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’.

N.B.: The traditional press conference will be held at the end of the proceedings at 1.15 pm, on Tuesday 23 June.

Here you will find the programme of the two-day event and the list of participants.

Programme

Fondazione Cini – Venice

Monday, 22 June 2009

First Session

9.30 am – 9.40 am Introduction by Dr Martino Diez, director of the Fondazione Internazionale Oasis.
9.40 am – 10.00 am Address by H.E. Card Angelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice. About the inevitable cultural interpretation of faith
10.00 am – 10.20 am Dr Paolo Gomarasca, Tradition/testament/inheritance, for a hermeneutics of tradition
10.20 am – 10.40 am Fr Michel Cuypers. The role of tradition in the Islamic faith
10.40 am – 11.00 am Prof Malika Zeghal. Tradition and traditions in contemporary Islam

11.00 am – 11.30 am Break

Second Session

11.30 am – 11.50 am Prof Azzeddine Gaci, Islam in Europe, a tradition in the making.
11.50 am – 12.10 pm Prof John Milbank, Rethinking religions’ public place
12.10 pm – 13.00 pm Open discussion on the various papers presented

13.15 – 14.45 pm Lunch

Thirds and fourth sessions

15.00 – 16.30 pm Discussion
16.30 – 17.00 pm Break
17.00 – 18.45 pm Discussion

Tuesday 23 June 2009

First Session

8.45- 9.00 am Introduction by Dr Roberto Fontolan, Oasis editor
9.00- 11.00 am Open discussion

10.00 – 11.30 am Break

Second Session
11.30 am – 12.30 pm Open discussion
12.30 pm – 12.45 pm Closing address by H.E. the Patriarch

13.15 pm Press conference by Card Angelo Scola and other international guests

Speakers who will open the committee’s proceedings:

Paolo Gomarasca is a Researcher in Moral Philosophy and teaches Institutions of Anthropology in the Faculty of Sociology at the Università Cattolica in Milan His latest book is Meticciato: convivenza o confusione? (Métissage: Coexistence or Confusion) (Marcianum Press, 2008).
Michel Cuypers is a Brother of Jesus. After living in Iran he moved to Egypt in 1989 where he is a member of Dominican Institute for Eastern Studies (DIES). His focus has been on the study of the Qur‘anic test.
Malika Zeghal is Associate Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion and Islamic Studies in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In her work, Gardiens de l’Islam (Guardians of Islam), she analyses the influence of the ulamā of Al-Azhar University.
(Alasdair) John Milbank is a Christian theologian and Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Nottingham.
Azzeddine Gaci heads the Islamic Regional Council of the Rhône-Alpes Region, France

For more information about Oasis, its resources (journal, newsletter, website, books, research and events) and committee, check out its website www.oasiscenter.eu

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/19/oasis%e2%80%99-international-network-is-back-in-venice/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/10/18/the-patriarch-and-the-muftis-scola-on-the-open-letter-by-138-muslim-leaders/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/10/18/the-patriarch-and-the-muftis-scola-on-the-open-letter-by-138-muslim-leaders/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:27:45 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=37 In this exclusive interview granted to Il Foglio, the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, opens to the spirit of the letter of 138 Islamic sages, “A common Word between us and you”, thus putting an end to the discretion observed by the Church up to now. The one exception to that discretion is Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, who last Saturday told Il Foglio, «it is a non polemical document, signed by sunnis and schiites, full of citations from the Old and New Testament». He added: «I was impressed by the fact, probably without precedent, that the citations concerning Jesus Christ were taken from the Gospels and not from the Koran». «A most encouraging sign, as it demonstrates that good will and dialogue are capable of overcoming prejudices. It is a spiritual reflection on the love of God», remarked Tauran. The ecclesial reserve was noted also by the international press agencies, beginning with Reuters.

