It is by now a commonly shared idea that it is necessary to translate the concepts deriving from one’s various religious and cultural traditions into public argumentation. In other words, it is vital that the foundations, which cannot be relinquished in any substantiated view, be translated into a series of axioms. Similarly to mathematical logic, they must be understood as a formal system of properties that implicitly define their expression (which is, in this case, a vision of the world), quite apart from a priori recognition or negation of their absoluteness by everyone concerned. On this basis the subjects living in a pluralistic society are called to work at continuous dialogue, and to tell others tirelessly of their own identity within a spirit of reciprocal recognition, allowing orientations and directions in the interest of the common good to emerge. On this subject, as Benedict XVI wrote in his lecture for the university “La Sapienza” (Rome 17th January, 2008), the very experience of democracy shows that numerical majorities and their relations of strength are not enough to guarantee and maintain it; democracy needs to be characterized also by «a process of argumentation that is sensitive to the truth».

A civil society conceived in this way has no need to neutralize religions, nor need it hurl itself against universal absolutes of which the various social subjects may be convinced. Its only must is to accept dialogue between equals, leaving to the state institutions which promulgate and interpret laws the task of recognizing which opinion is the most advantageous, and which tradition the prevailing or dominant one which the sovereign people, either directly or indirectly through its representatives, indicates as the one to which their society wishes to adhere. This does not imply the dictatorship of a majority that claims to establish the truth, nor the negation of the fundamental rights of any minority or individual (including objections on grounds of conscience). It is merely a question of not making the necessarily secular nature of the State coincide with an impossible neutrality.

The Christian community also wants to contribute to building good life in society. In society, the Christian faithful, sustained and guided by the authentic Magisterium of the Church, learn to get to know Jesus Christ, the living fulfilment of moral law. By adopting Jesus’ action, Word, and precepts as their moral law, Christians find the adequate reason for the moral sense of existence. Indeed, Christ proposes himself as the essential and original principle of Christian morality. But, in so far as he is the principle of universal morality, he carries within himself and gives value to the path of human moral experience as such (common morality), which Revelation reveals, rather than denies. Within the framework of common morality, the legal and economic dimension of common praxis can be worked out.

On these bases, Christians can contribute to the building of a good life, even within areas full of pressing issues, like bioethics, on which you will be reflecting in your meeting.

I am certain that your exchange of views on multiculturalism, religions and bioethics, conducted with scientific rigour, will be able to show how the Truth – towards which mankind yearns – always promotes freedom that is adequately understood.

I wish you all that your work may be fruitful and send you heartfelt greetings.

One noteworthy recent initiative in Catholic/Muslim relations is the Oasis project, launched by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice in 2004. Though Oasis does not shy away from theological conversation, its accent is on understanding Islamic cultures, sometimes expressed as the ‘Islam of the people’ – what in journalistic parlance might be called ‘the Muslim street.’ In particular, Oasis is interested in the interplay between traditional cultures and the new forces of pluralism and mixture of peoples driven by globalization. (Scola likes to use the Italian term ‘meticciato’, which roughly corresponds to ‘mestizo’, to convey this idea.)

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, June 22-23, the scientific committee that directs Oasis met in Venice to take up the subject of ‘intepreting traditions in a time of blending.’ In conjunction with that event, I interviewed Scola, 67, on the current state of Christian/Muslim relations.

In light of current events, Scola’s comments on Iran seem especially interesting. In a nutshell, he suggested that a form of ‘Shi’ite messianism,’ corrupted into a political ideology, may be part of the problem in terms of Iran’s checkered relationship with the West – but that it’s ‘reversible.’ He also suggested that the 1979 Iranian revolution and all that’s followed offers a useful reminder to the secularized West that history is sometimes still forged by ‘theological options.’

The full text of the interview follows.

1. Why the choice of ‘tradition’ as the theme for the annual meeting of Oasis?

Each of us, in making daily decisions in work, in our relationships, even when we rest, starts with an interpretive hypothesis about reality that we’ve received from preceding generations – in other words, a tradition. Oasis, as you know, wants to investigate the “process of mixing of civilizations,” and while the actors in this mixture are single individuals, they’re all heirs of a tradition. The problem, naturally, is how these traditions relate to one another. Are we prisoners of our tradition, as multiculturalism has it? Do we have to put our traditions in parentheses in order to adhere to certain abstract universal principles? Or, with a truly revolutionary attitude, do we even have to abolish them? In reality, tradition presents itself to us as a patrimony that has to be interpreted, because it’s a fact of experience in constant evolution, which is all the more evident in a pluralistic society such as ours.

2. The pope talks about ‘inter-cultural’ rather than ‘inter-religious’ dialogue. What do you think this distinction means? Does he too possibly have in mind the weight of tradition?

I believe that the Holy Father wants to emphasize that the Christian faith, which is the child of an incarnate God, and because it’s offered to humanity as an answer to the questions of daily life, immediately becomes a culture. There’s no pure ‘faith,’ which then enters into relationship ‘with the different cultures.’ Moreover, every faith and every religion is always subject to cultural interpretations. The relationship between faith and culture is inevitable, and circular. Just think about all the different points of view we in the West have with regard to ‘the Islams.’ Therefore, there simply is no inter-religious dialogue that isn’t at the same time inter-cultural.

The pope’s approach in no way intends to limit the dialogue, but rather to define it rigorously. What’s in play aren’t ‘pure faiths,’ but faiths as they’re culturally interpreted. That has nothing to do with relativism: The Truth is incarnate. That applies to Christianity in itself, to all the religions, and thus to inter-religious dialogue.

3. In Jordan, the Holy Father proposed an ‘alliance of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims. What do you think the aim of such an alliance would be?

The pope himself gave the answer at the end of his speech at the airport in Amman: ‘To grow in love for the Almighty and Merciful God, and in fraternal love for one another.’ Together Christians and Muslims can offer witness to an ‘expanded reason,’ capable of opening itself to the dimension of the Absolute.

