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.