The note Journey of Hope was released jointly this week by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.[1] The note calls us to look back on the sixty years since the promulgation of Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions proclaimed by Pope St. Paul VI in the context of the Second Vatican Council.

Journey of Hope summarizes the challenge we faced, and continue to face: “How can fidelity to Christian identity be reconciled with a sincere openness to otherness?” The declaration points to an answer, emphasizing the centrality of freedom in “the quest for the values proper to the human spirit.” To truncate this quest by coercion or contaminate it with enticements is to stunt the human spirit. Such interference fosters a shallow “utility faith” – or, worse still, encourages human persons to mock God and mutilate their souls by dissimulating in sacred matters. Respect for conscience here is not a concession to error; rather, it is a reverence for a truth that does not deserve to be insulted by feigned piety or slighted by reluctant acquiescence, but rather to be received with full, free, and loving assent.

The note makes clear that, despite the document’s statements of respect and appreciation of faith traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, it was the Church’s relation to Judaism that was its point of origin. Indeed, the 1961 draft that Pope St. John XXIII delegated to Agustin Cardinal Bea was originally entitled Decretium de Iudaeis, or “Decree on the Jews.”

Surely there was reason enough for such a document. The Shoah and all that befell the Chosen People over the course of World War II was barely more than fifteen years past when John XXIII initiated the process that ultimately bore fruit as Nostra Aetate. It is true that Naziism was fundamentally pagan in its orientation and that some individual Christians acted heroically, including the future pope himself, who as Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, Papal Nuncio to Turkey and Greece (and then, in the last year of the war, to France) was personally credited with saving thousands of Jews. The fundamental issue remains: the Christian West as a whole profoundly failed and betrayed the Jewish people.

Much of the fault for this may be attributed to a cultural Christendom that, however deeply entangled with Christianity, was and remains more involved with national, ethnic and cultural identity than with God, Christ, or transcendent truth. We see this in the attacks on migrants from the newly ascendant European far right – who, while making no pretense of personal faith or religiosity, invoke Christian identity in direct opposition to the churches, above all the Catholic church as embodied in the witness of every pope since Leo XIII.

The most ancient and enduring trope in Christendom’s perversion of Christian witness in this regard is the disgrace of Christian anti-Semitism. An axiology that opposes Christianity to Judaism (or, more often, “the Christian” to “the Jew”) has long been present in the culture of Christian Europe. It is, nonetheless, self-evidently incompatible with Christianity. Nostra Aetate invoked Romans 9:4-5:

They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen.

Jesus Christ became incarnate as a Jew; the Church proclaims Him Son of the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. She shares with the Jews the Tanakh – which we know as the Old Testament. Yes, creedal and theological differences have always abounded and continue to abound; it is, however, simple enough; without Judaism, there is no Christianity.

Moreover, the note brings out how Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity arose side by side, in virtually the same moment, in the period surrounding the destruction of the Temple:

Both modern Judaism and contemporary Christianity are based on the Word revealed in the Old Testament and trace their roots to the Judaism of Jesus’ time. Following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Judaism gradually evolved primarily into Rabbinic Judaism, while early Christianity developed from the movement initiated by Jesus and his disciples, distinguishing itself from the various forms of Judaism over time.

Thus, in one sense contemporary Judaism and Christianity are less parent and child than siblings, almost twins. Yet this does not refute the priority of Judaism’s original claim to the Tanakh and to the heritage of Temple Judaism; it is in that sense that the note cites Benedict né Ratzinger:

Pope Benedict XVI regarded the Jewish people as our “fathers in faith,” and emphasized that dialogue between the two faiths must begin with the gratitude of Christians toward the Jewish people, because, despite the difficulties they have endured, they have preserved faith in the one God. Accordingly, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger could affirm that “such a dialogue, to be fruitful, must begin with a prayer to our God that he may above all grant to us Christians greater esteem and love for this people, the people of Israel.”

What had begun in the mind of Pope St. John XXIII as a reckoning with the Shoah and the fraternal betrayal of our elder brethren in Faith, resolved into a reexamination of our whole disposition to other religious traditions. As the note states, the project that had begun as Decretium de Iudaeis:

…was further developed during the sessions of the Second Vatican Council and ultimately took concrete form in a document that, like the mustard seed in the Gospel (cf. Mk 4:31-32), grew beyond all expectations, becoming a great tree that embraced not only relations with Judaism but also dialogue with the various religions.

My personal history teaching college classes in world religions provided me with tools to appreciate more deeply the sensitivity and subtlety with which Nostra Aetate addresses East Asian religion:

In Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust. Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.

The declaration recognizes the deep philosophical roots of these religions. It notes Hinduism’s differing spiritualities expressed through its various yogas and its layered and ambiguous understanding of the myths of the gods. It commends Buddhism’s commitment to transcendence and recognizes the aspects in which its practice may be as much a human discipline or a philosophy as a religion.

The declaration responds with what may be its best-known sentence: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions.” And why would it? Why reject anything that is true and holy? Yet the message of Nostra Aetate is more subtle than that; if, as St. Paul writes in Romans 2:15, the law of God is written on the human heart, then sincere and sustained searching, such as the great religious traditions afford, cannot but decipher some measure of that law, and with it some recognition of its author. It is for this that all of us alike were made; as one passage of Nostra Aetate states:

One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God. His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all men, until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light.

