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Nostra Aetate Growing a Culture of Dialogue ‘In Our Time’. Darren Dias, OP University of St Michael’s College. Growing religious diversity in Canada. Interreligious families. Nostra Aetate. Historical Background Declaration on the Church’s Relation to Non-Christian Religions
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Nostra AetateGrowing a Culture of Dialogue ‘In Our Time’ Darren Dias, OP University of St Michael’s College
Nostra Aetate • Historical Background • Declaration on the Church’s Relation to Non-Christian Religions • Thematic Developments • In Our Time: dialogue for today
Historical Background Christian Beliefs and Attitudes that shaped our relationship with other religions:
Legacy • Mistrust • Suspicion • Animosity • Unresolved feelings • Need for healing and reconciliation
The “Jewish Question” • Supersessionism • Anti-Judaism/Anti-Semitism • Deicide • Shoah • State of Israel
The Declaration of the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions “…no other schema had so held the public in suspense and had been so much written about. The interest was so deep that one could well say that many people would judge the Council by the stand it took on this question.” - Cardinal Bea
Nostra Aetate October 28, 1965
Chapter 1 There is one human community whose unity is rooted in God— our common origin and destiny.
Chapter 2 “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”
Chapter 3 Muslims “adore the one God,” “submit wholeheartedly” to God’s decrees as Abraham did, revere Jesus as a prophet and honor Mary, they “await the day of judgment,” “worship God…through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.”
Chapter 4 “Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.”
Promises “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle.”
Deicide “what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
Anti-Semitism “in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
Exhortation to Dialogue “The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.” (2)
Exhortation to Reconciliation “Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.” (2)
Exhortation to Justice “The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.”
Commitment to… • Repentance and reconciliation • Unity of the human family • Encounter and Exchange • Recognition • Witness
…for a culture of dialogue in the Church “Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue… It is the only way for individuals, families, and societies to grow along with the culture of encounter, a culture in which all have something good to give and all can receive something good in return.” - Pope Francis
A Covenant Never Revoked “the meeting between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God (Romans 11:29), and that of the New covenant, is at the same time a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and second part of her Bible.” - Pope John Paul II Mainz, 1980
Documents to consider… • Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, No. 4 (1974) • Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church (1985) • We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998) • DabruEmmet(signed by 220 rabbis and Jewish scholars) (2000)
Important Interfaith Prayers • Assisi Day of Prayer for Peace, 1986 • Assisi Day of Prayer for Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1993 • Day of Prayer for Peace, Assisi, 2002 (post-9/11) • Pope Francis at the 9-11 Memorial, 2015
Pope John Paul II, Christmas 1986 “Indeed, on that day [first Assisi prayer], and in the prayer which was its motivation and its entire content, there seemed for a moment to be a visible expression of the hidden but radical unity which the Divine Word… has established among men and women of this world, both those who now share together the anxiety and the joys of this portion of the twentieth century and those who have gone before us in history, and also, those who will take up our places ‘until the Lord comes.’ The fact that we came together in Assisi to pray, to fast and to walk in silence—and this in support of the peace that is always fragile and threatened, perhaps today more than ever—has been, as it were, a clear sign of the profound unity of those who seek in religion spiritual and transcend values that response to the great questions of the human heart, despite the concrete division.”
Dominum et Vivificantem, 53 “…we cannot limit ourselves to the two thousand years which have passed since the birth of Christ. We need to go further back, to embrace the whole of the action of the Holy Spirit even before Christ-from the beginning, throughout the world, and especially in the economy of the Old Covenant. For this action has been exercised, in every place and at every time, indeed in every individual, according to the eternal plan of salvation,... Grace, therefore, bears within itself both a Christological aspect and a pneumatological one…
Secretariat for Non-Christians established by Paul VI on Pentecost 1964 and renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 1988 • Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (1970) • Commission for Promoting Religious Relations with the Jews (1974) • Commission for religious relations with Muslims (2006) • Many national and diocesan commissions
Redemptoris mission 55 Inter-religious dialogue is a part of the Church's evangelizing mission. Understood as a method and means of mutual knowledge and enrichment, dialogue is not in opposition to the mission ad gentes; indeed, it has special links with that mission and is one of its expressions. This mission, in fact, is addressed to those who do not know Christ and his Gospel, and who belong for the most part to other religions.
Dialogue • Dialogue of Life • Dialogue of Action • Dialogue of Theological Exchange • Dialogue of Religious Experience • From “Dialogue and Proclamation” 1991
Official Documents • The Attitude of the Church Toward the Followers of Other Religions: Reflections and Orientations on Dialogue and Mission 1984 • Dialogue and Proclamation (joint document of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) 1991
Why Dialogue? • To discern God’s presence and to be drawn into deeper relationship with God • To recognize the giftedness of our neighbor and to delight in his or her difference • To grow in our true religious identity, in what we profess and how we live our faith • To affirm our common humanity and stand against that which de-humanizes, especially at the margins and with the marginalized • To give witness to the world of the profound spiritual values and wisdom of our religious traditions.
