Question 4.82

4.82 What about interreligious dialogue?

With Islam, there can be no theological dialogue, because the essential foundations of the Christian faith are very different from those of the Muslims: the Trinity, the Incarnation, namely, the fact that “Jesus Christ has come [among us] in the flesh” (1 Jn 4:1-10), the Cross, the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and consequently the Eucharist are rejected by the Muslims. But we can promote a dialogue that might lead to an effective collaboration at the national and international level, particularly in the context of defending human life, from conception to natural death. For example, like the Church, the various authorities of Islam vehemently reject the new gender ideology.

However, in Africa, with different accents depending on the country, for instance, Sudan, Kenya, or Nigeria, to mention a few, Christian-Muslim relations have recently become very difficult, almost impossible; in Sudan, a Christian is considered a slave by the Muslims. My remarks, however, ought to be nuanced; generally speaking, relations between Christians and Muslims, at least in West Africa, have always been harmonious and quite friendly.

But in the countries that were the cradle of Christianity, in the Near East and the Middle East, it distresses me to see the development of the relations between the different religious communities. In Iraq, for example, the results of Western and American policies are catastrophic for the Christians, who are being driven by Muslim extremists from the lands that their forefathers occupied since time immemorial. In the Syrian refugee camps that I visited, set up in Lebanon or in Jordan, how can one not be struck by the profound misfortune of the Christians who are condemned to a diaspora that will not speak its name? I heard the Syrian bishops, during our meeting in December 2013 in Beirut, voice their suffering and their fear that one day the Middle East will be devoid of any Christian presence. Their communities are undergoing considerable trials and are experiencing a demographic decline that is so significant that the future of Christianity in its cradle of origin is thereby threatened. According to leaders of the Churches of the various rites, the exodus of Christians has reached alarming proportions. Given the uncertainty that weighs heavily on their life as baptized believers, the kidnapping or assassination of priests, brothers, and nuns, and of bishops too, Christians easily give in to the temptation to emigrate-when they are not brutally driven from their homes, as has been the case in Iraq since the violent American military invasion in 2003.

I would like to report the anguished cry of a great pastor, Archbishop Basil Casmoussa, archbishop of the Syriac Catholics of Mosul, who during the Special Synod of Bishops for the Middle East in October 2010 deplored “the unjust accusation against Christians of being troops hired or led by and for the so-called Christian West and thus considered as a parasitical body in the nation”. Continuing his speech, he added that Christians were “present and active here well before Islam, [but now] they feel undesired in their own home, which becomes more and more a Dar el-Islam [a house of Islam]. … The Eastern Christian in Islamic countries is condemned be it to disappear or to go into exile.

What is happening in Iraq today makes us think back to what happened in Turkey during the First World War. It is alarming!” This suffering of our brethren in faith breaks our heart and invites us to prayer and communion with the Churches of the Middle East, which today, to borrow the words of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, are “God’s wheat, ground by the teeth of beasts, that [they] may become the pure bread of Christ”. Yes, I can say emphatically that some Western powers will have perpetrated, directly or symbolically, a crime against humanity.

In the dicastery that I headed for several years, Cor unum, we promoted dialogue, to the extent we could, inasmuch as our aid was destined for all people, without distinction as to race or religion; material difficulties, wars, famines, droughts, and earthquakes can strike any human being, whether he is Christian,

Muslim, Buddhist, animist, or atheist. I regarded projects designed to assist Muslims in the same way I did the requests submitted by Christians. For example, the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel offers assistance mostly to countries where the population is overwhelmingly Muslim. To put it quite simply, our model is still God; he is the Father, and he is concerned about all his children.

It is necessary to believe in dialogue while thinking always about the example of God himself. Our Father never tires of engaging us in dialogue, of coming to us despite our oft-repeated infidelities. He comes again, as always. In the same way, despite the difficulties, which are often excruciating, we have to go back a hundred times to the drawing board in our dialogue with our brethren who profess another belief. But without personal conversion, without true union with God, reconciliation with other religions remains an empty exercise.

In our plan for interreligious dialogue, we can run several risks. Postmodern ideology, which is everywhere today, is fundamentally soft, fluid, indeterminate, and for that very reason receptive to all “truths” that have lost their vitality. … Therefore, we must never lose sight of the fact that dialogue has meaning and legitimacy only because of a more basic relation to the truth being sought and to an objective good, namely, the dignity of persons that is manifested precisely in this search for truth. There are no truths about God that are inconsistent with each other. There is only one truth that must be sought, attained, and proclaimed: it is Jesus Christ.

The second danger is that of a falsely happy syncretism, which comes precisely from our lack of faith in God. If we are sincerely in God’s hand, we can be optimistic about ecumenism; if it does not make sufficient progress, it is because our sin is still great and our faith too tepid. The division of Christians remains a major scandal. We must be one body so that the world might believe.