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This insight, slightly modified, has subsequently entered into an encyclical with teaching authority. In Redemptoris Missio, 29 it is said that the
Church’s relationship with other religions is dictated by a twofold respect: ‘Respect for man in his quest for answers to the deepest questions of his life, and respect for the action of the Spirit in man.’ (*) Excluding any mistaken interpretation, the interreligious meeting held in Assisi was meant to confirm my conviction that ‘every authentic prayer is prompted by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in every human heart’.59
The action of the Holy Spirit in human hearts and cultures has now been repeated in a number of teaching documents, so in one sense, its application to prayer as one element of culture is unsurprising. But these prayers cannot be understood to be a full participation in the life of the triune God, but a form of participation that will find its fulfilment in trinitarian prayer and praise. Needless to say that the heart of the non-Christian might be more receptive and transformed (and thus their lives) in such prayer than that of a Christian who prays the Lord’s Prayer without receptivity to the Spirit. The objective forms of beauty, reverence and solemnity such as the Muslim call to prayer properly recited, or the ecstatic joy and transformative rhythms of Sufi sung prayer, are remarkable. I have learnt greatly from both forms of prayer in their reverent and ecstatic witness, and have been deeply moved myself into prayer. I came to greatly appreciate the importance of communal public prayer and bodily movement in prayer, and also the importance of charismatic ecstatic prayer where we lose the security of a liturgy and leap into the abyss of the Spirit. I have met Muslims whose prayer life has caused me to feel shame for the lack of sincerity and regularity of my own prayer life. All this is of course a very different act from interfaith prayer, which while possibly legitimate in some limited cases,60 cannot be possible as a regular practice given our deep differences in understanding God. I do not want to accentuate the intellectual dimension of prayer, but this aspect cannot be negotiated away either. Ratzinger makes a good case for deep respect and reverent witnessing to the prayers of others, but cannot see a strong case for interfaith prayer.61
Social justice
As we have seen, the relation between religions from a Catholic perspective has been profoundly oriented towards the common good. My own involvement with Hindus and Buddhists came precisely through this process in my Catholic commitment against nuclear weapons. While I was a doctoral student at Cambridge I was an active campaigner for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Through CND I came to meet many Hindus and Buddhists (admittedly the majority were European converts to these religions), but found in their commitment to social justice a deep solidarity and a slowly growing friendship through our activities. At times I would despair that no one from my local Catholic community was involved in CND, while the religious commitment of my Hindu and Buddhist friends had led them to CND and a variety of other social justice networks. Some Catholics (including myself) are abysmally ignorant and inactive on the front of social justice despite the goldmine in the nearly one-century-long and constantly developing traditions of social justice.62
As has been made clear above a number of times, one of the major reasons given for interreligious dialogue is the service to the ‘common good’ which is enjoined upon all Catholics. Poverty, the environment, the arms race, the oppression of women and children all over the world are just some of the few horrendous crimes that cry out to God. Christians are called to address these problems in every way they can, and that includes working with those from other religions to bring about the ‘common good’. These alliances can be grassroot communities working to build a well together, or groups to lobby politicians, or official bodies, like the Vatican and certain Muslim states coming together to put pressure on the United Nations regarding the issues of fertility. And of course, issues of social justice might also entail questioning and challenging religious communities, including our own. For instance, the Vatican has made recent demands for reciprocal rights to be granted Christians in Muslim countries, such as Muslims enjoy in most western democracies. I think this is important, but we need to be careful here. It seems problematic to urge Muslim countries to be like western democracies (to be like us). There is surely more mileage in urging Muslim countries to follow the Qur’an more faithfully and show, if possible, that the Qur’an and hadith are capable of generating quite different views about religious freedoms within a Muslim society. I am not implying a type of relativism here, but simply following through my MacIntyrean form of argument: it is better to argue from within a tradition to a goal that one seeks. This type of intra-traditioned form of argument is more likely to convince a sincere Muslim. If that argument fails, then dialectical argument against the religion is required. If that fails, one might resort to international political pressure. If that fails, suffering must be undergone, for violence is not in my view a Christian option.
Conclusion
I want to commend the approach I have outlined above because it remains faithful to the ancient dogmatic teachings of the Christian Church, while applying and thinking them through in a very new context. It remains faithful to Christ and the revelation of the triune God, it remains faithful to Christ’s founding of the Church as the means of salvation for all people, and yet without compromising these foundational tenets, it reaches out to other faiths and their adherents. In this reaching out there is a generous and joyful acknowledgement of the work of God in these religious cultures (in differentiated and nuanced ways) and a patient learning from these cultures. There should also be repentance for our many failures in these areas. In this reaching out there is a concern to join together to act for the common good and to help transform society and alleviate the suffering of the poor, to herald in the kingdom of God. In this reaching out there should be an acknowledgement that we can only ‘reach out’ as equals, seeking to learn how to love and serve and not dominate or denigrate. And in this reaching out, there is finally and foremost a call to be witnesses to Christ, to be missionaries of the gospel, and to call all peoples to baptism. Mission requires a delicate sensitivity to a plethora of issues, but it cannot be bypassed or ignored. Of course, the planting of church communities is the greatest witness, especially when those communities are marked by charity, love of the poor, and serving others out of the endless service of Christ to us. Learning to love involves an activity whereby only by being attentive to the triune God, the forsaken on the cross, can we learn that God’s grace is to be found where we might expect it least.63
1 See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 1990. (This and all Vatican documents cited, unless otherwise stated, can be found on www.vatican.va website. All websites cited in this chapter were checked in July 2009.) I have developed this view of the theologian in Theology in the Public Square (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 77–111; and see also Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), which acts as a commentary to the Instruction.
2 See Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (London: Duckworth, 1990).
3 See Paul Griffiths’ challenging thesis on this matter in Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
4.
