Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the origins of monastic interreligious dialogue, identifies some of its major activities, including the multilingual journal Dilatato Corde and organizing meetings for interreligious dialogue such as the “Gethsemani Encounters,” “Nuns/Monks in the West,” and “Monks and Muslims,” and comments briefly on the evolution of the understanding of monastic interreligious dialogue in the light of Nostra Aetate. The author’s personal reflections as a monk and practitioner of dialogue permeate this analysis of the unique contribution monastics have made to interreligious engagement.
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Notes
- 1.
This is an expanded version of the presentation given at a panel on Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. The other members of the panel were Abbot James A. Wiseman, O.S.B., of Saint Anselm’s Abbey, Washington, D.C., and the Rev. Vivian Grunenfelder of Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist Monastery in Mount Shasta, California. I am grateful to Abbot Wiseman for graciously allowing me to use much of his presentation in the section of this article devoted to some theological issues raised by dialogue.
- 2.
L’Invincible Espérance, ed. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 1996; 2010); L’Autre que nous attendons: homélies de père Christian de Chergé (1970–1996) (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Éditions de Bellefontaine 2006); Dieu pour tout jour: Chapitres du Père Christian de Chergé à la communauté de Tibhirine (1986–1996) (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Éditions de Bellefontaine 2007). The life of Christian de Chergé and the monks of Tibhirine is recounted by John W. Kiser in The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003). A theological appraisal of de Chergé’s writings has been translated into English: Christian Salenson, Christian De Chergé: A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2012).
- 3.
Paris: Broché, 2015. The Italian translation of this collection has recently been published, as Lettere a un amico fraterno (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2017).
- 4.
Fr. Borrmans passed away on December 26, 2017. For his late reflections on his former student, see “Christian de Chergé et son Echelle mystique du dialogue,” Islamochristiana 42 (2016): 115–135. For a bibliography of Borrmans’ writings until 2004, see Islamochristiana 31 (2005): 1–20; a list of his more recent publications appears in Islamochristiana 43 (2017).
- 5.
«… ce qu’il appelle sa ‘curiosité’ consiste à écouter dans la tradition de l’autre comment l’Esprit de Dieu y est secrètement et indéniablement présent.» The review is by Benoît Standaert, a Benedictine monk of Saint Andrew’s Abbey in Belgium and appears in the on-line version of Dilatato Corde, Vol. IV, no. 1 (January–June, 2015): www.dimmid.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={AF82DFA3-51D7-4596-A20C-1195F989B7F1}.
- 6.
In fact, Pope Gregory the Great says that when Benedict arrived at Monte Cassino, one of his first acts was to tear down the temple of Apollo and build a chapel dedicated to Saint Martin. Dialogues, II, 8.
- 7.
Jean Déchanet, Christian Yoga, trans. Roland Hindmarsh (London: Burns and Oates, 1960).
- 8.
In such books, for example, as The Still Point: Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); Christian Zen: A Way of Meditation, 3rd edition (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997); The Mirror Mind: Zen-Christian Dialogue, 3rd edition (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990); Lord, Teach Us to Pray: Christian Zen and the Inner Eye of Love (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
- 9.
“Interpretare vocabulum Monachi, hoc est nomen tuum. Quid facis in turba qui solus es?” Epistola XIV ad Heliodorum Monachum, in Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi, Opera Omnia, ed. J.P. Migne, Patrologiae Latinae, vol. XXII (Paris, 1845; reprint: Turnholt, Brepols, 1986), 350.
- 10.
“Quare ergo et nos non appellemus monachos, cum dicit psalmus: Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum? Μόνος enim unus dicitur, et non unus quomodocumque. Nam et in turba est unus, sed una com multis; unus dici potest, μόνος non potest, id est solus; μόνος enim unus solus est. Qui ergo sic vivunt in unum ut unum hominem faciant, ut sit illis vere, quomodo scriptum est, una anima et unum cor – multa corpora, sed non multae animae; multa corpora, sed non multa corda – recte dicitur μόνος, id est unus solus.” Augustinus, Enarrationes in Psalmos 119–133, ed. Franco Gori. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. XCV/3 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 201), 327.
- 11.
Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, trans . Thomas L. Campbell (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981) VI,1,3.
- 12.
Thomas Merton, “Preface to the Japanese Edition of Thoughts in Solitude March 1966,” in Honorable Reader, ed. Robert E. Daggy (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 111.
- 13.
The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions Books, 1975), 318f.
- 14.
Pierre-François de Béthune, O.S.B., By Faith and Hospitality : The Monastic Tradition as a Model for Interreligious Encounter, trans. Dame Mary Groves, O.S.B. (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2002), 3. This book was followed by two others, translated as Interreligious Hospitality: The Fulfillment of Dialogue, trans. Robert Henrey (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2010) and Welcoming Other Religions: A New Dimension of the Christian Faith, trans. William Skudlarek, O.S.B. (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2016).
- 15.
RB 1980, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), pp. 255f.