Turning to Islam, Nostra Aetate proclaims:

The Church regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

and continues:

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, 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.

In our day, it is difficult to remember how far the papacy of St. John Paul II went in allying with the governments of Muslim-majority nations against distortions common to the secular West, particularly with regard to life and family issues. Nowadays, it is ironically those most engaged in the trenches of the culture wars who seem particularly likely to express suspicion of Muslims. The note takes cognizance of our changed times:

It is worth noting the growing critical awareness of manifestations of Islamophobia, which fail to distinguish adequately between, on the one hand, cases of fundamentalism and violence and, on the other hand, the peaceful lives of other Muslim believers who integrate into and contribute to the countries that welcome them.

The position expressed in the note is clear: it is not the differences in the great world religious traditions, but the common distortion of their fundamentalisms, that present the greatest obstacles to our growth in understanding of God and of one another in peace and charity. As the note states, “Perseverance in interreligious dialogue is meant to demonstrate that fundamentalism is a distortion of religions, one that runs counter to their deepest calling” – citing in this regard the famous passage from Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address, in which he in turn cited the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus: “Spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.” Although Benedict’s citation was (somewhat understandably) taken as a criticism of Islam in general, there is reason to believe that Benedict’s core intent was to express something far more universal: the relationship between reason and religion which is perhaps the greatest safeguard against fundamentalistic distortions.[2]

One citation in the note from Lumen Fidei, which was Francis’s first encyclical (while also, in some respects, Benedict’s last), sums up the necessary change of perspective especially well:

Truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.”

As such, the journey of faith “requires humility, courage, and discernment,” along with “inexhaustible patience.” The note further emphasizes dialogue – a word that appears over 150 times in the 8,500 words of the note. Admittedly, a certain temptation toward eye-rolling could be understandable here, given the appropriation of this word to the lexicon of corporate committee-speak – but that would be a serious error.

First of all, as the note clearly states,

It is not a matter of founding one great world religion in which all beliefs are flattened. Such a possibility must be excluded out of respect for oneself and for others. Rather, it is a matter of building a fraternal society capable of accepting differences. This intention remains at the heart of interreligious dialogue.

What is being proposed here is clearly quite distinct from the kind of Weltethos long associated with the late Swiss theologian Hans Küng. Whether or not Küng could fairly be characterized as trying to found a universal religion is less the point than that he was committed to a unipolar code that all could equally affirm. None of this is at stake here.

Moreover, Catholic theology has increasingly centered the role of relationality, first through the Thomistic personalism of the 20^th century existential Thomists and of St. John Paul II né Karol Wojtyła, and even more so through the genius of Benedict né Ratzinger:

In Christianity there is not simply a dialogical principle in the modern sense of a pure “I-thou” relationship, neither on the part of the human person that has its place in the historical “we” that bears it; nor is there such a mere dialogical principle on God’s part who is, in turn, no simple “I,” but the “we” of Father, Son, and Spirit. On both* sides there is neither the pure “I,” nor the pure “you,” but on both sides the “I” is integrated into the greater “we.”

and again, from his work Many Religions, One Covenant:

When we say that man is the image of God, it means that he is a being designed for relationship; it means that, in and through all his relationships, he seeks that relation which is the ground of his existence. In this context, covenant would be the response to man’s imaging of God; it would show us who we are and who God is.

Here, we are at once encompassing and surpassing dialogue. A strong theocentric model, drawing on the identity of the imminent Trinity as relatio subsitens, directs us toward a theology that accords primacy to plurality, to relationality, and to relations among and within relations.[3] While there is no evidence that the Church is revising its metaphysics, there is reason to believe that these modern and contemporary influences, above all Ratzinger/Benedict, are exercising influence in our theological understanding – keeping in mind that the philosophically and theologically Augustinian German has been joined in the roll of the Successors of Peter by the American Augustinian religious.

Ultimately, the respect we show for other belief traditions – and, if anything even more so, for their adherents – serves only to strengthen our own faith. For, in many ways, the greatest danger to our faith is not that it be challenged by the beliefs of others, but that through our own pride, vanity, self-love, and ignorance we should appropriate our faith and the name of our God to the point that they become an accessory to our own identities. If anything, even the least dialogue with others makes it clear to us what we believe, and the attempt to proclaim our faith in Christ – and the encounter with Him that such evangelism entails – should go far toward showing us the truth of why we believe.

Image: Vatican News

[1]  It is worth noting that the note was released in the character of a magisterial statement, given the express ratification of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, this past June 22.

[2]  It is possible (albeit painful) to appreciate the irony in the coincidence between Benedict’s critique of the anti-intellectualism and irrationality of fundamentalism and the public relations faux pas into which it devolved. It should also be noted that Benedict’s assessment of Islam could have benefited from some qualification; while his view accurately reflects the mainstream Sunni Islamic theology descended from al-Ghazali (not to mention the considerable de facto history of Sunni theology following the whims of power, from the caliphs to the Saud family), there are other traditions (e.g. the Ibadi tradition prevalent in Oman and, at least in principle, the Usuli theological school of Twelver Shiism which dominates Iran) that would differ substantially, with far more room for reason in theology.

[3] I would think in this regard also to reference Martin Buber (despite Ratzinger’s words about superseding the “I-thou”) and Emanuel Levinas, as well as the long-standing and widespread southern African oral tradition philosophy best known as Ubuntu, which has begun over the last seventy-five years to establish a written identity.