Dialogue of religions

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interfaith tree

by Shri. Eduardo Faleiro 10 October 2019

Samuel Huntington in his classic, “The Clash of Civilizations and the remaking of the World Order,” relates with great clarity that “gradual, inexorable and fundamental changes are occurring in the balance of power among civilizations and the power of the West compared to that of other civilizations continues to decline. The most significant increases in power are accruing and will continue to accrue to Asian civilizations. These shifts among civilizations are leading and will lead to a revival and increased cultural assertiveness of non–Western societies and to their increasing rejection of Western culture.”


The 21st century will reportedly be the Asian century just as the Twentieth was the American century and the Nineteenth the European century. By 2050, China is expected to be the second largest economy in the world and India, the third largest. With regard to religions, Huntington says, “the late Twentieth Century saw a resurgence of religions across the world. This resurgence has involved the intensification of religious consciousness and the rise of fundamentalist movements. It has thus reinforced the differences among religions.”


At the onset of the Third Millenium, the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC) make a positive and significant contribution to religious harmony. It calls for a new paradigm Christianity grounded on an authentic Asian theology and centered on acceptance of religious pluralism. The Asian bishops acknowledge that no particular religion can lay the claim to being the norm for all others. “As religious pilgrims we must walk together on the path of dialogue towards harmony,” they assert. When a religion lays absolute claims to truth, aggressive militancy and divisive proselytism follow and in their wake bitter religious conflicts. Neither Christianity nor any other religion has a monopoly over truth and salvation, affirms the Jesuit theologian Sebastian Painadath (FABC’s Theology of Dialogue, p.197.) Yet, “a crypto colonial exclusivist attitude still lurks in the hearts of many Christians not only in the West but also in Asia and Africa because they have inherited it from the West and seem to hold to it with more enthusiasm than critical sense” (Resource Manual for Catholics in Asia, FABC p.280.) The late Archbishop Angelo Fernandes characterized this exclusivist approach in two words, “ignorance and arrogance.”

Inter-religious dialogue implies a new way of reflecting upon the world and its meaning. A prerequisite for such a dialogue is that the parties involved should have an open mind which respects differences and pluralism. All forms of exclusiveness have to be shed. Implicit is the end of exclusivist and triumphalistic attitudes, notions of superiority and “choseness,” that one’s religion is the final and the only that deserves absolute and final status. “The increase in the number of Church movements engaged in aggressive and militant evangelization (understood in the very narrow sense of the word) is certainly a cause for concern for our brothers and sisters of other faiths. Some of the less than ethical means used in these proselytizing efforts by members of these movements makes one wonder if they are really followers of Christ. (Resource Manual, p.286).


The Asian bishops at the FABC level are concerned not merely in giving training to a few experts but to prepare all the faithful for interreligious dialogue which is the new way of being the Church today. Hence, FABC proposes that all Catholics be given the possibility to widen and deepen their knowledge of the different Asian faiths and theologies. It is important it says, “That Christian parents, catechists and educationists should teach their children about God’s love for believers of other religions and about the many good and holy values in these religions…Schools should become places where interreligious understanding may be furthered.”  It adds,:  “basic knowledge about the beliefs and practices of other religions taken from reliable and objective sources should form part of the catholic catechetical training. Catholic parishes too should foster interreligious understanding and fellowship because the prime agent of this new mission in dialogue is the parish. Dialogue brings to the local Churches in Asia openness to the integration into the mainstream of cultures. Christians grow in genuine love for their neighbours of other faiths and the latter learn to love their Christian neighbours. Only in this way can interreligious dialogue become a reality at the grassroot level of our churches.”


FABC asks Episcopal Conferences to develop a formation process for clergy, religious and laity towards the formation of persons of dialogue who would be sensitive to other faiths and persuasions and courses on religions outside Christianity should be included and strengthened in the curriculum of the seminaries and other houses of formation…bishops and clergy as well as lay people should be given opportunities to update themselves on this point…Collaboration, partnership, working together is imperative for the survival of mankind. Interreligious dialogue and cooperation are not an optional task to be pursued in one’s spare time. It is integral to one’s faith, and has to be a preoccupation of every religion to be promoted by every religious system.

“This collaboration should not wait until times of crisis or only wherever communal and interreligious tensions prevail. Rather, they should be integral to all programmes and efforts of service to society. All human rights and human promotion programmes ought to have an interreligious component built into the system. These programmes should eventually become identified not so much as Christian services but as interreligious programmes run by multireligious organizations and for the benefit of a multireligious clientele.”


The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences has delineated a clear and insightful doctrine on interreligious dialogue and cooperation. The Church in India and elsewhere in Asia is expected to implement it effectively. In this age as noted in the title of a recent book, humankind is ultimately faced with two choices, Dialogue or Death. May the leaders of every religion and their followers work together for the benefit of all and on behalf of justice and peace. This is the paramount challenge of our times.

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Faleiro was born on 30 August 1940. He was a Union Cabinet minister at the Indian federal government in New Delhi from 1986 to 1996. Earlier, he was a member of the legislative assembly of Goa for a short while, before shifting to national-level politics. When the Indian National Congress, a party he has associated with for most of his political career, was out of power, Faleiro was a member of the Rajya Sabha too, the upper house of the Indian parliament. Below is a list of posts held by him: 1971-1976: Member, Goa Legislative Assembly 1974-1976: Deputy Leader, CLP (I), Goa Legislative Assembly 1977: Elected to the Sixth Lok Sabha 1980: Re-elected to the Seventh Lok Sabha 1982-1986: Chairman, Economic Development Corporation 1984: Elected to the Eighth Lok Sabha for the third consecutive time 1985-1986: Chairman, House Committee May 1986 to February 1988: Union Minister of State, External Affairs February 1988 to December 1989: Union Minister of State, Economic Affairs (Finance) 1989-1990: Elected to the Ninth Lok Sabha for the fourth time 1990: Member, Committee of Privileges; Member, Consultative Committee; Ministry of Planning and Program Implementation 1991: Elected to the Tenth Lok Sabha for the fifth time 1992: Leader of the Indian Delegation to the United Nations 23 June 1991 to January 1993: Union Minister of State, External Affairs 18 January 1993 to April 1996 – Union Minister of State, Chemicals & Fertilizers, Ocean Development, Electronics, Parliamentary Affairs 1995: Vice Chairperson of Independent World Commission on Oceans 26 July 1999: Elected Member of Rajya Sabha (Council of States.) In March 2006, Mr Faleiro was appointed as Commissioner for NRI Affairs by the Government of Goa, with the rank of a Cabinet Minister. 2007: Chairman of Universal Peace Federation of India(NGO in Consultative Status in the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations)