1

Vatican II and Interreligious Dialogue:

It’s Impact on the World and the African Church
____________________________________________________
By

Michael McCabe SMA (Tangaza College, Nairobi, Kenya)

Introduction

The Second Vatican Council was the first ecumenical council in the history of the
Church to give serious consideration to the Church’s relationship to the followers of other
religions and to advocate interreligious dialogue as an integral dimension of her mission. Its
positive statements about other faith traditions decisively shaped the Church’s understanding
of itself and its mission in ways from which there is no return, in spite of some current
difficulties and set-backs. My presentation will attempt a) to highlight the significance of the
Council’s teaching on interreligious dialogue and draw out its implications for the
understanding and practice of mission and b) to flag some achievements, difficulties and
challenges of interreligious dialogue, especially in the present African context. First, I will
begin by stating two crucial presuppositions of this paper.

Two Presuppositions

My first that it is that dialogue is primarily between peoples not belief systems; my
second is that it involves the entire culture of a people. The first presupposition clearly
implies that respect for, and openness to, the followers of a religion is the necessary
foundation for a better understanding and appreciation of that religion. The second
presupposition highlights the fact that religions are embedded in, and carried by, cultures (the
entire way of life by which a people express, confirm and nurture their identity as a particular
people). Hence interreligious dialogue is, at one and the same time, intercultural dialogue.
This is particularly true of religions where the forces of secularism have not yet divorced the
spiritual from the material world as, for example, the traditional religion of Africans.
 2

A. The Significance of Vatican II

Over the past 50 years the Church’s relationship to the followers of other religions has
moved “from confrontation to dialogue,” to quote from the title of a familiar book by Belgian
theologian, Jacques Dupuis.1 Most missionary congregations were born at a time when the
Church’s relationship to non-Christian religions oscillated between hostility and neglect. It
was not the purpose of mission to enter into dialogue with the followers of other religions but
rather to convert them to Christ and make them members of the true Church.

The missionaries were the Church’s frontier troops, leaving their home countries in a
spirit of self-sacrificing love and service to proclaim the Gospel and establish the Church in
pagan lands. They saw themselves as engaged in a one-way traffic.2 It was they who had to
bring the true faith, while the pagans were merely the recipients; it was they who had to
convert, while the pagans were the ones to be converted. For the missionaries it was
inconceivable that other religions apart from Christianity -- or more precisely the form of
Christianity found in the Catholic Church -- could facilitate a saving encounter between God
and people. Far from being “seeds of the Word” (AG 11), other religions were viewed as
“cocktails of idolatry or superstition,”3 and works of the devil. This negative evaluation to
other religions, which continued practically up to the time of the Second Vatican Council,
found expression even in the language of Christian prayer. We prayed for ‘the poor heathen,’
for ‘those steeped in superstition and ignorance.’ In a Prayer for the Conversion of Africa,
still in use up to 1964, when I entered the Society of African Missions, we prayed as follows:

O my God, behold us humbly prostrate in thy presence beseeching thee

through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, to have pity on infidel Africa. Change the
hearts of its unhappy children and save their souls.4

In the light of this negative evaluation of other religions, the positive approach
endorsed by Vatican II seemed like a revolution. Jacques Dupuis has termed the Council a

1
Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis), trans by Phillip
Berryman, 2002.
2
Cf. Justin Ukpong, “Contemporary Theological Models of Mission: Analysis and Critique,” AFER, June
1983, pp. 162-164.
3
Melchior de Marion Brésillac, Faith, Hope, Charity (Spiritual Exercises given to Indian Seminarians),
translated from the French by John Flynn, SMA, Rome, 1988, p. 134.
4
Directory of the African Missions, Guy & Company Ltd., Cork, 1957, p. 44.
 3

“watershed”5 in the Church’s approach to other religions. Certainly no simple ‘hermeneutic

of continuity’ can do justice to the newness of the Council’s teaching. However, this positive
approach did not just suddenly appear out of the blue, so to speak. It should be seen rather as
the climax of a theological and pastoral movement around the middle of the 20th century that
tried to develop a more positive approach to other cultures and religions and to promote
dialogue as an important component of mission.

In Africa and Asia there were theologians and anthropologists who sought to find
within the local cultures of ‘non-Christians’ what were called human and spiritual values that
could serve as ‘stepping stones’ to the Gospel (preparatio evangelii). I should also add here
that missionaries themselves played a significant role in bringing about this change of
approach.6 Their own positive experiences often led them to question the negative theological
evaluation of other religions they had received and to bring to light the many positive values
they found in the cultures and religious traditions of the people among whom they worked.

