Abstract
The editors of this collection of essays provide us with another contribution in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra aetate (NA), the Catholic Church’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. NA, one of the shortest documents produced by the Second Vatican Council, has turned out to be among the most important of the documents. Its positive reception by Catholics, other Christians, and those who follow other religious paths is gaining momentum, as anthologies such as this volume attest.
The editors have assembled a distinguished group of contributors. All have academic credentials and positions. Most, however, are religious activist-practitioners of one sort or another. This is refreshing. During the first fifty years of NA, too much has been written on the “foundations” of interreligious dialogue by people with little actual knowledge of other religious paths and even less experience in engaging others in the time-consuming project of dialogue.
Praise for NA is not difficult to find. Without doubt, John Borrelli, of Georgetown University, is currently doing the most important historical work on NA. His essay traces the basic features of the human drama and international diplomatic intrigue that eventually led to the document. Dwight Hopkins, of the University of Chicago, praises NA for its repudiation of discrimination based on “race, color, condition of life, or religion” as “foreign to the mind of Christ” (§5)
There is a good deal of critique as well. Paul Knitter laments that this document of a church council asserts the supremacy of Christianity. Jerusha Lamptey notes that NA favors similarity over difference in its approach to religious diversity. Rita Gross objects to the fact that NA sees religious diversity as problematic, not normative. Jeanine Hill Fletcher argues that the text is implicated in “the American racist project.”
According to some of the contributors, the future of interreligious dialogue will require that religious believers renounce their belief in the supremacy of their own faith. In my view, this comes dangerously close to using interreligious dialogue as a covert tool of conversion. John Thatamanil’s essay offers a particularly nuanced approach to the problem of religious claims to supremacy by calling into question the possibility of religious self-sufficiency in the future. He holds up comparative theology as an alternative to “parity pluralism.”
Surprisingly for an anthology such as this, not one of these essays is weak.