4. In your view, what were the principal fruits of the pope’s trip to the Holy Land?

Pope Benedict’s trip to the Holy Land was a lesson in realism. At the beginning, it looked like an “impossible trip” because it seemed destined to make everybody unhappy. Intead, Benedict XVI inserted himself into the vast ranks of Christian pilgrims to the holy places. He walked in the footsteps of the Incarnate God, who died and rose again for the salvation of human beings. He traced the paths that throb with the suffering of the Christians who live there. In the name of the entire Catholic church, he embraced the Christian community on that edge of the Middle East, the ‘lit candle that illuminates the holy places.’But this embrace – precisely because it was performed in the name of Him who is the way of truth and life – also included, though in diverse ways, our Jewish brothers and the Muslims who live in the land given to our father Abraham. It’s the universal and incarnate proposal of Christ that leads the Christian faith to encounter with every religion, with every vision of reality.

5. What’s your view of President Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo?

I’m curious to hear from participants in the Oasis meeting what effect the words of the American president had on the populations of the Middle East, especially the Christian minorities. His speech seemed to me very political. It was extremely lucid in indicating the challenges that the United States must confront, decisive in suggesting certain changes in direction, and even audacious in favoring a greater role for regional actors. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the arguments offered in support of a ‘new beginning’ between Muslims and the United States are fragile, and some historical readings were distorted to suit the necessities of the moment. Obama was forced to pass over some of the points of greatest friction. It was an understandable choice from a tactical point of view, but it can’t hold up for very long.

6. What are you hearing from your contacts in Iran these days? Looking down the line, it seems that Shi’a Muslims and Catholics share certain traits: A strong clerical hierarchy, a theology of sacrifice, and deep currents of popular devotion. Does this suggest that Catholicism can play an important role in a dialogue with Iran, where Shi’a Islam is dominant?

Three accents strike me in the Shi’a tradition: the necessity of a continual actualization of revelation in certain physical persons, to the point of overcoming a too-rigid conception of divine transcendence; the lively expectation of eschatological fulfillment; and the reflection on the problem of evil. I have the impression that we’re not well informed on these points, despite the enormous work of study and analysis that’s been done by specialists in recent years. We know Shi’ites better than we know Shiism!

The Oasis network really hasn’t arrived yet in Iran, so what I know about what’s happening is what I see and read in the mass media. I don’t doubt, however, that many people in Iran want better relations with the West. We must not forget that Persian culture has shown itself to be extraordinarily fertile and receptive.

The principal probelm, if I can put it slightly audaciously, is that Shi’ite messianism, almost unable to bear the weight of the exepectations with which is is structually bound up, has been converted over the centuries, at least in some circles, into a political ideology. We’re talking about a long process that’s not linear, which experience a brusque acceleration with the 1979 revolution. As Westerners, we were caught off guard. We had forgotten that history is also sometimes forged by ‘theological options.’

In any event, all this is reversible.

7. One sometimes has the impression that any step toward Muslims by the Catholic church is experienced by Jews as a step away from them, and vice-versa. How do we balance these two relationships?

When he arrived in Paradise, Dante asked the blessed if they weren’t annoyed by one another, defensive of their goods and jealous of those touched by the others. The response was no, because with love, the more it’s shared the more it grows. That point holds true for Christians, well beyond their own limitations, also in the arc of history.

‘Readiness for dialogue’ is a good, and a good is always to be shared. If you’ll forgive the crude comparison, it’s not like a cake which, if I eat it, you can’t – or if the Jews get it, the Muslims can’t have it. When dialogue isn’t a tactic, but, as Bonhöffer said, it opens the dialogue partners to “the depths of reality,” then a step forward with Muslims not only doesn’t mean a step back in relations with other religions, but on the contrary, it acts as a stimulus.

With regard to Judaism, it’s written into the DNA of our own faith. I’ve never forgotten the words that Cardinal Henri de Lubac said to me in long-ago 1985: ‘If Christianity must be inculturated, then it must inculturate into the history, which is still unfolding, of the Jewish people who are our roots.’

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/24/iran-struggling-with-shiite-messianism-cardinal-says/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/22/oasis-interpreting-tradition-at-the-time-of-metizaje-of-civilisations-on-the-inevitable-cultural-interpretation-of-faith/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/22/oasis-interpreting-tradition-at-the-time-of-metizaje-of-civilisations-on-the-inevitable-cultural-interpretation-of-faith/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:19:03 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=158 “Oasis is called to an exploration of the role of traditions in the time of the mestizaje of civilisations as a place of the inevitable interpretation of every faith. These interpretations are the subject of a continual narrative and dialogue between the subjects that live in our plural societies. Without, however, ever forgetting the ultimate assent required by Truth, because, as Pascal observes, ‘however much such antiquity may have force, truth must always have the better of it, however much it is of recent discovery, since it is always older than all the opinions that have been held of it’”.

Here some excerpts of the card. Angelo Scola’s contribution.

Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 22-23 June 2009

INTERPRETING TRADITION AT A TIME OF MESTIZAJE OF CIVILISATIONS
ON THE INEVITABLE CULTURAL INTERPRETATION OF FAITH

“A year after the stimulating meeting in Amman, which was concerned with religious freedom considered even to the extreme foundation of freedom to convert, we are reunited again today in the magnificent seat of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in order to analyse the subject of traditions and their interpretation.
The growth, at a numerical level as well, of those taking part in this scientific committee and their variety of religious backgrounds and loyalties bears witnesses to how deeply is felt the need for a place of shared encounter. It was precisely the perception of this need that inspired, by now six years ago, the idea of a reality of communion that would unite Christians of the East and of the West in a work involving the reading of the historical circumstances in which to actuate the increasingly urgent relationship with Muslim believers.
Whilst I believe that by now the goodness of that initial insight has been ascertained in the light of the fruits that it has produced in recent years, there remains in front of us, always open because inexhaustible, the task of refining our comprehension of a historical process that calls on us in an increasingly imposing way.