«The document is certainly an encouraging sign», Cardinal Scola tells Il Foglio. «Above all what is of note is the number and quality of those who have signed the document. This is not only a media event, because consensus is for Islam a source of theology and law. The redactors of Oasis have told me that even if those who have signed avoided a juridical formulation to the document, it is still true that no text produced by the most extremist salafi groups has ever been able to claim a consensus equal to that witnessed by the 138 signatures at the bottom of the open letter. The approach is realistic, ‘if Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace’, and at its core it simply aims to ‘say to Christians that we, as Muslims, are not against them and that Islam is not against themso long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their
Religion’. In that sense, the Muslim leaders willingly identify themselves with those ‘others’ of whom Jesus says: ‘who is not against us is with us’».

For the first time a large number of scholars of Islam seem to break with the culture of rejecting the West and non Muslims. «The document, in the prospective of that double love, of God and one’s neighbour, underscores a vein of the Muslim tradition which has been partially placed in the shade due to the growth of fundamentalism. The text affirms that man has ‘mind or the intelligence, which is made for comprehending the truth; the will which is made for freedom of choice, and sentiment
which is made for loving the good and the beautiful’. On the other hand, one notes between the lines a condemnation of terrorism: ‘to those who nevertheless relish conflict and destruction for their own sake or reckon that ultimately they stand to gain through them, we say [...] to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony’. The fact that the text is rooted in the Muslim tradition is very important and makes it more credible than other proclamations expressed in a more western language».

In the introduction the 138 record that “together we represent 55 per cent of the world’s population”, a very tactical and political approach. Also for this reason Cardinal Tauran stated that the letter opens new roads, but it needs to be studied thoroughly in order to make it more objective and not selective, more universal and less political. Instead of criticizing the letter, Scola however prefers to speak «of a possible necessary limitation of perspective. One cannot ask of this document more than it can give. It is only the prelude to a theological dialogue, which, in an atmosphere of greater reciprocal esteem, proposes to investigate the contents of the two pillars (love of the one God and love of neighbour) in the two religious traditions».

A year ago in Cairo the Patriarch organized a meeting of the biannual journal, Oasis, with the title, “Fundamental Rights and Democracy”, in collaboration with the University of Al Ahzar, Catholic dignitaries, western academics and members of the World Jewish Congress. «This theological dialogue is in no way possible if there is not a preceding respect», continues Scola. «I had the occasion to discuss publicly at Cairo and in the USA with three signers of the document: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Muzammil H. Siddiqui, and I was able to ascertain that this reciprocal esteem is real. The hope is that this document might be read and widely diffused in the Muslim world and in the West».

Can one sustain that the letter is a demonstration that Benedict XVI opened a great debate at Regensburg? «Certainly, the intervention of the Pope provoked a dynamic of great interest within Islam. As the same signers recognize, the interconnection between Christians and Muslims in the contemporary world is such to make it impossible not to take a position concerning the coexistence between different faiths». Dialogue with Islam seemed to have stopped to the point of death. «The document indicates an important point of departure for an authentic dialogue. That always requires two conditions: the revelation of self in testimony and the search for a life that is good (vita bona). It seems to me that the signers of the letter are decidedly going in this direction from the moment that they invite Christians to a type of ‘spiritual emulation’, in a task to do the best: ‘Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works’».

Oasis each issue of this review well reminds us that the choice of the title is connected with the famous statement of John Paul II in his address in Damascus at the Omayyade Mosque on 6 May 2001 indicates here a precise pathway. That of an encounter with merciful God, with our brothers and with our sisters within the bond of religion. It will not be useless to remember, as well, that the method with which we want to operate a dialogue to the full in relation to the questions and issues that derive from the process of an unprecedented mixing of peoples, is that of passing humbly through the presence of minorities, who are tested but intensely witness-bearing, made up of our Christian brethren. The effectiveness of this method has already been documented on a number of occasions at the level of its capacity to force we Christians of the West to go beyond the intellectualism that afflicts us endemically, and to provoke our brethren of the East to take on to the full the task of accompanying us to the encounter with religions, and in a particular way with Islam in its various forms.