Vatican II took this irenic approach to a new level with its recognition and affirmation
of spiritual and moral values (“seeds of the Word”) in non-Christian religions and cultures.
This affirmation can be seen especially in the major documents of the Council: the Decree on
the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes (AG); The Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church, Lumen Gentium (LG); the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,
Gaudium et Spes (GS); and the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian
Religions, Nostra Aetate (NA).7

The Spiritual Treasures planted by God among the Nations

The acknowledgement of authentic human and spiritual values in other religions is

expressed more forcefully in AG 9 & 11 and NA 2 than elsewhere in the Council documents.

5
Op. cit., p. 59.
6
In Africa the contribution of Placide Frans Temples, a Belgian Franciscan missionary who worked for over 20
years in the Congo and published an important study of what he termed Bantu Philosophy (Philosophie Bantou)
in 1945 is widely acknowledged. Less well known is the contribution of Kevin Carroll, SMA, a missionary in
Ghana and Nigeria for nearly 50 years, to the appreciation of African art and culture, especially among he
Yorubas. That lacuna is now being rectified with a major Conference on his work being organised by the SMA
to take place in the Dromantine Retreat and Conference Centre, Newry, N. Ireland on the 6 th October, 2012.
7
Other themes found in these documents, e.g., the broadening and deepening of the meaning of mission, and
the acknowledgement of cultural diversity as a value to be cherished by missionaries, also give strong
theological foundation for viewing interreligious dialogue as an integral dimension of mission. I have elaborated
these themes at greater length in an article I wrote a few years back. Cf. “Mission as Dialogue” in the Tangaza
Journal of Theology and Mission, 2010/1, pp. 31-46.
 4

AG 9 states that “whatever truth and grace is already found among the nations is a sort of
secret presence of God.” AG 11 goes on to spell out the implications of this affirmation for
the members of the Church and especially for missionaries, emphasising the need for
dialogue:

In order to be able to witness to Christ fruitfully, Christians must be united to

those people (gentes) in esteem and love. They must take part in their
cultural and social life through the various dealings and occupations of
human life. They must be familiar with their national and religious
traditions; with joy and reverence they must discover the seeds of the word
hidden in these traditions…. Just as Christ searched the hearts of people and
led them to the divine by truly human contacts, so his disciples, deeply
imbued with the Spirit of Christ, should know the human persons among
whom they live and associate with the. In this way, through sincere and
patient dialogue, they will learn what treasures the bountiful God has
distributed among the nations.

This positive approach receives even more emphatic expression in the Declaration
Nostra Aetate. In its first paragraph the Declaration situates its directives on the Church’s
relations to the followers of other religions in the broad context of the common origin and
destiny of all people in God, and of the search, common to all religious traditions, to answer
ultimate question about the meaning of human life. It then goes on, in the second paragraph,
to exhort the members of the Church

prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the

followers of other religions, and in witness to the Christian life and faith, to
acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and moral good, as well as
the socio-cultural values found among them (NA 2).

Despite its appreciation for the authentic human and spiritual values to be found in
other religions and its exhortation to missionaries, and to all members of the Church, “to
acknowledge, preserve and promote” these values, Vatican II did not offer, according to
Dupuis, a definitive theological evaluation of non-Christian religions or spell out what role, if
any, they may have in God’s plan for the salvation of humanity. Be that as it may, there is
more than sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that the Council viewed the spiritual
and moral values found in other religions as part and parcel God’s personal outreach to all
peoples and not merely an expression of the human search for God.8 This theological

8
This seems to be the line adopted by Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), where non-Christian
religions are termed “natural religious expressions, worthy of esteem” but incapable of establishing “an
authentic and living relationship” with God (Cf. EN 53). The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s
 5

evaluation of other religions would later receive further support and affirmation in the
writings and speeches of Pope John Paul II.

A major theme running through several of John Paul II’s encyclical letters and
speeches is that of the universal presence and action of God’s Spirit in human history. His
first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis speaks of “the firm belief of the followers of other
religions” as an effect of the Spirit of truth operating outside the visible confines of the
Mystical Body” (RH 6). His strongest statement on the universal presence and action of the
Holy Spirit is in his encyclical on the Permanent Relevance of the Church’s Missionary
Mandate, Redemptoris Missio (RM), published in 1990. RM 28 states unambiguously that the
presence and action of the Holy Spirit, everywhere in the world, “affect not only individuals
but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.”