An Ineluctable Horizon: the Mestizaje of Civilisations
This year’s title, ‘Interpreting Traditions at a Time of Mestizaje of Civilisations’, contains in its second part an important clarification. Our analysis, indeed, seeks to develop by taking into account a context evoked by the category of ‘mestizaje of civilisations’.
To the benefit of those of our guests who are joining the deliberations of Oasis for the first time, I would like to observe that through this term, which has a explicative and not a prescriptive meaning, we seek to read the process of the unprecedented mixing of peoples that is in front of everyone’s eyes. The qualification ‘of civilisations’ by which we connote the term ‘mestizaje’ is often not seen in all its delimiting range perhaps because the term ‘mestizaje’ produces at the outset a certain counter reaction.
For us, the mestizaje of civilisations – and I would like to stress this clarification – is not a political programme: its circumstantial character, indeed, excludes the possibility of erecting it into a goal to be pursued down the historical future. At the same time, it is something more than a simple description of a process (as an enunciation of a physical law or a detached observation of a biological phenomenon could be) because it is offered as a horizon that is able to provide space for all the categories that are necessary to creating the conditions by which such a process could become an opportunity for a broader mutual acknowledgement on the part of all the actors in the field. I am referring to the subjects of identity, otherness, difference, relationship, interculturality, integration, etc. Decisive weight amongst these categories should certainly be given to the factor of ‘tradition’.
(…)
As we have always done, we will take advantage of the specific expertise of each participant, but for the sake of a shared work which, taking them as given, goes beyond them. In this sense, our coming together constitutes a practical illustration of that unity of forms of knowledge which today is increasingly seen as necessary. It constitutes the great challenge and the reason for existence of the Studium Generale Marcianum, in whose cultural project Oasis participates to the full.
First of all – by now this is something that we know – we are dealing with unity of the subject of knowledge in its capacity to host the whole of the real, but because of the special configuration of the disciplines that involve us in Oasis this reflection can attempt to express itself also as unity of the various forms of expertise, albeit in obvious respect for the methodologies that are specific to each form of expertise. In this field, in fact, the building of humanistic knowledge does not appear to be as yet imploded.

Although one of the finest fruits of Oasis for me and for many other people has been the possibility of getting to know better the fascinating Islamic civilisations and the rich Easter Christian traditions, it is evident that we cannot think that we will all dedicate ourselves full time to Islamic studies or to the study of Eastern Christianities or to the theology of religions. Is this a limit destined to condition the future developments of Oasis? Decidedly not, because the specific object of our work is not directly the study of Islam or of Eastern Christianities, nor even inter-religious dialogue stricto sensu, but a reading of the process of the mestizaje of civilisations, in which both Islam and Eastern Christianities come into play, as indeed do the various traditions of the West. This is a process that concerns all of us in the first person, beyond specialisations, so important has it become. I, for example, can touch it with my hands as a bishop every time that I make a pastoral visit in any Venetian parish.

The Implications of Faith
If faith is inevitably destined to become culture because it always offers an interpretation of the real, and culture in its turn interprets faith, the dialogue between the subjects involved in the mestizaje of civilisations will take place first of all, even though not solely, at this level, in an adventure of reciprocal edification. The subject is of capital importance for a plural society which seeks to promote the fundamental practical good of being together.
The dual risk is that of falling into deductivism, on the one hand, or into extrinsicism, on the other. Giving way to deductivism, from the principles of faith would flow in an automatic way certain applications, certain consequences. In opposite fashion, in giving way to extrinsicism, culture would be the field of the ‘human’ on which faith would then be grafted from the outside as a superadditum. Both these paradigms have experienced at different times broad success within the Christian world but by now they display with clarity their limits.
On the ridge between the two fronts is, in my opinion, located a more suitable pathway. Not mechanical applications, nor extrinsic juxtapositions, but dynamic implications. An implication, as is known, is an aspect contained – implied – in a reality that precedes it. If we talk about the implications of the Christian Mysteries, the primary reality is the Christian Mysteries, but these mysteries according to the sacramental logic of Revelation (FR, n. 13) are dynamically embodied in the present of the subject who lives them. They this bear upon how men conceive themselves, on the way in which society is conceived, and on the way in which the relationship with creation is conceived, and they are subject in their turn to the inevitable cultural interpretations that this subject practices. The commitment of a Christian as regards people, society and the cosmos is not a consequence of these Mysteries. And yet it does not immediately coincide with the Christian Mysteries as such: it is implied in them. Indeed, the Christian Mysteries are not given once and for all in the form of a package of dogmas from which to draw opportune consequences; they are dimensions of the event of Jesus Christ which constantly proposes itself anew to the freedom of man, which is always historically located.

Tradition and Truth
Here, therefore, is outlined the pathway that I have tried to follow through brief points: Oasis is called to an exploration of the role of traditions in the time of the mestizaje of civilisations as a place of the inevitable interpretation of every faith. These interpretations are the subject of a continual narrative and dialogue between the subjects that live in our plural societies. Without, however, ever forgetting the ultimate assent required by Truth, because, as Pascal observes, ‘however much such antiquity may have force, truth must always have the better of it, however much it is of recent discovery, since it is always older than all the opinions that have been held of it’.

