III Catholic Muslim SUMMIT
Introductory Remarks
by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran

Respected Bishop Chane
Your Royal Highness,
Respected Ayatollah Damad,
Your Excellences,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to Rome! My first and foremost thought as I address you is one of gratitude to God, the Almighty and All-loving Who, in His caring Providence, grants us the opportunity to meet with each another and to know one another more or for the first time. In Him, as believers, we find strength, light, peace and joy.

I have been asked to serve this Summit as its Host Principal. It is therefore in this capacity that I welcome the leaders and participants of each delegation: the Sunni, the Shiite and, surely, the Anglican Episcopal one.

I also wish to welcome the guests of honor: His Eminence Metropolitan Emmanuel of France, who represents the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, representative of Judaism, and His Eminence Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. A warm welcome with a sense of gratitude goes especially to Mrs. Amy Goldman who, together with others, generously contributed to the finances of this event.

The Steering Group, composed of Canon Peterson from the Anglican Communion, Mons. Roberto Vitillo, Head of the Delegation of Caritas Internationalis in Geneva, and Mons. Khaled Akasheh, Bureau Chief for Islam at the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, worked hard for the preparation and the organization of this Summit. The staff of Il Cantico is doing all their best to make our stay here comfortable. To all these persons and to all those who have worked and are still working with generosity and in silence, our heartfelt thanks. 

We are gathered in Rome, the heart of Catholic Christianity and one of the most significant cities, as per its history, with its monuments and particularly of spirituality. All this means that Rome has a mission as well, the mission of universality, in other words, Catholicity. In this context, I do hope that we will be able to realize the expectations of Pope Francis who encourages us to be men and women of dialogue, dedicated to the promotion of peace and fraternity and the eradication of hunger and poverty in the world.

May God help us to be messengers of peace and fraternity, especially through the acceptance of all persons, as our brothers and sisters!

50th Anniversary Celebration

19 May 2014

WELCOME OF CARDINAL JEAN-LOUIS TAURAN

It is a privilege for me to welcome you to this special celebration to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Let me first of all express my gratitude to all those who are present here today or already gone to the House of the Father, for their valuable work and for sharing their knowledge at the service of the Church which is entrusted to this Council. It is impossible for me here to remember everyone, but I am sure that their names and faces live in the hearts and minds of each one of us. I thank all of you who are gathered here because, by accepting our invitation to attend this conference, you also agreed to share with us the joy of this happy occasion. Finally, I wish to thank all of our staff for their willingness and generosity to serve the good cause of interreligious dialogue.

In present times, conflicts are often marked by religious differences, making relationships and dialogue among persons of different religions more needed than ever. Such dialogue must continue, with both courage and prudence, and with patient perseverance, trusting in the help of the Holy Spirit, Who, ever since this Dicastery was founded on Pentecost of 1964, has supported our commitment to dialogue in all its different forms and with many persons of different religions.

Bearing this in mind, I would like to recall what Pope John Paul II said about the duties of Catholics towards others: Christ’s proclamation, witnessing and dialogue: “It is the Holy Spirit who scatters the ‘seeds of the Word’ in the various customs and cultures…This awareness cannot fail to instil in Christ's disciples an attitude of openness and dialogue towards those with different religious convictions. If the Church's children know how to remain open to the Holy Spirit's action, he will help them communicate Christ's one, universal, saving message in a way that respects the religious convictions of others.” (Homily of Pope John Paul II for Pentecost, N. 3-4, 10 June 2000).

All of the sons and daughters of the Church who work or have worked in the past for the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue have always tried, with esteem and respect for persons of other religious traditions, to remain open to the work of the Holy Spirit. Even in difficult moments, when misunderstandings, the inability to communicate and even the rejection by the others seemed to prevail, the Lord gave us the grace to recognize what is true and good and that is sown in the hearts of the members of other religions.

In these 50 years there have been numerous opportunities for sincere dialogue, collaboration, and search for a common approach to meet the needs of this world. There are many people of other religions whom we have met along the way, sharing a part of the journey, and whom I remember here with gratitude and friendship.