In the first issue of this review, with a ‘bold metaphor’ we spoke about the ‘inevitable imposition of a kind of hybridisation of civilisations’. And we went on by detailing
this hybridisation in a figurative sense as a ‘mixing of cultures and spiritual facts that are produced when different cultures enter in contact’, concluding, however, that ‘we have in common human nature on which is based the family of peoples’. At a distance by now of almost three years since those first statements, it was necessary to explicitly focus in on this interpretative category. We did this during the annual meeting of the scientific committee, an occasion for an assessment, both theoretical and practical, of the objective limits within which to maintain or forgo the thesis of hybridisation; many of the articles that follow are the outcome of this shared work.
The choice of the category of hybridisation had in me the character of an intuitive in-ventio which was provoked in me by a question posed by a journalist. It was not born from the study of the literature in the field but rather from my trips in Mexico and in particular from a consideration of the strongly hybridised character of the Mexican people. Recourse to this category also arose from the dissatisfaction that the employment of traditional terms such as identity, dialogue, integration, multiculturality and even interculturality continued to produce in me in the face of the many forms that the process takes.

Historical processes first and foremost belong to the order of events and are thus in the final analysis unpredictable and uncontrollable. However, because of the interaction and duration of the factors that make them up, not only can they be better known about but they can also, within certain limits that definitely cannot be established a priori, be directed. The process of the hybridisation of civilisations and cultures as well, albeit with its tumultuous and often violent realisations, demands to be addressed with this positive critical aptitude. In the final analysis it is based upon a dual firm belief to which we have referred in the past on a number of occasions. First of all, the aspiration to the universality and the constitutive unity of the human heart, which is made for truth. The elementary human experience, which is common to all men of all times and cultures, is the most striking confirmation of this. Each man and each woman, every day, lives by affections, by work and by rest. These are the symbols of a universal dynamic language that never ceases to make the members of the human family brothers. And we well know the reason. This and this is the second belief lies in the fact that a Father opened His home by creating the whole of mankind and, lovingly welcoming us from everywhere, He is taking us to His home with open doors. God guides history with a precise design which the contradictory movements of our freedom and the power of freedom of evil cannot, in the end, resist. He wants all men to be saved, He wants them to be ‘sons in the Son’. The human adventure of the freedom of every individual and of every people only demonstrates the profundity of the love of God who chose, in order to communicate Himself, to pass, with the cross of Christ, through finite freedom and constant wandering.
This state of things calls us to the responsibility of the hard work of reading historic circumstances. A reading that can never avoid self-exposition witness. Religions and cultures, in their insuperable polarity of the universal and the particular, are within this unitary design. Indeed, they exalt it in the interplay of differences which through the power of the Trinitarian event exist, ultimately, solely in unity. Unity, and thus universality, is the alpha and the omega of history because it does not fear difference, given that it lives in a perfect and non-contradictory way in the same supreme foundation (the Trinity). From where and why in the final analysis does a religion arise if not from the humble recognition that the mystery of God goes beyond all human understanding? ‘Si comprehendis, non est Deus (Augustine). ‘Incomprehensibile incomprehensibiliter comprehenditur’ (The in-comprehensible [the foundation] becomes understood in-comprehensibly: a formulation taken from a passage of De Trinitate of St. Augustine, echoed by Anselm in his Monologion and by St. Thomas in Summa). This is the way in which the mystery of God attracts us to It as is demonstrated, in a freely-given and splendid way, by the wonders of Christian Revelation. This takes place at the level of personal intelligence but what applies to personal intelligence, which is anyway an ‘incarnated’ intelligence and solidarity-inspired in relation to the whole of humanity, takes place also for cultures and religions, which in essential terms are nothing but a personal and communitarian expression of the self-awareness of a specific people. Thus God after a fashion gives Himself to men, all of whom are marked by an inextirpable religious sense. He gives Himself fully in Jesus Christ, His living and personal Revelation. He, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, comes ‘for all men of good will , in whose heart grace works invisibly’ [GS 22].