NEW YORK – Despite difficulties, Christianity, Islam and Judaism can work together for peace, but only by each remaining faithful to its own beliefs.
That’s the view of leaders and scholars from the three religions who shared a podium at a Jan. 17 forum at the United Nations. “We live in a desert,” amid the growing secularism, religious divisions, and other conflicts that plague the world, said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author and professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, one of the panellists. “The words ofJesus Christ, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ were at no time as true as today.”
Religion can help foster that peace, “but only if it continues to be religion,” remaining faithful to its own identity, the Iranian-born Nasr said. “We must not relativize our path to God, but we must accept the validity of other paths.
Nasr spoke along with Cardinal Angelo Scola, patriarch of Venice, and Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress, and the Venice, Italy-based Oasis International Studies and Research Center.
About 200 people filled the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Auditorium for the forum, which was held to introduce the work of the Oasis Center and its publications. Oasis, a bi-annual magazine that deals with issue of Christian, Muslim and other interfaith concerns, is being given a U.S. editions for the first time.
The Jan. 17 forum included the three “Abrahamic” religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Cardinal Scola founded the Oasis Center and its journal to forster dialogue among Christians and Muslims, beginning with Christian communities living in Muslim countries.
In addressing the audience, Cardinal Scola emphasized the need for dialogue beyond scholarly circles to included individuals in their daily lives.”Listen to the experiences of people”, he urged.
Father James Massa. director of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, who met Cardinal Scola when he was in Washington the previous day, called Oasis a “marvellous instrument” that offers was to “bridge the divides” between Catholics and Muslims.
Fahter Massa noted that the name comes from a comment by Pope John Paul II that “the place of prayes is dear to both Christians and Muslims ad an oasis in which one meets with the merciful God along the walk toward eternal life and with one’s brothers and sisters in the bonds of religion.”
Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and who works closely with the Oasis Cener, moderated the panel.

‘Misunderstandlngs’

Nasr noted that “many profound misunderstandings need to be overcome,” especially the miss-association between Islam and violence.
Both Islam and Christianity have, at different times in their history, practiced violence “in the name of religion,” he said. While Judaism has less of a record of violence, “for most of its history ii hasn’t had the power” to inflict violence.
“You can’t compare your favourable periods with the unfavorable periods of other religions” or confuse the influence of religion with the influence of the civilization in which a people of faith live, Nasr said.
In understanding the differences in history and theology of each religion. “the freedom to be oneself,” and not be subject to coercion, whether military or economic.
While recognizing the differences among the three religions, Nasr said, “Look at how much they have in common. They all believe in the same God”, as well as “the beginning and end of human history, the immortality of the soul and responsibility for one’s actions before God.”
“Let up hope and pray that all those who believe in God, in his mercy and his wisdom” Nasr continued, “will be able to speak together as a single family in a world so alienated from the divine.”
Rabbi Singer also shared that hope for all religions. He found encouragement from the closer relationship between the Church and Judaism since the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 document Nostra Aetate (The Relation of the Church to better relations with Judaism. Yet dialogue between Jews and Catholics went far beyond what was imagined in Nostra Aetate, Singer said.
He cited the leadership of Pope John Paul II for fostering the healing. Jewish-Catholic dialogue can be a model for reconciliation, he said.
“If Jews and Catholics can get along,” Singer said, “almost anything can happen.”
Singer praised Islamic figures who have denounced violence, in particular Shaykh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti in Egypt and one of the highest-ranking clarics in e Sunni Muslim world.
The rabbi read a statement in which Ali Gomaa repudiated violence committed in the name of Islam as “the actions of e misguided criminal minority” who “contradict the central theme of peace in Islam.”

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/02/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-talk-about-god/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:07:48 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=62

On the occasion of his encounter with representatives of Muslim communities in Germany on 20 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI re-emphasised that “interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an occasional option. It is in fact a vital necessity, and our future depends to a great extent upon it”.
Here the Pope was re-stating a personal conviction about interreligious dialogue which he had espoused some years before in his celebrated volume entitled Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (The new people of God). In this work the theologian Joseph Ratzinger had maintained: “[] it has become an integral part of our faith today that Christianity should have relations with the religions of the world: this is far from being a matter of a mere curiosity that is solely interested in constructing some theory of its own about the destiny of others this destiny is decided by God alone, who does not need our theories (…) But today there is more at stake: the sense of our being able and obliged to believe. The religions of the world have become a question mark for Christianity; faced with them it must start to think afresh about its claims, [] how it can understand them as playing a necessary role in the history of salvation”1.

Having acknowledged the centrality of interreligious dialogue, we next need to determine the few basic criteria to which Benedict XVI refers. They can then be the object of discussion and study in our dialogue. It is not possible in this brief introduction to offer a systematic presentation of these criteria. I will limit myself therefore to stating two; I cannot even hope to be able to offer an organic analysis of them.

a) Religions and good life
The first of these criteria – not in order of importance but because it is the most pacific was particularly and significantly emphasised by the Holy Father in his addresses to Muslim believers. This asserts that dialogue is proper to every believer as a member of the people of God or of the Muslim communities. It derives above all from the fact that every person is de facto a member of a society, and is thereby called to contribute to the good life of the society in which he or she lives. Here the Pope strongly emphasises the need for adhérents of religions to take the same path: “Certainly, recognition of the positive role of religions at the heart of the social body can and must impel our societies to explore more and more deeply their knowledge of the human person and to respect human dignity by placing the person at the centre of political, economic, cultural, and social activity. Our world must come to realise more and more that all peoples are linked by profound solidarity with one another, and they must be encouraged to assert their historical and cultural differences not for the sake of confrontation but in order to foster mutual respect.” (Pope’s speech to the diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Nunciature at Ankara, 28 november 2006).

b) Faith, reason, and religions
The second and more demanding criterion is the one emphasised particularly in the celebrated lecture at the University of Regensburg. It deals with the nexus of faith, reason, and religion and the capacity of human reason to grasp this nexus. In this connection the Holy Father affirmed at Regensburg: “theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences (…) precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith. Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. (…) A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. (…) For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity (…) is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. (…) The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.” [Official translation from Vatican website]
This long quotation from the Regensburg lecture can help us to determine a few essential elements which can be the object of our dialogue.
The correct relationship between faith, reason, and religions, perfectly comprehensible to human reason when not enslaved to reductionisms, involves a recognition of the two inseparable sides to dialogue, neither of which can be dispensed with.

c) The principle of integration
The first of the above criteria can be identified as the principle of integration. What does it consist in? It can best be described in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Basle theologian acknowledges the necessity of a comparison of the actual contents of religions at all levels. In this way “something like a scale of recognisable truths will be born, which can be co-ordinated according to the principle: “The one who has more truth is more right and has more rights on his side” (…) The one who turns out to be in a position to integrate the maximum of truth into his vision would have the presumption of a maximally true truth”2. From this point of view it is possible to grasp why the Holy Father proposes to understand interreligious and intercultural dialogue in a unitary fashion. A definition of culture which does not take into consideration the religious dimension constitutive of the ultimate requirements of reason is reductive (Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?)