After fifty years, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has come a long way in its efforts to help the Church reflect on the aspect of its mandate which consists of meeting the followers of other religions. I would like to emphasize the importance that has always been given to collaboration with the bishops’ conferences around the world, whether in terms of participation in colloquia or conferences which they have organized or when it is the Dicastery itself which organizes an event, always inviting representatives of the local churches.

The cooperation in the field of ecumenism is also important, in particular the on-going collaboration over the years with the World Council of Churches. We are aware that in order to be faithful witnesses to the Lord Jesus, we Christians must offer our unity to the world. Even as regards interfaith relations, it is important to find a common path that makes us credible in the eyes of believers of other religions. The fruitful collaboration with the World Council of Churches produced a number of documents, among which I remember: on Interfaith Prayer, on Interfaith Marriage and the last in chronological order, on Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World.

It would be impossible not to mention here the work of theological reflection accompanying the creation of the Dicastery.  There have been various texts produced by the Dicastery which provided indications about the approach to have with followers of other religions. In 1984, and then in 1990, two important documents were published known by their short titles, “Dialogue and Mission ” (1984) and “Dialogue and Announcement ” (1990). During the last Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery (November 2013) “Guidelines of Pastoral Orientation for Interreligious Dialogue”, which had been prepared in the previous Plenary Assembly, were then presented. Let me recall to mind, finally, our Pro Dialogo bulletin in which there is a collection of both Papal interventions on Interreligious Dialogue as well as various articles and news on interreligious dialogue actions throughout the world.

Time does not allow me to go on.  I would like to conclude with my thanks for the encouragement and support which the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has been receiving from the Pontiffs over the years.

After the “dialogue with the world” of Paul VI, the “dialogue of peace” of John Paul II, the “dialogue of love and truth” of Benedict XVI, we have come to the challenge of interreligious dialogue as “dialogue of friendship”, announced by Pope Francis.

In this way we continue on the path of dialogue, aware that we must look ahead while bringing with us the great richness of the past gathered over the years. Let us invoke the Holy Spirit, asking that He help us to free ourselves from being closed to what is new and what is true, but above all that He arise in us the desire and the willingness to collaborate with all persons in view of the common good.

NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY
CONFERRAL OF HONORARY DOCTOR OF LAW DEGREE ON 

His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran
Notre Dame Rome Centre
January 27, 2014

Acceptance Speech by Cardinal Tauran

I am grateful to the Provost of Notre Dame University for conferring upon me the Degree of Law Doctor honoris causa. This recognition transcends my person: it has to be shared by the entire Pontifical Council for Interreligious Council Dialogue (which celebrates its 50^th  anniversary this year).

Dialogue has inspired my life and my ministry. As a boy, I discovered the richness of Anglican religious music in England. As a priest, in my diocese of origin, Bordeaux, I was in charge of dialogue with the Jews and the Anglicans. As a Vatican diplomat I have been involved in many international talks (in particular in the frame work of the CSCE). Since 2007, I have been President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. For me, dialogue has been my ministry: when you meet somebody who does not live like you, who does not think like you, or who belongs to another religion, you have a choice: you close the door, you try to impose your way of life or you decide to consider the “other” like a brother who is, like you, a pilgrim towards the Truth.

The contemporary process of globalisation and the accelerating process of international communications make interreligious dialogue a critical issue. In other ages religions lived in separate territories. Their divisions resulted from their existing in different spaces. Today religious offers cannot be made from a monopolistic perspective and this fact explains the importance of interactions between religions.

In Europe from the eighteenth century onwards a conviction began to appear that faith is incompatible with reason. Although he was a believer, Descartes was to apply his methodical doubt to matters of faith. This current of thought was to give birth to the philosophy of the Enlightenment: reason has access to truth on its own. Natural moral standards, tolerance, deism or even, for some, atheism led to the belief that man is self-sufficient. After the considerable progress of the sciences (Newton died in 1727), the development of travel (and missions) and unresolved social crises, it seemed to many that Christianity, with its dogmas and moral teaching, did not serve progress. All people were thus considered to belong to a common humanity and, endowed with reason, easily discovered that a natural religion exists, without dogma and without fanaticism. The individual sufficed unto himself. There was no need to look to religion to explain man’s origin, nor to await a happiness beyond this earth. Thus man is placed at the centre of the world and the supernatural is eliminated. At the level of ideas, this vision of things was to lead to Scientism (all that human reason does not justify does not exist), and at the level of achievements, to the French Revolution (to organize society without God), culminating in the twentieth century with the two forms of totalitarianism (Marxism-Leninism and the Nazi ideologies).

