Discerning the 'Catholic instinct'
Dialogue and Proclamation ten years on
This article is not intended as a comprehensive commentary on the text of Dialogue and Proclamation.[1] Still less does it presume to present some theological overview of the place of the document within the wider context of theology of religions as it has developed since Vatican II.[2] The main task I have set myself is to suggest some possible 'reflections and orientations' for the future.
Let me begin by sketching the line I intend to take. There are several 'traditional' theological topics in the document which compete for our attention: the salvation of the non-Christian, the nature of the missionary Church, the person of Christ in a pluralist world, and the role of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. While all of these major themes make some appearance in what follows in this article, they are all tangential to the main thrust of DP. This is largely concerned with balancing the particular missiological interests of the two dicasteries which were responsible for formulating DP. The lack of any single overarching theological principle in the document could be accounted a weakness, leading not to clarification but to a certain ambiguity of purpose. On the other hand, its strength is that it records and promotes a debate which, ten years on, is more alive than ever. To admit, then, that DP was born from the 'unfinished business' inherited from its predecessor,[3] and continues to work within the terms of a polarisation of two apparently conflicting terms, should not detract from the particular wisdom which DP as a whole seeks to represent. This wisdom is not neatly summed up in any section of DP's two lengthy main chapters, nor is it to be found in the more hesitant remarks in the conclusion. It is there in the title, in that single word 'and'.
Dialogue and Proclamation deals with both much more, and much less, than the inevitable tensions surrounding the practice of Christian faith in a pluralist post-modern world. Whatever is meant by the two terms - and my initial point is that the Church is very far from appreciating their properly theological nature - they have both, somehow, to be held together.
That may seem obvious; theological rationality is always aware of the danger of a partial or premature closure. It is, however, all too easy to understand this particular document as concerned merely to work out the implications of an a priori opposition, to get the two terms and the realities they represent in some sort of balance. There is, of course, more than a little truth in this assessment, as the continuing debate about the relative demands of different forms of missionary activity indicates. My immediate concern, however, lies not with a debate about missionary strategies but with a more positive extension of Catholic theological rationality. This I take to be the underlying issue in Catholic theology of religions since the Council. When, for example, Lumen Gentium speaks of persons of other faiths being 'orientated to' or 'related to' the Church(LG 16), what is the nature of that relationship? How is such a relationship to be maintained without occluding one or other side? And what are the implications for Christian discipleship and the Church's self-understanding of an anthropology which recognises and fully appreciates the social and relational nature of human existence? Can one give a coherent account of such relationality without slipping into relativism?
These are the questions which I perceive to be lurking beneath the immediate debate about the 'tension' between two 'intimately related, but not interchangeable' forms of 'the Church's evangelizing mission'(DP 77). Nowhere in DP itself is that relationship spelt out with any precision. If recent missiological reflection - not just about dialogue with people of other faiths, but about justice and inculturation - represents the true mind of the Church, it emerges from a somewhat ill-defined and diffuse, yet possibly more authentically Catholic, missionary sensibility. It is the nature of this sensibility - what I like to call the 'Catholic instinct' - which forms the main subject of my reflection.
Emerging theological themes
First, however, it is important to draw out certain theological themes from DP which lead us in this direction. Perhaps the most theologically significant section of the text is that entitled 'A Christian Approach to Religious Traditions'(14-32). These paragraphs build on the positive assessment of other religions made by Nostra Aetate, but combine it with an important caveat. Repeating points made in both Lumen Gentium(16) and Ad Gentes(9), DP reminds the Church of the continuing validity of Christian mission as a purification from the reality of sin. Nostra Aetate's call to 'acknowledge, preserve and encourage' the truths and values present in other religions requires 'dialogue and collaboration'(NA 2). But a dialogue which is a genuinely mutual experience of learning entails discernment. This is what places the Holy Spirit right at the centre of any theology of religions. It is stated clearly towards the end of the section that 'the fruits of the Spirit of God in the personal lives of individuals, whether Christian or otherwise, are easily discernible(Gal 5.22-23)'(30). What is much more difficult to discern, however, is the way 'elements of grace capable of sustaining the positive response of their members to God's invitation' are at work in other religious traditions themselves(30). A theological assessment of the providential role of other religions is, of course, crucially important but is beyond the scope of DP. Nevertheless, the document does allow a generous expression of the 'Catholic instinct' with its vision of the history of God's saving action which extends 'beyond the boundaries of the Chosen People to touch both the history of nations and the lives of individuals'(20).