d) Truth and freedom
The second indispensable aspect of dialogue concerns the truth-freedom nexus. While it is true that the principle of integration is essential, because required by the quest for truth proper to religions, at the same time it does not manage to encompass all of the horizon of truth on its own. By its very nature truth requires the act of a freedom which is ready to give active assent.
The principle of integration cannot but bow to the “freedom of God in His Self-revelation”3, proposing a kind of absolute knowledge of hegelian stamp. The same principle must also respect the truth of the finite freedom of man, which is called actively to welcome the statement of truth rather than merely enduring it! That is why Balthasar himself speaks of truth in terms of “love that gives itself in freedom (“only love is credible”)”4. Pope Benedict also fully took on board this crucial aspect of interreligious dialogue when, in his Message on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Interreligious Encounter of Prayer for Peace (the second of September 2006), he opted to speak expressly of the «language of testimony».Christians and Muslims in particular must bear testimony, in reciprocal dialogue, to their faith in the one God and in the ineradicable distance constantly present in the Islamic faith between Creator and creatures. They must not however undervalue the differences – beginning with the trinitarian monotheism central to Christianity. Defending in continuous open dialogue the freedom of religion in every civil society, Christianity and Islam are then called to testify that every form of violence is by its nature alien to the authentic raison d’être of religion as such.

————-

1. J. RATZINGER, Il nuovo popolo di Dio, Queriniana, Brescia 1971, 391-392. [Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie, 1972]

2. H. U. VON BALTHASAR, La mia opera ed epilogo, Jaca Book, Milano 1994, 97-98. [My Work: in Retrospect, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993]

3. Ibid., 98.

4. Ibidem.

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/01/16/intercultural-forum-for-studies-in-faith-and-culture-introductory-paper-by-card-scola/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2006/09/01/todays-and-tomorrows-scenarios-for-competitive-strategies-religions-and-politics/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2006/09/01/todays-and-tomorrows-scenarios-for-competitive-strategies-religions-and-politics/#comments Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:15:50 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=190 1. The “Gods Are Back”
With the end of the age of utopias, the end to what Lyotard refers to as the age of the “Grand Narratives” , the growing influence of religions and sects around the world, especially of Islam, is at odds with the view that prevailed after 1945, namely that religion’s social and political relevance in the modern world would wither away. Then there were expectations that the process of secularisation would usher in the so-called mundane world. Instead, we are witnessing the Sacred making an almost furious comeback . All the tragic conflicts that have inflamed every corner of the globe after the fall of the Berlin Wall are proof enough of the naiveté behind the idea that in the 21st century the Western Way of Life would spread globally under the sign of “an awkwardly-labelled Humanity with a capital H” .
In order that this overly brief remark about the socio-political importance of religion not be seen as uncritically biased, it is necessary to take into account the objectively dialectical nature of the relationship between religion and modernity. If we want to respect the history of Europe, whose mind has tended to think globally, we must explicitly look at the dialectical between Christianity and Modernity?
What is it?
Let us begin at one extreme of this dialectical relationship. Today we can dispassionately say that modernity led Christianity to rigorously explain the consequences caused by the necessary and sound process of differentiation of religion from politics, a distinction that was already announced in the Gospels when Jesus said: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt: 22, 21). Modernity, especially with the advent of the Enlightenment, held in check a certain ideological drift in the Christian experience itself, a drift due to a doctrinaire point of view that reduced revealed truth to just a “system of conceptual propositions from which one could deduce individual aspects of reality”. This reductionism denied reality’s historical, unpredictable and perplexing nature and underestimated the importance of the relationship of truth to freedom. Quite a few occurrences connected to the inculturation of Christianity in Europe-and there are no reasons to disagree with this-are proof of this ideological failure.
From early modernity, the one-way vision that governed the relationship between truth and freedom found itself progressively in crisis. This vision correctly claimed that freedom had to provide space for all the truth, but it did not clearly show how to integrate the truth of freedom into the meaning of freedom for the truth, which implies the objective recognition of freedom of conscience, when the latter is correctly understood.
Nonetheless, and this is the other extreme of the dialectical relationship between Christianity and modernity, we must stress that if European modernity was, in a certain sense, able to force Christians to accept this greater authenticity, it was able to do so thanks to the essential and permanently vital core of the Christian faith itself. This core was passed on, from Jerusalem to Rome, by way of the unbroken Christian traditio, and continues to this day to be a key resource for contemporary Europe but also other parts of the world.
I am referring here to the principle of difference in unity which lives in the mystery of the Trinity and passed into History because of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and became, by analogy, the principle of understanding and positively valuing all differences. At both individual and collective levels, this difference is not only tolerated but it is actually extolled because it is held in unity by that Truth-which is an event before it is ever a doctrine and ethics (cf. Deus caritas est n. 1)-that reaches into the farthest point (sort of a Ultima Thule) of the human experience, so that even the most radical difference is not allowed to degenerate into something that would more or less violently dissolve society.
In this context, the practice and theories of democracy evolved in the West in such a fashion that democracy came to be understood as an ensemble of citizens, intermediary organisations and peoples living together, freely and in an orderly fashion. In so doing, the latter gave rise to a civil society adequately served by the state.