This means that Christian Revelation is by its nature meta-cultural As Fides et ratio states in sections 70-72, it can be received in every form of culture and specifically for this reason it cannot be reduced to any specific culture. The Revelation of the One and Triune God is revelation of the Ineffable, it is like the burning bush of Moses that is never consumed, to which one cannot draw near in a direct way without covering one’s face, without taking off one’s shoes. Cultures and religions are like the veil and the shoes of the history of mankind. Nothing more and nothing less. Something that historically cannot be renounced but which is never absolutely definitive. This vision, emphasised authoritatively in Fides et ratio, is extraordinarily important because it is doubly liberating. On the one hand, it makes us understand that the conversatus est cum hominibus of God in Jesus Christ proclaims the infinite mercy of the Absolute in relation to our contingency. This is embraced to the point of the lowest and most secondary cultural and religious expressions of the customs and life of a people, and sent on into eternity. On the other hand, the otherness in which mystery maintains itself opens up to the human experience the critical capacity for purification and possible detachment from cultures and religions, according to the insuperable methodological principle enunciated by Paul: ‘test everything; hold fast what is good’ [I Th 5:21]. The proclaiming of the love-logos in John, the incarnated Son of God, Jesus Christ, very God and very man, allows those who adhere to this in the faith to appreciate to the full cultures and religions specifically, also, by forgoing what shows itself to be perishable.

These notations appear at first sight to be more referable to the category of interculturality than to that of hybridisation. At first sight the category of interculturality seems to allow the more effective construction of a shared area of recognition, beyond the trenches of identity but also behind chaotic hybridisations and dangerous forms of syncretism. Personally, however, I take the liberty of laying stress on a certain preference being given to the category of hybridisation. All the more because, given that it is unthinkable to attribute the description of the process of the mixing of men and peoples to a single category, it is inevitable that the privilege given to one will involve the need to have continual recourse to all those others that can be brought into play so as to be more effectively aware of the process in the attempt to direct it. In this sense no category, even that of hybridisation, can become ‘the’ method by which to address the phenomenon of mixing. It would be grave were we to transfer it from the level of a description of facts to the level of prescriptive direction. And all the more because, like every category, it is heavily prejudged not only biologically but also ideologically.
However, if well maintained within the limits imposed by the specification ‘hybridisation of civilisations and cultures’, it seems to me that despite the risks to which it is exposed it is a category that we should privilege. And to which, after a certain fashion, we should subordinate the others (interculturality, integration, dialogue, etc.) and not vice versa, The reason for this preference of mine comes from the extremely realistic character, which is sanguine so to speak, that the term ‘hybridisation’ expresses. This makes it more capable of reading the historical process underway while leaving it open to necessary rigorous delimitations, something which, for that matter, would be required all the other categories as well. Indeed, in this sense I take the liberty of adding that, while returning often over recent years to this subject, albeit, obviously, not in a rigorously academic way, I have been convinced that even the metaphorical use of this category must be attenuated and that connection with the nexus with its biological genesis must not be lost. Must Christianity I return here to the example of Mexico perhaps fear the fusion of races and peoples that has taken place through the generation of people by parents from different peoples? With all the pain that this involves, does this fact not conserve an echo of that breaking down of the wall that separates so as to make ‘us both one’ to which the Letter to the Ephesians [cf. Eph. 2:14] refers?
Does not the given fact of hybridisation, which implies a recognition of the fact that history is inevitably a place of encounter that often, however, passes by way of clashes, and the fact that peace, which should always be pursued, is given to us, as Paul says, ‘if possible’ [cf. Rm 12:18], tell us that only God is the lord of the future?
Without falling into examples of facile Irenism or ingenuous forms of optimism about a process that calls us to think anew about our cultural and also juridical instruments (passing, to take up the phrase of Prof Cesare Mirabelli, ‘from a hybridisation of laws to a law of hybridisation’), we can, however, be certain that this, at the level of facts, is the road that is outlined before us today. A road that has perhaps not been thought of, one that is certainly difficult, but which we have already begun to walk down. It is of no use, therefore, to tarry in the illusory trenches of an identity, understood as closure, forgetting that the danger for the West lies, rather, in becoming increasingly, as the poet Eliot said brilliantly, ‘straw men’.

Card. Angelo scola, the Patriarch of Venice

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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.

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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.

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