It is clear that, for Pope John Paul II, the many and varied religious traditions of
humanity are much more than mere attempts by human beings to reach out to God. They are
genuine, if always limited,9 expressions of God’s outreach to human beings beyond the
boundaries of the Church and manifestations of the Spirit of God at work in the world. If,
then, God’s Spirit is present in, and works through, other religions, it is surely legitimate to
speak of these religions as playing at least a participatory role (albeit dependent on the unique
and definitive mediation of Christ) in the salvation of their followers.10 And, if this is
accepted, may we not also view these religions as integral elements in God’s providential
plan for the salvation of human beings? This is the line being followed by a number of highly
respected Catholic theologians, notably Jacques Dupuis11 and Claude Geffré,12 and it
provides, I submit, a strong case for attuning mission to the key of dialogue.13

Dominus Iesus (2000) seems altogether too niggardly in its theological evaluation of other religions as
representing “the sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious
aspiration,” but not to be considered in any way as revealed truth (DI 7). This, in turn, means that the followers
of these religions cannot be said to have “theological faith” (ibid.). This position, it seems to me, is impossible
to reconcile with Ad Gentes 9 which speaks of “elements of truth and grace” to be found among the nations and
which “are, as it were, a hidden presence of God” (italics mine).
9
Christianity, too, as a socio-cultural phenomenon, is also a limited expression of God’s loving self-donation in
history.
10
Redemptoris Missio seems to allow for such a dependent but important mediatory role for non-Christian
religions when it refers to “participated forms of mediation of different kinds and degrees” beyond the frontiers
of Christianity. Cf., the final sentence of RM 5.
11
While Dupuis’ views came under the scrutiny of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, its final
judgement cleared Dupuis of any trace of doctrinal error.
 6

Mission as Dialogue

The teaching of Vatican II on other religions has enormous implications for the
understanding of the Church’s mission, especially its mission ad extra. The Church and all its
members are called to participate in a movement of self-giving love that comes from God and
of which God’s Spirit is the primary agent -- and who is present and active among all peoples
in and through their religions and cultures.

As participants in God’s mission, missionaries never begin from a tabula rasa. Rather
they encounter human beings and a world in which God’s Spirit is already operative. God is
everywhere before them, and salvifically active in ways unknown to us. Mission thus means
entering into the mystery of a missionary God whose love embraces the world and all its
inhabitants: the mystery of the Spirit’s power, present in unexpected places and unsuspected
ways; the mystery of people’s participation in the paschal mystery in ways we have neither
known nor imagined (cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 22). To encounter this mystery we need to
look, to contemplate, to discern, to listen, to learn, to respond, to collaborate.

Engaging in mission in this more open and dialogic mode does not mean in any way
bracketing, much less abandoning, the missionaries’ core convictions, as disciples of Christ,
about the unique and constitutive role of Christ in the salvation of humankind. Some
advocates of religious pluralism, like Alan Race,14 John Hick15 and Paul Knitter16 argue that
in order to enter into genuine dialogue with the followers of other religions, Christians must
abandon or radically revise their claims about Christ so as to accord other religions parity of
esteem with Christianity. However, the parity of esteem required for genuine dialogue is to

12
See Geffré’s recent article, “The Crisis of Religious Identity in an Age of Religious Pluralism” in Concilium
(2005/3), pp. 13-26. Geffré argues that Christians need to de-absolutise Christianity as an historical religion and
accord other religions a de jure role in God’s plan of salvation.
13
The clearest official endorsement of this position is to be found in a 1984 Document of the Pontifical Council
for Interreligious Dialogue on “The Attitude of the Church towards the Followers of Other Religions” which
insists that mission and dialogue can never be separated: “Dialogue is the norm and necessary manner of every
form and aspect of Christian mission” (no. 29). Cf. also in this regard the major contributions of Michael Barnes
SJ (Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002) and Paul F.
Knitter (Introducing Theologies of Religions, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2002).
14
Cf. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions, Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, New York, 1983.
15
While Hick has written several books in support of the pluralist model of the relationship between the
religions, the clearest exposition of his position is to be found in God and the Universe of Faiths: Essays in the
Philosophy of Religions, Macmillan, London, 1973.
16
Cf. Knitter’s best known work is: No Other Name? A critical survey of Christian Attitudes Towards World
Religions, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1985.
 7