- 16.
de Béthune, Welcoming Other Religions, 36.
- 17.
Both the English and the French versions of the film are available on YouTube. Search for Strangers No More or La voie de l’hospitalité.
- 18.
Pierre de Béthune speaks in French in the film: “Si on est profondément ancré dans sa tradition comme on peut l’espérer d’un moine qui a été formé pendant de nombreuses années, à ce moment, il ne faut pas avoir peur de s’immerger, de se plonger dans une autre religion, ce n’est pas une question de compromis, non plus, en disant je prends ça mais je ne prends pas ça, non, je prends tout! Mais je le prends depuis mon tout! C’est une rencontre de la foi à la foi. Peut-être même plus précisément de la fidélité à la fidélité”.
- 19.
de Béthune, Welcoming Other Religions, 83. Emphasis added.
- 20.
I am paraphrasing, but that is the gist of what I remember he said to me some 20 years ago.
- 21.
See Fabrice Blée, The Third Desert: The Story of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, trans. William Skudlarek, O.S.B., with Mary Grady (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 58–60.
- 22.
www.dimmid.org The principal articles of the first five volumes of Dilatato Corde have been published in book form (Brooklyn: Lantern, 2012) and the periodical is indexed in the ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index, http://www.atla.com.
- 23.
Demythologizing Celibacy: Practical Wisdom from Christian and Buddhist Monasticism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008).
- 24.
Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman, O.S.B., “Introduction,” The Spiritual Life: A Dialogue of Buddhist and Christian Monastics, ed. Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. (Brooklyn, Lantern, 2010), xvii.
- 25.
Christian de Chergé’s brief Testament was written on December 1, 1993, and renewed on January 1, 1994, just a few days after the GIA came to the monastery with its demands for assistance. The Testament has been reprinted in many sources; both the French original and an English translation can be found in the appendix to Salenson, Christian de Chergé: A Theology of Hope. In January 2018, Pope Francis confirmed that Christian and his confreres were killed in odium fidei, clearing the way for their beatification.
- 26.
New editions of the proceedings of the first three Gethsemani Encounters have been published: The Spiritual Life: A Dialogue of Buddhist and Christian Monastics, ed. Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. (Brooklyn: Lantern, 2010); Finding Peace in Troubled Times: Buddhist and Christian Monastic on Transforming Suffering, ed. Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. (Brooklyn: Lantern, 2010); Green Monasticism: A Buddhist-Catholic Response to an Environmental Calamity, ed. Donald W. Mitchell and William Skudlarek, O.S.B. (Brooklyn: Lantern, 2010). Some of the presentations made at the fourth encounter are contained in Volume 5 of Dilatato Corde.
- 27.
“The dialogue of religious experience, where persons, rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches, for instance with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and ways of searching for God or the Absolute.” Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Dialogue and Proclamation, AAS 84 (1992): 414–446, no. 42.
- 28.
Proceedings of the Rome, Qom, and Assisi meetings have been published: Monks and Muslims : Monastic and Shi’a Spirituality in Dialogue, ed. Mohammad Ali Shomali and William Skudlarek, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012); Monks and Muslims II: Creating Communities of Friendship ed. Mohammad Ali Shomali and William Skudlarek, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014); Monks and Muslims III: Towards a Global Abrahamic Community, ed. Mohammad Ali Shomali and William Skudlarek, O.S.B. (London: Institute of Islamic Studies, 2015).
- 29.
I recall a confrere who told me that in the last session of an introductory theology course he taught to undergraduates at Saint John’s University (Collegeville MN), he reviewed the topics covered during the semester to help his students prepare for the final exam. When he asked if there were any questions, a Japanese student raised her hand and asked, “What is this ‘god’ you’ve been talking about all semester?”
- 30.
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.5.
- 31.
Henri Le Saux/Abhishiktananda, The Eyes of Light (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1983), 43.
- 32.
Le Saux, letter to Marc Chaduc, April 8 & 11, 1973, in James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told Through His Letters (Delhi: I.S.P.C.K., 1989), 326.
- 33.
Majjhima-nikaya, 63.
- 34.
Thomas Merton, Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 260–61.
- 35.
Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.8; also Brahmasutra 1.4.21.
- 36.
Raimundo Panikkar, The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 162–63.
- 37.
Finding Peace in Troubled Times, 195.
- 38.
The statement comes in an initial paragraph of the decree: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (Jn 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself. The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men” (NA 2).
- 39.
The words in the official Latin text are “agnoscant, servent et promoveant.” Agnoscere: to know again, recognize; to know by inference or report, understand; to express knowledge, admit, acknowledge. Servare: to watch over, observe; to keep, retain a promise. Promovere: to watch over, observe; to keep, retain a promise.
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Skudlarek O.S.B., W. (2018). Monastic Interreligious Dialogue: Dialogue at the Level of Spiritual Practice and Experience. In: Latinovic, V., Mannion, G., Welle, O.F.M., J. (eds) Catholicism Engaging Other Faiths. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98584-8_14
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