Can Interreligious Dialogue Be Truly Religious?

National Catholic Register, 12 March 2021

The papal response to this question, as first answered by Benedict and then by Francis as shown during his visit to Iraq, indicates both continuity in substance and a difference in style.

At the heart of the Holy Father’s trip to Iraq was a meeting with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq.

The meeting brought to the fore a question that Pope Benedict XVI first raised in 2006. Can interreligious dialogue be truly religious? 

The question, as first answered by Benedict, and then by Francis, shows both continuity in substance and a difference in style. The theologically precise Benedict raised an objection later confirmed by Pope Francis’s pastoral strategy of encounter.

Since the 1960s as a young theologian at the Second Vatican Council, Joseph Ratzinger had been fascinated by the encounter of faith and reason, philosophy and science, religion and culture. These questions all had great application to the practice of ecumenism with separated Christians, and interreligious dialogue with non-Christians, especially Muslims.

Over time, Ratzinger became convinced that interreligious dialogue was not possible as a specifically religious matter. Religion begins with God, and if there is a significant disagreement about who God is, then there is no unifying basis for true dialogue, which requires shared points of departure. 

The imperative for dialogue, the sharing of wisdom and cooperation remained, but Ratzinger considered this to be more a matter of cultural dialogue. Every culture has within it ideas about God and so these would necessarily be discussed, but as a cultural, not specifically theological, matter.

It was a precise distinction. Peoples of different religions could — and should — speak with each other. That would not be “interreligious dialogue” as much as dialogue between people of different religions.

Therefore, less than a year after his election Benedict XVI transferred the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, to Cairo as apostolic nuncio in Egypt. There he would encounter an Islamic civilization in the spheres of culture, politics and diplomacy, as well as religion.

More provocatively, Benedict XVI did not appoint a new president to replace Archbishop Fitzgerald, but rather appointed Cardinal Paul Poupard, already president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, as president of interreligious dialogue, as well. While the interreligious council was not suppressed, it was united to the council for culture in the person of the president. The future of the curial org chart would reflect Benedict’s conviction that interreligious dialogue was part of cultural encounter.

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