Obviously the Church contested this vision of things and maintained that to exclude religion from the horizon of human life is to amputate man, created in the image of God, from his spiritual dimension.  Pope Jean-Paul II's Encyclical Fides et Ratio expresses it well: “In God there lies the origin of all things, in him is found the fullness of the mystery, and in this his glory consists; to men and women there falls the task of exploring truth with their reason, and in this their nobility consists" (no. 17).     

But this God whom we dismissed in the past is reappearing in public discourse today. Newsstands are full of books and magazines on religious subjects, esotericism and the new religions. Today, one cannot understand the world without religions. And this - for here indeed is the great paradox of the current situation - is because they are seen as a danger: fanaticism, fundamentalism and terrorism have been or still are associated with a perverted form of Islam. It is not, of course, a question of Islam practised by the majority of this religion's followers. Still today it is a fact that people kill for religious reasons. The reason is that religions are capable of the best as well as of the worst: they can serve holiness or alienation. They can preach peace or war. Yet it is always necessary to explain that it is not the religions themselves that wage war but rather their followers! Hence the need, once again, to conjugate faith with reason. For to act against reason is in fact to act against God, as Pope Benedict XVI said at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006:

“In the beginning was the Logos means both reason and word — a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. [...] A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.”

Thus we are in a world in which, because of material and human precariousness, the dangers of war and the hazards of the environment, in the face of the failure of the great political systems of the past century, men and women of this generation are once again asking themselves the essential questions on the meaning of life and death, on the meaning of history and of the consequences that amazing scientific discoveries might bring in their wake. It had been forgotten that the human being is the only creature who asks questions and questions himself. It is remarkable that Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council, should underline this aspect of things in its introduction: 

“Men look to their different religions for an answer to the unsolved riddles of human existence. The problems that weigh heavily on the hearts of men are the same today as in past ages. What is man? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is upright behaviour, and what is sinful? Where does suffering originate, and what end does it serve? How can genuine happiness be found?” (n. 1).

Thus we are all condemned to dialogue. But, what is dialogue? It is the search for an inter-understanding between two individuals with a view to a common interpretation of their agreement or their disagreement. It implies a common language, honesty in the presentation of one's position and the desire to do one's utmost to understand the other's point of view.

Applied to interreligious dialogue, these presuppositions make it easier to understand that in the context of religion it is not a question of being "kind" to others to please them! Nor is it a matter of negotiation: in interreligious dialogue it is a question of taking a risk, not of accepting to give up my own convictions but of letting myself be called into question by the convictions of another, accepting to take into consideration arguments different than my own or those of my community. All religions, each one in its own way, strive to respond to the enigmas of the human condition. Each religion has its own identity but this identity enables me to take the religion of the other into consideration. Identity, otherness and dialogue go together.

Interreligious dialogue is not relativism. We must see what we have in common and put our convergences at the service of society. But we do not put our faith into brackets. On the contrary, the beginning of an authentic religious dialogue is the proclamation of the religious convictions of the partners: we cannot build a true dialogue on ambiguity. We accept being called into question by the convictions of another, in order to enrich my own faith with the convictions of the others. Identity, otherness and dialogue go together. 

As we are in a Catholic University, I would like to underline that Professors, personnel and students are on the front line for interreligious dialogue among the youth of tomorrow.

We know that good Christians try sincerely to listen to persons or to read literature in order to know, to understand and to share our common convictions with other religious persons or groups. Many dioceses have a commission for interreligious dialogue. But the specific contribution of a university to interreligious dialogue is realized through research, taking into consideration the statistical, historical, social, cultural and theological point of view. What is essential is the right attitude towards the truth: impartiality, objectivity, promotion of a culture of encounter.

I do hope that Notre Dame University will continue to propose an education which teaches how to think, a scientific knowledge enlightened by spiritual values and a culture opened to a universally oriented culture. The word “university” comes from the Latin word “universum”.

So let us continue to teach the pedagogy of peace. Let us follow the advice of the Roman philosopher: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult”. Let us dare!