be accorded to the dialogue partners, not necessarily to the belief systems they espouse. 17 As
Jacques Dupuis rightly points out, holding on to one’s faith in Jesus Christ as unique Saviour
of all people need not undermine a commitment to mutual dialogue on equal terms.18 What is
essential in interreligious dialogue is that one is prepared to listen to the other, to allow
oneself to be challenged by the other, and to believe and hope that through this dialogue one
can come to a more adequate understanding of the faith of the other and of one’s own faith as
well. This is the approach taken by a number of Catholic theologians today, who are committed
exploring their own Christian faith in the context of dialogue with other religious traditions. For
example, John Keenan and Joseph S. O’Leary are exploring Buddhism to gain a better understanding
of aspects of their own Christian faith. Francis X. Clooney is doing something similar while
comparing Christian and Hindu texts, and David Burrell finds it profitable to dialogue with Islamic
thought so as to deepen his understanding of the Christian doctrine of God.19

In the encounter with others, the first task of missionaries is to seek out and discern
where and how God’s Spirit is present and active among them, in and through their religions
and cultures. They must not impose our agendas on people. Rather they must try to discover
God’s agenda by entering into the already existing dialogue between God and people with the
heart and mind of Christ. For this they need to develop a capacity to be surprised by God and
to recognise how the Christ “who plays in ten thousand places/, lovely in eyes and lovely in
limbs not his/ to the Father through the features of men’s faces” (G. M. Hopkins).

B. Achievements, Difficulties and Challenges of Interreligious Dialogue

in the African Context

It must be acknowledged that the Council’s teaching on other religions and on

interreligious dialogue as an essential dimension of the Church mission was, for the most
part, taken to heart by the missionary and religious congregations working in Africa as well
as by the local Church. Catholics no longer speak in derogatory terms about the followers of

17
As the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, states: “Equality, which
is the presupposition of interreligious dialogue, refers to the personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to
doctrinal content” (no. 22).
18
Cf. “Relating to other faiths: how far can you go?” in The Tablet, 8 June 2002, p. 16.
19
Cf. also, James L. Fredericks, Faith among Faiths: Christian Theology and non-Christian Religions, Paulist
Press, New Jersey, 1999, pp. 139-180. This author also sees the positives to be gained from a comparative study
of non-Christian religious traditions.
 8

other religions as “infidels” or “pagans” but rather refer to them by name, e.g. Hindus,
Buddhists, Muslims, or followers of traditional religion. Courses in Islamic Studies,
Interreligious Dialogue, Traditional African Religion,20 The Christian Theology of Other
faiths, are offered in many African seminaries (though not all), Universities and Theological
Colleges throughout the continent.

Numerous seminars, Summer Schools and workshops have updated and deepened the
understanding of priests, religious and some of the laity regarding the Council’s teaching on
interreligious dialogue and the new faces of mission.21 Congregations like the Jesuits, the
Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Passionists, the Combonis, the Missionaries of Africa, and
indeed many others, have not only initiated specific projects of interreligious dialogue
(especially with Muslims) but have adopted a dialogic approach in their understanding and
praxis of mission. I will illustrate this point with just two examples, the first taken from the
revised Constitutions and Laws of the Society of African Missions and the Second from the
Constitutions of the Medical Missionaries of Mary.

The SMA Constitutions and Laws (2004) article 1 states:

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit we aim to be a sign of communion and
an instrument of dialogue among cultures, religions and churches, so that the
Kingdom of justice and peace, love and truth, may become a reality.

Article 20 gives even clearer expression to the dialogic dimension of the Society’s
mission:

In our mission we seek to be enriched by the cultures and religions of the

people among whom we live and work. Thus with them we may be more
fully evangelised by the Holy Spirit who works in all.