2. Religion removed from the public sphere
And yet we cannot forget one important fact that, historically, came out of this dialectical relationship between modernity and Christianity in Europe. The precious outcome of this relationship, i.e. the truth of freedom of conscience and thus a satisfactory distinction between religious faith and political action, came with a hefty price, namely the removal of religion from the public sphere of civil society. A perceptive historian wrote that with modernity “religion starts to be viewed from the outside. It is categorised as a custom or something that is historically contingent. As such it is seen as opposed to reason or nature. ” Starting in the 16th century, various alternatives to the former relationship between religion and politics appear. There are attempts to reduce all confessions to one (integralism/fundamentalism); to find a supposedly universal natural religion that predates historically-contingent religions (naturalism of the Enlightenment); to attribute to “politics” the same function as a catalyst for citizens, intermediary organisations, civil society and nations once performed by religion (totalitarianism); and finally to subscribe to the notion of “provisional morality”, i.e. to scepticism (agnostic liberalism).
This fundamental process had a two-edged historical outcome. On the hand, religion came to be politically used in either an authoritarian way (as state religion) or liberal way (as a socially valuable tool) . On the other, religion was restricted to the private sphere, irrelevant and inappropriate for the public sphere. What modernity failed to do was to consider religion’s public relevance in and of itself.

3. Etsi Deus non daretur?
Quickly moving to the present, we can see that the rapid development of today’s civilisation of networks has transformed the nature of political participation and humbled intermediary organisations. In Europe, for more and more people a proper relationship between an individual’s fundamental rights and the state can only exist if other points of reference and mediation are excluded-only this way is a society deemed democratic and pluralistic. In this context, religion is seen as an “unwelcome third party” to be tolerated in so far is it is confined to a person’s private life. This view corresponds to the current phase of globalisation which focuses on cultural neutrality whereby in modern Western democracies all religions are “equal” (in-difference). The public sphere is said to be neutral as far as religions are concerned (…). All religions are asked to see their own universalism as a private affair, [at best] limited to their own sphere of influence. ”
This outlook is best exemplified by Kelsen’s well-known assertion that the “appreciation of rational science and the tendency to keep it free from any metaphysical or religious intrusion are traits of modern democracy “.
In very different ways countries like France, Italy and Spain have been the scene of heated discussions with regard to secularism. In each the prevailing view has been that the modern state ought to be secular and neutral. But we must really understand what this formula means. In the more passionate interpretations, the term “secular” does not only mean “a-religious” but sometimes even rhymes with “antireligious”.
Scholars do point out that in the United States, expressing one’s religiosity in public life is an accepted practice, albeit not a predominant one. The Founding Fathers somewhat tried to build “a secular state without a secular civil religion” . In this country, the political sphere is clearly separate from that of religion, but it is open to the latter because it is aware that government alone cannot fashion ethical citizens. On the contrary, ethical citizens are often inspired by religion to favour democracy. American Evangelicals, whether Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, whose appeal is currently reaching into places like Latin America (Brazil), Asia, Africa, and even in predominantly Muslim regions, are able to go quite far in integrating their faith and the American culture. Whatever we may think of these faith-based movements, and we should not underestimate their appeal, they do seem to confirm that “an important lesson in the American experience of religious diversity within a democratic political and social structure is that its religious foundation of culture is broad enough to accommodate those attempting to live according to one of the three great Abrahamic faith traditions while preserving individual freedom of belief and practice [as well as the freedom not to believe or practice].”
Kelsen’s thesis is thus coming under closer critical scrutiny today not only by people like David Novak, an American Jew who argues that “religious people are capable of building a secular order based on their own revelation-based traditions” , but also by those in Europe who are calling for a fresh approach to pluralistic democracy. Thinkers like Böckenförde and Habermas for instance, who, each in his own way, argue that whilst the modern state can only be based on a consensus over procedures, this does do not exclude that “the liberal secular state can also be sustained by normative premises that it alone cannot generate” .
Isn’t forcing believers to act etsi Deus non daretur, by not mentioning the relationship between rationality and the ultimate divine origin of a given rule (norm), ultimately a price to high to pay in order to live in society ? Are we actually sure that this omission isn’t depriving society of something good?
Ultimately, it is not possible to exclude, at least in principle, the notion that religion, too, can play a role in the public sphere.

4. Religions, social capital and “cultural métissage”
In particular we must ask ourselves: Can the principle of difference in unity, whose roots are Christian, ensure that democracy is real, now and in the future, in Europe as well as elsewhere? A democracy that not only can face rapid intercultural and inter-religious transformations, but can even turn the world’s new traits into cultural resources ? I think so. And I am certain that there is nothing nostalgic about it; it does not in any way, shape or form imply returning to bygone models of Christianity.
With regard to this I would like to say a few things.
First, I believe that recognising the religious dimension in civil society can fill the gaps left, among other things, by the liberal view of religion as a private matter.
Above all democracy needs trust and shared ideals without which it turns into a set of purely procedural conflict-resolution mechanisms between opposing interests. Von Kutschera realised this when he said that even ethics, whose main task is to “mediate between interests and moral needs, cannot motivate men’s desires and interests. Ethics need to be more grounded in anthropology, the more so since markets and economies are increasingly globalised. The fact that today there is no other form of democracy than the procedural model not only does not rule out Böckenförde’ thesis but rather proves it. In other words, democracy needs a certain societal background.
Secondly, it is by now obvious that marginalising religion from the social sphere is unacceptable to those non European cultures for which religion is essentially a public matter . In this sense, modern solutions to the relationship between religion and politics become obsolete as a result of the sometimes violent historical evolution of the process-I stress process-of civilisational and cultural métissage. This expression, which tentatively appeared some 20 years ago in anthropology departments and is by many still perceived apprehensively and with suspicion, has a broader application, in my opinion, than terms like identity and integration .

5. A public sphere religiously qualified
What new role can religions play at this point in history, at least in the West? First of all, I think we ought to recognise the need for a religiously qualified public sphere that is well separate from that of the state and quite distinctive within civil society itself .
This means that in its attitude towards religion, the state must shift from one of passive tolerance to one of “active openness”, in which religion’s public relevance is not reduced to whatever public space religions have negotiated with the state. For their part, religions must abandon their self-centred or fundamentalist attitude and engage in direct exchange with other religions and cultures so as to create an arena of dialogue in which religions can express their views and be heard in public debates over cultural values.
In other words, “a religiously qualified public sphere exists within a civil society defined as the meeting place where people engage in social exchanges (market-oriented or socially integrative), not deprived of their religious self but defined by it, and who, through their mutual interaction, give value to their respective selves as part of a democratic political system that regulates the presence of different religions in the aforementioned spheres of exchange. [A religiously qualified public sphere] is the place in which religions themselves elaborate social relations by acting outside of their own immediate realm through the influence they exert on social actors.”
Such a proposal recognises the fact that, “increasingly, freedom is viewed as a relational phenomenon” in tune with a one-to-one relationship between truth and freedom that is still being explored, since early modernity, in various modern cultures.

