The future of interreligious dialogue is being discussed this week in Madison. A conference sponsored by the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at the University of Wisconsin has drawn scholars from across the country for three days of … interreligious dialogue.
The event that prompted the get together was the document that came out of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council 50 years ago called Nostra Aetate or the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. Like a lot of things that happened in the sixties, this was ground-breaking, for the Catholic Church certainly, but also for the greater Christian church and other religions.
Just how amazing was this official pronouncement became clear during the opening plenary lecture this evening at the Upper House, delivered by John Borelli, Special Assistant for Interreligious Initiatives to President John DeGioia of Georgetown University, “a marvelous and rich contextualization,” in the words of Lubar Institute Director Charles Cohen.
Borelli has extensively researched the history of Nostra Aetate, with the assistance of — among others — the Rev. Thomas Stransky, a Milwaukee priest who served on the staff of the Secretariat for Promotion of Christian Unity, which initiated what eventually became Nostra Aetate. Stransky, who is now 85 years old, went on to direct the Tantur Ecumenical Institute just outside of Bethlehem, “living Nostra Aetate on one of its most notorious faultlines,” as Borelli put it.
“Nostra Aetate originated in an effort to relate Jews to the church,” Borelli said, as he described the experiences during World War II and afterwards of the man who convened Vatican II, Pope John XXIII.
As plans for Vatican II and the role of the Secretariat for Promotion of Christian Unity were being laid, Borelli described one meeting in which the Holy Father engaged Father Stransky in a discussion about Wisconsin farm animals. Pope John XXIII and his successor, Pope Paul VI, saw an important role for the statement at Vatican II, but its final form was shaped by many pressures of the time, including the more traditional Catholic bishops in Europe and the bishops from other regions which saw 28 new nations being formed in that era.
Pope Paul’s history-making visits to Israel, India, and the United Nations in 1964 also shaped Nostra Aetate. As did the accompanying statement on Religious Liberty. “It was a difficult process,” Borelli said, “the pressure was enormous.”
Like much about Vatican II, Nostra Aetate opened the way for new attitudes, new postures and new openness. But it also does not address many issues, such as the role of other religions regarding the issue of salvation, for instance.
“It was the beginning, it launched much dialogue,” Borelli concluded, about Nostra Aetate. “We will enjoy a rich set of surprises in the next 50 years.”
Sessions of the conference will continue through Monday and Tuesday at the Pyle Center on Langdon Street, with another plenary address Monday evening. Paul Knitter, Professor Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary, will speak on Nostra Aetate: A Milestone in the History of Religions? From Competition to Collaboration. More information on the conference can be found at the Lubar Institute website.