The revised Constitutions of the Medical Missionaries of Mary (2005), article 9:15,
states that the members of the Congregation are “called to pray and to celebrate the liturgy
with people of different national and religious traditions and beliefs and to search with them
for the ‘seeds of the Word’ which lie hidden in their cultures.” An earlier article, referring to

20
A lacuna in this context has been the religions of Asia which have received very little attention in most
African theologates, seminaries or universities. Cf., Guido Oliana’s “The Theological Challenges of Religious
Pluralism: Towards a Christian Theology of Other Faiths” in the Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission,
2010/1, pp. 9-30, at p. 17
21
However, as Albert de Jong had pointed out, religious and missionary Congregations were given many more
opportunities for updating on the theological and pastoral orientations of Vatican II than were the pastoral
agents of the local Church. Cf., his work, The Challenge of Vatican II in East Africa, Paulines Publications
Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, 2004, pp. 186-192.
 9

the healing ministry of the Congregation, insists that its members should study the history,
traditions and customs of those among whom they work and strive “to understand their
interpretation of misfortune, sickness, suffering and death.”

Setbacks, Difficulties and Challenges

Despite significant achievements and some outstanding efforts on the part of a

number of missionary congregations, it must be admitted that interreligious dialogue,
especially the dialogue with Islam and with African traditional religion(s) is still in its infancy
in Africa. Indeed, in some places and instances, it has gone into reverse mode. Regarding the
dialogue with Islam, following many decades of peaceful coexistence and collaboration
between Christians and Muslims, the relatively recent emergence of a virulent stream of
Islamic fundamentalism and an equally dangerous Islamophobia in some Christian circles,
has given rise to new tensions and open conflict in many countries. In the missionary society
to which I belong (SMA), our 2007 General Assembly noted a significant lessening of
enthusiasm for dialogue with Islam in recent years.22

However, sometimes setbacks can be a stimulus to fresh efforts. The recent clashes
between Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria have led to renewed efforts at dialogue
and collaboration.23 Paradoxically, too, the debacle of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 Regensburg
Lecture,24 where he cited a disparaging remark about Islam’s violent tendencies, made by a
medieval Byzantine Emperor, has led to a renewed and intensified dialogue between Muslims
and Christians under the initiative known as “A Common Word”.25 It should be noted that
this initiative was taken not by the Vatican but by 138 Muslim scholars who sent a document
(“A Common Word”) to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other Christian leaders,
reminding them of what Muslims and Christians hold in common, namely, love of God and

22
Cf. “The Official Texts of the 19th General Assembly of the Society of African Missions”, Bulletin, no. 124
(May 2007), pp. 38-39.
23
In September 2011, a two-week workshop for SMA missionaries working in eight African countries was held
in Abuja, Nigeria. It was launched by the SMA General Council and facilitated by Fr Basil Soyoye, SMA, and
Sr Kathleen McGarvey, OLA. An account of the workshop can be wound on the website of the SMA Irish
Province at: http://www.sma.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=903%3Achristian-muslim-
dialogue-2011&catid=100%3Aministry&Itemid=101. Accessed 12 July 2012.
24
An English translation of the Pope’s lecture can be found at: http://www.zenit.org/article-16955?l=english.
25
Cf. David Burrell’s engaging and insightful account of this initiative: “Dialogue between Muslims and
Christians as Mutually Transformative Speech” in Criteria of Discernment in Interreligious Dialogue, ed. by
Catherine Cornille (Interreligious Dialogue Series/1), Cascade Books, Oregon, USA, 2009, pp. 87-98.
 10

love of neighbour, and challenging all to search for mutual understanding in the cause of
peace.26 In spite of this progress, the dialogue with Islam remains an extremely difficult one
which, nevertheless, must be pursued with courage and patience for the sake of
reconciliation, peace and religious freedom.27

If the dialogue with Islam is still in its infancy, this is even more true of the dialogue
the followers of traditional religions in Africa. I must confess disappointed that Pope John
Paul II’s post-synodal Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa (1995) had so little to offer by way of
orientation for this dialogue beyond saying that the followers of traditional religion should be
treated with respect and esteem and that courses on African traditional religion should be
given in houses of formation for priests and religious (cf. EA 67).

Pope Benedict XVI’s Africae Munus (2011), his Exhortation, following the Second
African Synod (2009), has somewhat more to say but is rather guarded and more focused on
the dangers to be avoided than the potential to be developed in this dialogue. While
acknowledging the need for dialogue with traditional African religions, the focus of Africae
Munus is on the need for “guidance in gaining a deeper and more accurate knowledge of the
traditions” in order “to identity points of real divergence” from the Gospel message, to
“clarify the vital distinction between culture and cult and to discard those magical elements
which cause division and ruin for families and societies” (AM 92). The Exhortation also
sounds a dire warning particularly about the “scourge” of witchcraft “currently experiencing
a certain revival” (AM 93) in Africa.

