What does a dialogue between faiths involve?

FIVE hundred years ago, when the Spaniards first brought Christianity to the Philippines, interreligious dialogue was not within the meaningful thematics of the time. Interreligious dialogue would have been rejected outright as absurd. Not because the occupying Spaniards hopelessly harbored malice in their hearts but because they sincerely believed that they were in possession of the true faith, and paganism — that to them was an abomination in the eyes of God — was to be stamped out off the face of the earth.

Human consciousness does evolve, and the insight that others can be honest in the pursuit of what their consciences dictate called for a horizon that was not present then. And lest we think of ourselves as any more enlightened and tolerant, let us just ask the medical community about its openness to “pluralism” – the recourse to traditional medicine and religionbased therapies: yoga, Ayurvedic therapy, acupuncture and herbalism; to name a few. There is also a marked intolerance for the views of those opposed to the LBTQ+ or the feminist agenda. Parallels have been drawn — not without reason — between the daring meeting that St. Francis ventured with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil and between the recent encounter between Pope Francis and Ayatollah Sistani. I can only presume that the Sultan would have considered St. Francis an interesting if weird chap who was not worth beheading. Both Pope Francis and the Ayatollah were, I feel safe in presuming, more thoughtful!

Not too long ago — at least, until the time I was in the minor seminary (that today’s youngsters count as ancient history!) — we talked about the “separated brethren” and prayed that they would “return to the one, true fold,” meaning, the Catholic Church. Theologians had long been thinking otherwise, and the Vatican 2 documents on Ecumenism and Religious Freedom finally expressed a new take on interreligious dialogue. Basic to all this is the respect all should have for the sovereignty of conscience. Apart from what theologians may say about conscience, it is nothing other than human intelligence passing upon what I do or desist from doing. It is that fundamental capacity of which Ricoeur writes, to evaluate my actions as good or bad and to do so in regard to the actions of others. If we start with this premise, then we will be more prepared to concede to the other the right — in fact, the duty — to abide by the dictates of her conscience. But were not the IS, against whom both Pope Francis and Ayatollah Sistani raised their voices, goaded by their consciences? Perhaps, but conscience, as human intelligence, must always open itself to the critical moment: to the pose of inquiry, the challenge of criticism, the demand for justification. Conscience is not synonymous in the least with impulse!

Habermas who has written on this subject with his characteristic incisiveness lays down what to him is the fundamental norm: None should a priori exclude, denigrate or characterize the religious beliefs of another, as “irrational.” In fact, one should not do so in regard to religious belief. If religion is irrational, there is no reason that non-religion should not be. Both, after all, are fundamental positions of comprehensive explanation and meaning. There will always be, nonetheless, an “epistemic distance” that will not allow proof of religious doctrine in the same way that the existence of black holes is proved. And talking about black holes and that kind of physics that is involved in postulating them, is not striking that such theories as relativity, indeterminacy, the string theory are very high degrees of what Pierce calls abduction that one really does not pass effortlessly from premises to conclusion, in their regard, but one must decide whether to think of all things in terms of strings, or energy waves, etc. In such matters, every believer is to be left to her choice of fundamental allegiance.

But if they are to dialogue across allegiances about common concerns such as stewardship for the environment, the justice of inclusiveness, tolerance and mutual welcome, human rights, and to conduct their discourses as public theology, or even address secular states, then they must comply with the demands of the “translation proviso”: be able to embed themselves in universes of discourse common to all interlocutors. That means that you do not argue against a Supreme Court decision using the Book of Genesis, or one of the Surats of the Sacred Quran, or one of the Vedas. What is possible is for Genesis to provide the creedal basis for the position that human life is sacred and for the believer to find the premises from constitutional law for the position that human beings cannot be shot like rats!

Even in respect to the Sacred, there should be a way for all men and women of different faiths to talk — and to agree. The sense of the Sacred, the Holy, is, after all, what is distinctive of and fundamental to religion and, the psalmist who looks at the immensity of the heavens and sings the praises of the God who made them should be paid the same attention as Spinoza who, in wonderment at the world itself – and nothing behind it (as he does not think it reasonable to assert anything “beyond” the ensemble of all that is!) — utters, not only as a philosophical principle but also in invocation: Deus sive natura. No, John Lennon was foolish in thinking that the demise of religion and the debunking of heaven would end all strife. The day religion disappears is the day the human person ceases to be human. It is rather the capaciousness of spirit and trust in human rationality as well as in its virtually infinite sweep that will allow more meetings between Francis and Sistani, and those who come after them, to take place!