To be noted here is a shift from the question of the 'salvation of the non-Christian' towards a theology of revelation. As in Nostra Aetate, metaphors of light predominate. There may be no question of any special or independent revelation through non-Christian religions as such, but DP, like Nostra Aetate before it, is bound to allow that God reveals God in and through the created order. It thus reflects the 'single source' theory of revelation found in Dei Verbum: the revelation of the Word of God, spoken definitively in Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, bringing to fruition the 'seeds of the Word' in creation, represent together a single continuous action of God in the world. The difference between Christians and others is no longer expressed in terms of who has and who has not been saved but, more precisely, of who knows and who does not know the 'source of their salvation'(29). This shift of attention is significant. The reference in this paragraph to the 'invisible action of the Spirit of Christ' makes it clear that, while salvation is always 'in Christ', it is mediated through the 'sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their conscience'.
The word 'and' in this formulation has its own history. As Dupuis's commentary rightly reminds us, there were complex issues at stake in the lengthy discussions which produced DP - not least a question about how the Church can speak of what is 'other', the 'unknown' workings of God's Spirit.[4] The text does no more than remind us that 'sincere practice' alone may not be enough to disclose the presence of 'seeds of the Word'; if religious practice, both within and outside the visible bounds of the Church, is not to be reduced to mere ritualism no one can afford to ignore the need for constant discernment. This, properly speaking, is the work of the Holy Spirit which forms the consciences of all human beings just as the same Spirit guides the Church; leading it into all the truth.[5]
It is notable that in DP soteriology is always linked with more explicitly christological and, indeed, pneumatological, reflection: 'all share in the same mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ through his Spirit'(29). What is described as Jesus's 'open attitude toward men and women who do not belong to the chosen people' is more than merely exemplary(21). Rather the 'new horizon' he opens up is given an intrinsically theological status; the mission Jesus receives from the Father becomes universal through the Resurrection; his risen body establishes a 'new sanctuary'(21). This is not just a matter of the whole world being sanctified by what God has done in raising Jesus from the dead. More specifically, the possibility of a 'theology of history' is raised: to be precise, a vision of God's progressive self-communication to all humankind. Here again, soteriology is recast through a theology of revelation 'which reaches its climax in the Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ'(25). Negative judgements on the reality of human sin go hand in hand with a remarkable openness to signs of the 'unknown God' whom Paul proclaimed on the Areopagus, signs which the Fathers saw as a 'praeparatio evangelica'. Throughout DP exhibits a typically optimistic Catholic sense of the God who has always been at work in the world revealing himself and who goes on manifesting himself for the salvation of humankind. In this regard, of course, a major impetus has been given to the positive growth of interreligious relations by Pope John Paul II, both in the example of the 1986 Assisi meeting with leaders of faith and in his regular addresses to different faith communities and groups. DP notes the emphasis he places on the unity of the human family in Christ and the 'active presence of the Holy Spirit in the religious life of the members of the other religious traditions'(28). But the criteria of a discernment which would acknowledge elements of grace in the religions themselves have still to be determined. This is only the most obvious question left open by DP.
A second is the more practical, yet equally theological, question of how the Church is to learn an openness and respect for the signs of God's Spirit outside the visible bounds of the Church. How is this to be practised with Christian integrity? The ecclesiology of DP can be understood as juxtaposing two principles. On the one hand, thinking in eschatological terms, the Church cannot be limited to anything less than the whole of redeemed humanity; on the other, this vision of the completion of God's promise only ever exists as 'an inchoate reality, which needs to find completion through being related to the Kingdom of Christ already present in the Church yet realized fully only in the world to come'(35). Putting it in terms of the imagery of Vatican II, the Church is the 'universal sacrament of salvation' and, at the same time, a 'pilgrimChurch' which shares the joys and sorrows of the rest of humankind - and therefore of other people of faith. The Church is not just the first fruits of God's Kingdom, but also the instrument by which humankind is to be formed into a new unity in God. In principle, all people are already related or ordered to the Church(LG 16), but, if the principle is to become more than a pious wish, the Church must be faithful to what is ultimately God's mission to 'foster "the Kingdom of our Lord and his Christ"(Rev 11.15), at whose service she is placed'(35).
If this mission is indeed to be understood as God's mission, then to be Church cannot just be a matter of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel, or - to use the sort of language which makes itself felt in Part II of DP - a matter of living and acting in the power of the Spirit. The Church is also called to note and welcome the signs of the Kingdom, the continuities which link Christians and other persons of faith despite the sinfulness which obscures the full truth of the Gospel of Christ. Although dialogue and proclamation are often described as if they are complementary 'modes' of mission, there are hints in the text of something more profoundly theological struggling to release itself.