6. Religions and the Good Life
We must therefore imagine in more rigorous terms the type of state that can create an adequate space for a civil society that is truly plural, a state that is not afraid of the inevitable conflicts that will occur in such a society, but one that is able to positively regulate them. The type of state that I have in mind is not “detached” (i.e., falsely neutral); it is a state that is openly in the service of its citizens and their needs (like freedom, happiness, fulfillment) but without a specific worldview (Weltanschauung). And whilst fully respecting democratic procedures, it assimilates the values that underlie democratic life itself (civil and political liberties) to which intermediary groups give rise. I am neither ignoring nor am I worried by the fact that history teaches us that values are rooted in specific traditions which institutions certainly shape but which are in turn shaped by them. What I mean is the notion of “dominant traditions” similar to what Habermas had in mind when he spoke of “better opinion” . In the same way that someone arguing for an authentically formal and procedural democracy is not necessarily taking a “relativist” position, so anyone who thinks that the same procedural focus endowed with its own validity must be understood in axiological terms is not automatically a “fundamentalist”. I speak on purpose about the “axiology” and not the “foundations” of a procedural democracy, because this way we can refer to a “pre-political” level, one that is also religious in nature, and something that is quite useful for implementing human rights legislation and make democracies work. On another occasion I dealt with the same issues, when I spoke of “new secularism” in relation to the Italian situation .
Fundamental rights-if viewed in terms of the needs that constitute everyone’s basic experience and in terms of the values of living together in a democracy which are rooted in the particular history of a given people-represent the positive features of a truly secular society. In such a society, the state organises (and supports) the ways different identities and religions live side by side. The state I have in mind is not a state conceived as an empty and unremarkable container that one fills as one pleases (this is a weak and for all intents and purposes an unworkable proposition), certainly not one that is confessional, but rather one where everyone can make his or her own contribution to the common good. And this can only occur as part of an inevitable and respectful mutual process of give and take and recognition that preserves the real nature of power, which is and ought to be service to the people, even when the state must resort, as Kant put it, “to the use of force to uphold the law”.
It is no accident if it is the only proposition that, by avoiding the opposite dangers of unrestrained individualism and oppressive collectivism, can adequately take into account the “relational” nature of power . None of us can conceive ourselves outside of a relationship. The “individual” does not exist as a separate atom, self-sufficient and thus unrelated to others. We always exist in relation to a “different other” . Each one of us is both “oneself” (identity) and the “other” for “someone else” (difference). In actual terms, as Ricoeur pointed out, this relationship expresses itself in a process of dialogic confrontation and recognition (whose flip side is non recognition) which are the bases for sensible co-existence and legitimate rule .
As mutual confrontation and recognition evolve, the tie between identity and difference, in addition to being important for democracy, appears as something indissoluble. From this perspective the relationship between religion and politics only requires respect for religions’ nature as concrete universals. This nature is no less important than the universality of fundamental rights, which are often too abstract when they are reduced to a simple list of poorly understood and historically contextualised rules.
A civil religion alone is not enough for a sound democracy, nor can democracy rely on religions that are simply privatised. What democracy needs to do is to fully recognise that personal faith is inseparable from group ties (religions), which operate as independent actors in the public sphere and offer everyone without distinctions their own proposals for the good life to individuals and society in a process of exchange of ideas that is open, democratic, secular, public and plural.

Specifically as a result of a careful consideration of this ambivalent reality, various personalities of the Christian world (members of the laity, priests and bishops) met in Venice about a year ago to implement a project which we decided, in significant fashion taking the words pronounced by the Holy Father John Paul II at the Omayyad mosque of Damascus as a starting point to call ‘Oasis’. Oasis refers first and foremost to the Archbishop of Budapest, the Archbishop of Lyons, the Archbishop of Vienna, and the Archbishop of Zagreb, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the Archbishop of Changanacherry, the Archbishop of Tunis, the Bishop of Islamabad, and the Auxiliary Bishop of Arabia, all of whom, together with the Patriarch of Venice, make up the organising committee. At the same time, Oasis refers to a group of friends who created the International Centre for Study and Research and a journal. This project was born within the Studium Generale Marcianum, which came into being in Venice as a form of renewal of the pastoral action of the Patriarchate.
Whereas for Europeans such as ourselves the name ‘Oasis’ has the ring of a somewhat exotic transposition of the locus amoenus of Platonic connotations, a kind of garden where tarrying to converse is pleasant, an oasis is held much more dear by the man of the desert. And it is not in the least surprising that the garden became both in Genesis and in the Koran the paradigm itself of heaven.

The Hybridity of Civilisations
In order to illustrate the character of a project that has run the risk of having a demanding but at the same time auspicious name, I will begin with a general observation.
In connection with so-termed globalisation and ‘network civilisation’, we have been witnessing over recent decades an unprecedented process of the mixing of peoples, which, employing a metaphor that is somewhat bold, I have defined with the phrase ‘hybridity of civilisations’ (métissage de civilisations), where there should, obviously, be a strong emphasis on the genitive ‘of civilisations’. It is not the case that the meeting of peoples is a new development. Indeed, migrations and mixtures mark out the history of mankind. We may think of what the migrations of the Germanic peoples meant for the Roman Empire or what the invasion of the Mongols meant for the Abbasid caliphate. The new fact is that today this phenomenon affects the whole of the planet. This process, which is often tumultuous and loaded with contradictions, is unstoppable, and as a process it necessarily involves us and urgently requires the freedoms that are involved to find their direction.
An important aspect of this mixing of peoples is its unprecedented ‘bi-directional’ character. Although, in fact, many inhabitants of developing countries come to seek their fortune in Europe, North America or Australia, it is also true that every year millions of people, for the purposes of work or recreation, visit the remotest localities of the globe. Despite its evident limitations, tourism has helped to break down the barriers of isolation.

