drafted both documents for CDF.) George Carey, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was so shocked he expressed fears that 30 years of ecumenism may be at risk — in spite of the latest round of Anglican-Catholic consultations in Toronto last May which had sounded so hopeful (ChurchWatch, August).

CTAers have their say

CTA member and past speaker, Joanna Manning of Toronto, author of Is the Pope Catholic? A Woman Confronts Her Church, wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail that Ratzinger and CDF are reneging on Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism. She noted that the Council Fathers pointedly rejected language that made the Church of Christ coterminous with Catholicism, leaving room for God’s truth to shine forth in other denominations. Now “Rome seems bent on rebuilding the walls of fortress Catholicism,” she said.

Closer to home, Laura Grindstaff (photo above), leader of a CTA affiliate in St. Louis and of CTA’s Next Generation, said, “With this kind of thinking, it’ll be forever before my husband Sean (a Methodist) is officially allowed to take communion in the Catholic Church. The hierarchy argues on a totally ‘out there’ impractical plane, while in our country and others, churches of all denominations band together to make our communities safer, fairer, and more compassionate places to live.”

Interfaith dialogue will be addressed by CTA Conference speakers Nov. 3-5. They include Chung Hyun-Kyung, an ordained Presbyterian minister from Korea who rocked the World Council of Churches assembly in 1991 by using pre-Christian motifs to discuss the Spirit. Also speaking are Ghulam-Haider Aasi, a Muslim scholar, and George Tinker, an American Indian and a Lutheran theologian.