This is what I refer to as the 'Catholic instinct' - a generous sensitivity to the 'seeds of the Word'. In both Part I and Part II, but in different ways, the Church is portrayed as that community which finds its identity by responding faithfully to God's Word. The two ecclesiological principles noted above can only be held together eschatologically. That is to say that the Church prefigures or anticipates the Kingdom by making the vision of God's covenantal promise a reality at this moment. The Church lives, as it were, 'across time'. To admit that the full reality of the Kingdom is always elusive, never complete in time, does not absolve the Church from continuing to find ways of speaking of 'the hope that is in you'(1 Peter 3.15). This is what the Church does now, the very centre of Christian discipleship. If, however, the Good News takes time to grow, so will the virtues which make for a faithful missionary body. For this reason, the experience of dialogue - its 'active' and 'passive' senses, as it were - acquires a significance which goes beyond the purely practical. Although the term dialogue may have entered the Church's discourse as an expression of a concern for the communication of the Gospel message, and to that extent remains a practice of faith alongside the struggle for justice, liturgy and prayer, proclamation and catechesis,[6] it only becomes properly effective in the life of the Church in so far as it can be understood, like all practices, in theological terms, that is to say as mirroring in some way the divine initiative. Thus it is that, according to DP, God's action in the world can be appropriately described as 'an age-long dialogue' in which God speaks of salvation for all humankind(38).
Something similar applies to what DP says about proclamation as a 'response to the human aspiration for salvation'(67). The initiative lies with God alone. The first disciples manifested their joy in the Risen Lord; they spoke of what they knew God had done for them. Thereby they learned the qualities demanded of a Church which would proclaim the Good News of salvation from Christ himself who taught 'gradually, and with infinite care'. Those who would be disciples today 'will pass through the same process of discovery and commitment'(69). Between Parts I and II, and in Part III's explicit reference to a 'climate of expectation and listening'(85), emerge the principles - and the questions - which I referred to at the beginning of this article. The Church is led and taught by the Spirit of Christ. It therefore speaks of what it knows from listening to God's Word. But it must also be careful not to draw an arbitrary distinction between what is known and what is not known - what remains to be completed in God's way and in God's good time.
DP finishes somewhat limply with exhortations to seek the graces of dialogue and proclamation in prayer. Yet - to repeat - there are touches in what has gone before which seek to spell out the complementarity of practice in theological, more specifically in christological and pneumatological, terms. Following some all too brief yet insightful paragraphs in DM, in which dialogue is described as rooted in the Church's faith in the Trinitarian God where is glimpsed a 'life of communication and interchange'(22), DP finds itself grappling with what remains in many ways a new experience for the Church. 'Dialogue and proclamation' are not competing interests or modes of self-presentation which respond to different situations, but a single (if decidedly complex) response to God in a world which can no longer be reduced to simple oppositions. Dialogue is not, therefore, a mere adjunct to or sub-set of a straightforwardly univocal sense of mission, but has its own prior part to play in the life of a Church called to explore the manifold relationships which God's Spirit has already created. DP opens up the rich and diverse account of the 'four-fold dialogue' found in DM. This directly challenges the more intellectualist conceptions of dialogue as some sort of 'open debate', in which a topic of conversation is gradually clarified to the mutual benefit of both interlocutors. What this concept of dialogue leaves out of account is the fact that most interlocutors are not transparent to themselves, let alone to the other. Whichever form of dialogue human beings practise, they are all challenged to conversion. At some stage I find myself confronted not by the other person but by the transcendent horizon against which any genuinely open dialogue is set - in short, by God.
This point emerges all too tentatively in DP. The engagement with people of other faiths demands not so much a reorientation of 'missionary strategy' as a radical rethinking of the ways in which God's work of self-communication is to be discerned and communicated. The two go together - in a way which is never anything other than thoroughly paradoxical. The traces of the God who always goes before us are only to be discerned in the very attempt to communicate them. We learn by doing; we are faithful to what we know only by being open to, and working in the midst of, what we do not know. And, just as the act of communication with the other always falls short of the object of faith, so it must be repeated differently, in a way which, one hopes, comes closer to communicating with this particular religious community or this particular people of faith, calling forth from them a more adequate response to the demands of God. As anyone who has ever engaged in any of the four forms of dialogue knows all too well, the work of communicating the 'hope that is in you' and discerning the 'seeds of the Word' is never-ending. We speak and we listen, we give and we receive, in faith that Christ is mysteriously present on both sides, as it were, of the human relationship. It is relatively easy to believe that Christ Emmanuel is 'with us'; less obvious, and more difficult to express, is the complementary truth, that Christ is 'with the other'. How to hold both convictions together? The paradox is only ever resolved by allowing the Spirit to confirm the Church as what I would call a 'school of solidarity', a teaching and a learning community which exists not for itself but for the sake of others, that they too may be formed after the manner of Christ.