Oasis wants to study this process and its implications for civilisations. This is borne out, among other things, by the composition of its scientific committee which brings together both Western and Eastern personalities in a shared endeavour that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The choice of multilingualism (the journal is printed in four bilingual versions) is also dictated by the same wish. We could have published a journal exclusively in French, or in English, or in Arabic. Instead, we chose to have languages co-existing with each other even though the difficulty of the undertaking does not allow us for the moment to have an equal relationship in quantitative terms between Arabic and Urdu and the Western languages.
It is evident that a phenomenon as new as that of the hybridity of civilisations brings with it immense problems and to find adequate solutions requires great creative capacities. In the Western world the debate tends to focus on questions that are primarily of a juridical character out of the belief that it is urgently necessary to provide a solid legislative framework within which the individuals who are progressively becoming members of our societies can be received. Indeed, this position brings out an important aspect of the problem but it cannot conceal indeed it often conceals, above all if the sirens of gay nihilism are followed the temptation stigmatised by the poet T. S. Eliot as that of dreaming of ‘systems so perfect that no one will need to be good’.
In our opinion, the path that is possible is the path of testimony I use this category in the practical and theoretical sense which no man can evade because of the risk that is of necessity implied in freedom. It is useless to deceive oneself that man can be spared the adventure of encounter with others. This is because each one of us is born and grows through relationships. And it is specifically at this level that the journal Oasis intends to offer its own contribution, a journal that is not to be located at an academic or scholarly level but rather at a cultural one, in the broadest and noblest sense of that term.

Testimony: the Path to Encounter
The term ‘testimony’ runs the risk of immediately raising a problem. Given, it is said, that testimony implies an identity, and because the affirmation of one’s own identity is generally seen as being opposed to encounter with others, one should, it is argued, conclude that these positions exclude each other: either one engages in encounter or one bears testimony.
In our specific case, given that this is a journal produced by Christians, one would, it is proposed, be tempted to conclude that it should be directed solely to Christian communities that live in the West or in Muslim countries. To speak with ‘others’ as well, one would need, it might be suggested, another style, another point of departure, in essentials: another journal.

I think that this is an insidious cultural aut aut to which we should briefly turn our attention. If we turn our minds to history, to the standard bearers of the unbridgeable opposition between identity and encounter, we find many refutations of this. We may think, for example, of the great epic work of the transmission of classical knowledge. Who fails to recognise the cardinal importance of the re-reading of the Greek texts in the advance of Abbasid civilisation? And who, in turn, does not concede the important role, in a Europe that was already not unaware of the classical inheritance thanks to the patient work of monks, played by the input of Arab philosophical and scientific thought? Of this dialectic of encounter and identity it seems to me the Arab poet al-Buhturi was also aware when, towards the middle of the ninth century, after admiring the ruins of Persian rule in Ctesiphon, he ended his famous sniyya with the words ‘And thus I will always admire all noble people, from all lineages and descent’. An Arab and a Muslim, he found that he was celebrating a Persian and Zoroastrian king.

Naturally, history also records ferocious oppositions that have arisen when identity has been understood in an exclusivistic sense, but rather than discouraging us this should provide us with warnings about the present.
In reality, the very possibility of encounter lies in the inexhaustible search for truth understood in a dynamic, living and personal way by the human heart, which in all latitudes beats with the same desires, living every day on affection and work. If such was not the case, one would not know how to justify the fact that human cultures, albeit in their evident diversity, are mutually comprehensible: perhaps at the end of a long journey towards languages and categories that at the outset were distant, but always mutually comprehensible.

It is starting from this belief that Oasis intends to offer itself. With a dynamic identity and thus an identity open to others. Recognising the ecumenism and theology of religions as an inescapable dimension of the Christian experience, Oasis calls on all men of good will, whether Christians, Muslims, members of other religions, atheists or agnostics, and invites them to stand forward in the first person in a shared work about the meaning of the person, community, and the family of peoples. And without being afraid to propose to the freedom of others what they have found to be answers, without omitting to ask that a free dialogue of this kind be made possible everywhere in the world, as a generator of a new civilisation.

Indeed, freedom is for truth. Ever since Greek philosophy this has been an unquestioned cornerstone of the European mind. It has been more difficult for European thought to understand the equally irrepressible principle of the truth of freedom. Practical atheism as the ‘destiny of European modernity’ arose from the defence of the freedom of man carried to the point of postulating, as a minimum, the impossibility of re-cognising the truth. Beginning with the modern age, finite freedom in its constituent desire, its untameable technical-scientific effort to ‘possess’ man and the cosmos, and in the attempt to construct new forms of civil, economic and political life supported by good government has believed that it must require, at the least, a foregoing of the question of absolute truth: hence the censorship of the question about God.

Instead, Biblical revelation contains a theoretical core that post-modern man is rediscovering. Truth is the encounter that takes place between the absolute and transcendent foundation and man. This foundation testifies itself to man in the individual act of freedom that calls him to involvement. Freedom is based upon a God who manifests himself in history in order to come to encounter with man.
In Christian tradition truth, although conserving the whole of its character of absoluteness, is living and personal truth. It thus is not afraid of giving itself over to the finite freedom of man. The very event of Jesus Christ is overwhelming proof of this. Freedom for truth is not given that is not at the same time truth of freedom.
With these assumptions we thus sincerely invite whomsoever so wishes to engage in co-operation, in the certainty of the need to contribute to the accompanying of this complex but unstoppable process of the hybridity of civilisations with an authentic critical spirit. Indeed, only thus will there be realised that wish also contained in the Arabic word that expresses the concept of integration: to become mutually complete, perfect.