The dialogue with traditional religion in Africa had been stalled by the enormous rift
which developed between the Christian faith and traditional African cultures during the
modern missionary era when the Church was implanted in Africa. This rift has been
deepened more recently by the transportation to almost every part of Africa (especially
through the mass media) of the secularised and materialistic Western culture with its
attendant problems and negative influences.28 This situation surely calls for a deep healing

26
Cf. David Burrell, art. cit., pp. 88-89.
27
Cf. Pope Benedict XVI’s Post-Apostolic Exhortation, Africae Munus, Paulines Publications Africa, 2011, no.
94.
28
One of today’s leading African theologians, Laurenti Magesa, insists that the Church must help African
peoples resist the forces of globalisation and regain the ability and power of self-definition, thus affirming their
dignity and self-respect. For Magesa, the issue of self-definition is critical, for this is precisely what
globalisation, following on the heels of colonisation, is taking away from Africans. Cf., “Africa’s Struggle for
 11

and integration, which can be effected only through a painstaking and sustained dialogue with
the local cultures, in which the traditional religions are embedded. Here is surely a major
challenge for the African churches today.

Another difficulty which confronts the Church’s dialogue with traditional religion is
its heavy and heady emphasis on creeds and doctrines, whereas in traditional religions (not
only in Africa but throughout the world), the emphasis is more on myth, ritual and
celebration. Those who wish to engage in a fruitful dialogue with the followers of traditional
religions have to get out of their intellectual grove and examine how the rituals of traditional
religion function within the community and respond to human needs rather than to abstract or
theoretical questions. To dialogue with the followers of traditional religion we need to attend
to what we are feeling or experiencing than to what ideas come into our mind. Indeed, if we
are open enough, this dialogue can awaken dimensions of our own experience (for example,
greater awareness of our bodies) which we have forgotten or ignored – and may lead us to a
more integrated or holistic practice of our own faith.

Personally I have found helpful a suggestion made by one of the participants at a Staff
Colloquium on Interreligious Dialogue held in Kimmage (Dublin) in 2001. She said that
instead of trying to search for answers given, or even for the questions being addressed, by
other religions, it might be more fruitful to try and identify the core values of a religion. In
this perspective, it is assumed that each religion has some key or core religious value or set of
values which, while probably overlapping with those of other religions, can nevertheless be
said to be distinctive to that religion. An Irish missionary and author, Donal Dorr, has
identified the core value in traditional religion as “rootedness in nature and in the
community.”29

From my own experience missionaries who have worked in Africa can readily
identify and name the key values of traditional religion. This was verified for me some years
ago when I gave a three day seminar on the theme “Mission and the Challenge of
Interreligious dialogue” to a groups of African missionaries on a Renewal Course in
Jerusalem. I asked them to identify the values they discovered in the local cultures of the
people among whom they worked. The values they identified were: joy and celebration, the

Self-Definition During a Time of Globalization” (August-September 1999). Available on the SEDOS website
at: http://sedosmission.org/old/eng/magesa_1.htm. Accessed 12th August, 2012.
29
Mission in Today’s World, The Columba Press, Dublin, 2000, p. 40.
 12

unity of all life, relationship and friendship, hospitality and solidarity, patience and
endurance. These were not values they brought to the people, but values they found among
them, religious values embedded in the cultures – values which they found had enriched and
deepened their living out of their own faith in Christ. From my own experience of working as
a missionary in Liberia I would add the value of forgiveness. The capacity of so many
Liberians to forgive those who have inflicted the most abominable atrocities upon them in the
aftermath of the civil wars (1990- 2005), when I visited there in 2006 I found utterly
extraordinary. As an Irishman I have never come across anything like it in my own country,
where we have certainly been victims of criminal oppression by the British but find it so hard
to let go of the past.

While focusing on the positive values to be found in traditional religions, we must be

careful not to romanticise these religions (as was done in the film “the Emerald Forest” which
hit the headlines some 25 years ago, and perhaps more recently in the film, “Avatar”) and
ignore negative and apparently destructive elements in them. Spirit possession is a striking
feature of many traditional religions, where a group of people or a shaman deliberately set out
to be possessed by a particular spirit. While such spirit possession may not always be for an
evil purpose (in Zambia, for example, it is used to bring about healing), it is at least
ambiguous.

