A five-day dialogue between Catholics and Buddhists from the United States kicked off in Castelgandolfo, near Rome, on 23 June. The dialogue was sponsored by the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The venue was the headquarters of the Focolare Movement, an interfaith organization founded in 1943 by Catholic activist Chiara Lubich (1920–2008).
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran. From Vatican Radio
According to Vatican Radio, the gathering “includes 46 Buddhist and Catholic participants from New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.” Among the Buddhist representatives are those from the Sri Lankan, Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Chinese, Zen, and Pure Land traditions, as well as new movements like Won Buddhism and Rissho Kossei-kai. The group will also meet Pope Francis as part of Wednesday’s papal audience.
The meeting coincides with the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, a 1965 declaration published during the Second Vatican Council, which effectively sought to revamp the relationship between the Catholic Church and other religions.
The keynote address was given by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In it, he stated that the theme of the dialogue would center on suffering, liberation, and fraternity: “In a world, where diversity is seen as a threat, our coming together today in friendship and peace is a sign of our openness towards one another and our commitment to human fraternity. . . . We are all pilgrims and I see this Buddhist-Catholic dialogue as part of our ongoing quest to grasp the mystery of our lives and the ultimate Truth” (Vatican Radio).
Suffering and liberation are perennial concerns for Buddhists and Catholics alike, but it was Pope Francis’s “Message for the World Day of Peace 2014” that inspired the theme of fraternity. “Pope Francis states that ‘Fraternity is an essential human quality, for we are all relational beings. . . . without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace,’” said Cardinal Tauran.
He also argued that if the dialogue was to be envisaged as an inner pilgrimage, three motifs associated with traveling needed to be kept in mind. Firstly, the journey needed to carry “less baggage”—that is, one needed to overcome one’s own prejudices, wounds, and fears in order to listen to one’s heart and that of one’s neighbor. Secondly, the pilgrim’s task was about “crossing borders” because pilgrimage invites people to cross their cultural, religious, ethnic, and linguistic borders to meet, understand, and respect each other. “Thus, we journey to the ‘other side’ yet, firmly rooted in our religious beliefs,” he stated. The final motif was “returning home,” which the cardinal used to encourage participants to return to the US with a new vision and mission to take what they learn during this dialogue back to their communities and society.
In an interview with Vatican Radio, a Catholic participant, Fr. Leo Lefebure (who is also a theology professor at the Jesuit Georgetown University and well known in interfaith and comparative theology circles), commented that the basic values of Buddhists and Catholics converged to a great degree and that the faith experience of many Catholics had been “profoundly deepened” by practices like meditation.