Sixty years after the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate declaration, the Vatican is calling for a renewed approach to interreligious dialogue aimed at fostering peaceful coexistence without erasing religious differences. Source: EWTN News.
“Today, in the face of those who foment divisions and stir up conflicts, believers of different traditions – and above all their leaders – while remaining aware of their irreducible differences, are called to seek, with clarity and hope, the conditions necessary for peaceful coexistence,” states a new joint note from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
The document, titled A Journey of Hope: Sixty Years of Interreligious Dialogue and Fraternity in the Light of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, was published yesterday.
Pope Leo XIV approved the note at an audience with the prefects and secretaries of the three dicasteries on June 22 and ordered its publication.
The text reviews the teaching of successive popes on interreligious relations, looks back at the path travelled since Nostra Aetate was promulgated in 1965, and turns to the challenges facing dialogue today.
“In stark contrast to those rigid attitudes that seek to resolve conflicts by force, it is time to promote a new ethic of dialogue: a culture of complexity, flexibility, and friendship,” the document states. “It is no longer a matter of fearing or keeping one’s distance from the ‘other believer’ – another civilisation, another way of thinking – but of daring the encounter.”
One of the document’s proposals is to give greater recognition to concrete initiatives undertaken by local Churches.
“At the same time, greater appreciation must be given to the concrete initiatives undertaken by the local Churches, which are on the front lines,” the note states.
“It is they who, at the local level, develop the most creative and courageous forms of encounter: dialogue commissions, joint projects, educational or humanitarian initiatives, and shared celebrations.”
By gathering and sharing those experiences, the document says, “the universal Church can enrich her life while also identifying and guiding new pastoral paths”.
At the same time, the Vatican note stresses that dialogue does not mean abandoning claims to religious truth.
“It is not, therefore, a matter of renouncing the truth but of proclaiming it in a manner befitting the Gospel: with esteem, listening, and charity,” the document states.
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Vatican calls for ‘new ethic of dialogue’ 60 years after Nostra Aetate (EWTN News)