Even more ambiguous is the practice of witchcraft, which, as Africae Munus

acknowledges, still has an enormous impact on the everyday life not only of adherents of
traditional religion but also of African Christians. There is here a dabbling in the forces of
evil which creates an enormous amount of fear, even terror. We cannot ignore the presence of
“witch camps” in some of the most developed countries of sub-Saharan Africa.30 A
fundamental Christian conviction is that Christ came to liberate people from this kind of fear.
Dialogue with the followers of traditional religions surely requires that the oppressive
elements in these religions are also identified and honestly named, and that people’s fears are
addressed and redressed. This is what I would see as the purifying or redeeming aspect of the
dialogue between the Gospel and a particular culture

30
Kate Whitaker, of BBC World Service, gives a disturbing account of the horrific conditions under which these
women now live in such camps in Northern Ghana. Her programme,“No Country for Old Women”, which was
broadcast on 1st September, 2012, can be accessed on the website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00x8hm4
 13

So we come back again to the issue of culture. Dialogue with Traditional Religions
means dialogue with the followers of these religions and their cultures. Mention of the
dialogue with culture raises another difficulty: namely, the sense that this dialogue, despite
the many positive statements made in official and unofficial circles, is somehow stuck in a rut
or deadlocked. The gap between the Christian world and the world of traditional religion in
Africa has certainly not been bridged and hardly even lessened. Many reasons are advanced
for this failure. The main ones are a) that past and present inculturation projects are not
sufficiently anchored in the everyday life of the people and b) that the process of
inculturation was and remains mostly a dressing up with some local colour or an essentially
foreign (western) product.

It is sometimes said that the new Religious Movements, offering healing, success,
security, dignity and recognition to people, have stepped into the lacuna created by the failure
of the mainstream Christian Churches to inculturate the Gospel message. True, the solutions
these movements are offering are simplistic in the extreme. Yet, they are responding to real
needs in the everyday life of the people. I would suggest that a possible way out of the
present deadlock in the Churches dialogue with local cultures is to identify what Paulo Freire
terms “the generative issues”31 of a particular culture. There are the issues which respond to
the deep, unmet needs and hungers of the community (or significant sectors of the
community). Then, instead of just adding and African, Indian or Caribbean flavour to
existing rituals, the Church should develop new rituals in response to these issues. While this
may be primarily a challenge for the local Church it is also a challenge to which religious and
missionary congregations also must respond and for which they have an important
contribution to make.

Conclusion

A few days ago, I read the now widely circulated interview in Corriere della Sera,
given by the well-known Italian Prelate and Scripture Scholar, Cardinal Carlo Martini a few
days before his death to.32 In the interview he criticised the institutional Church for its pomp
and circumstance, its inability to relate to the world in which we live and to communicate the
Word of God effectively to the men and women of our time, its lack of flexibility and
31
Cf. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Edition), translated by Mrya Bergman Ramos, Continuum,
London, 2000.
32
An English translation of this interview can be found on the “Clerical Whispers Website at:
http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2012/09/translated-final-interview-with-martini_5.html
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courage. As I read his remarks in the context of revising this paper, I was struck by the
relevance of interreligious dialogue not only to the Church’s mission of creating truly
inculturated Christian communities and of promoting peace in the world but for its own
renewal and creative fidelity to the divine truth it bears but never fully grasps. This idea is
beautifully expressed by an Irish theologian teaching in Japan, Joseph S. O’ Leary:

Christian thought has to be fully open to the plurality of religious and secular
voices that situate and relativise it as a contingent cultural history, which can
be responsibly continued only in attentive response to these other voices.
This imperative has begun to make itself strongly felt only in the recent past,
and it has given rise to the most interesting religious thinking of today.
Dialogue.... saves Christianity from turning in on itself in an incestuous
rehash of its traditions, lets in some fresh air, and restores a human, natural
complexion to religious language.

My hypothesis is that pluralism is an irreducible aspect of

religious life and thought that can never be ironed out in the final triumph of
a single viewpoint. The reasons for this lie in the grain of religious language
itself, its reliance on ideas and images that are always culture-bound. The
vitality of religion, like that of art, depends intrinsically on the maintenance
of a variety of divergent styles.33

Why has there to be a final triumph of one religious viewpoint? Is it not enough that God and
his truth should triumph in the end and that, in this triumph, we can all be victorious.

33
Joseph Stephen O’Leary, Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,
1996, p. x.