The solution that the Pope pointed to was the language of human rights, which “are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.”
The Holy Father, in arguing this point, makes “a claim that can be engaged be non-believers, as well as by believers of all religious traditions that cherish reason,” Weigel notes.
Truth-Centered Dialogue
“The Pope also had some important and challenging things to say about turning-noise-into-conversation among religions, and within the fractured Christian household.”
The Pope, among other things, made clear at the meeting with other religions that, “in his mind, tolerance doers not mean avoiding differences in an exchange of pleasantries and banalities; rather, he gently suggested, true dialogue means taking differences seriously and exploring them, within a bond of civility created by mutual respect in the quest for truth,” explains Weigel.
The Catholic author and academic explains that for Benedict XVI, “genuine interreligious dialogue” does not “avoid the hard questions; it begins with the hard questions.”
“It is not difficult to imagine that Benedict had in mind here the dialogue he has been slowly nurturing with Islam: a dialogue focused on religious freedom and the separation of spiritual and political authority in the state. Unlike those veterans of the Catholic-Islamic dialogue who have long preferred to avoid those questions, Benedict insists, quietly but firmly, on beginning with them. Whether his approach helps support those Islamic reformers working to build an Islam that can live with pluralism and political modernity is one of the great questions on which a lot of 21st century history will turn.”
Weigel then turns to the address that Benedict delivered to the ecumenical gathering of Christians, a group that often appears fractured by division.
In this provocative speech, Weigel claims that “Benedict sharply raised the ecumenical ante by asking his fellow Christian leaders to consider whether those divisions did not reflect a ‘relativistic approach’ to Christian doctrine and moral teaching”.
The Pope pointed out that this relativistic approach is strangely parallel to secularist critiques of Christianity: a “relativism” about the truth of Christian faith that is shaped by the assumption that “science alone is ‘objective,’” an assumption that relegates all religious conviction “to the subjective sphere of individual feeling.”
According to Weigel, “Benedict’s personal answer to that question is, undoubtedly, yes.”
“Which suggests that this man who once took a professor’s post at Tubingen precisely to deepen his own theological dialogue with Lutheran colleagues now realizes that the real future of serious ecumenical conversation lies with the Catholic Church’s encounter with those Christian communities (largely, but not exclusively, evangelical) that still believe that the Gospel and the creeds stand in judgment on our theological speculation, rather than vice-versa. The Gospel and the creeds, the Pope suggested, are the boundaries within which real conversation can grow from ecumenical noise.”
Among the observations that strike George Weigel about the Pope’s visit is that, “it was refreshing to be in the presence of an adult – an adult who treated his hosts as adults by paying them the compliment of making serious, sustained arguments.”
In addition, “The American majority was reaffirmed in its conviction that religiously-informed moral argument has a place in public life; the non-believing minority experienced a religious leader who took care to speak in a language non-believers could understand,” he writes.
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Indeed, “by showing his pastor’s heart,” says Weigel, “one of the world’s most learned men embodied a truth of which both he and John Paul II were firmly convinced: faith and reason go together.”