Muslim, Buddhist, American Indian:

Quincentenary sparks non-Christian talks. (Interfaith Section -Catholic ecumenism)

by Dawn Gibeau

National Catholic Reporter

Vol.29 No.1( Oct 23, 1992)

Pp.18

COPYRIGHT National Catholic Reporter 1992


            ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious 
            Affairs sounds redundant, but John Borelli, an associate director in 
            that National Conference of Catholic Bishops agency, explained 
            recently that ecumenical relations are not the same as 
            interreligious ones. 
            Ecumenism refers to dialogue between Christians, he told NCR. It 
            often deals with theological questions and issues of history and 
            church order and structure, because its ultimate aim is church 
            unity, he said. Borelli is in charge of the NCCB's ecumenical 
            relations with Orthodox churches. 
            Interreligious relations, he explained, are those with Jews, 
            Muslims, Buddhists, American Indians, Hindus and other people of 
            faith who are not Christian. Goals can vary, but often talks seek 
            mutual understanding. 
            For example, Catholics and Muslims may find "similarities in 
            identification of God, worship of God, understanding of scripture" 
            and in practice "because we're descendants from the same Abrahamic 
            faith," he said. "With Islam, understanding is a very important 
            goal, because much of our history has been one of misunderstanding," 
            and often relations have been combative. 
            Talks at the local level often concentrate on specific concerns 
            about schools and neighborhoods, Borelli said; for instance, the 
            presence of drugs or guns in schools or assessment of how textbooks 
            present the faiths. 
            Borelli directs the NCCB's interreligious relationships with all but 
            Jews. Eugene Fisher is in charge of the dialogues with Jews (see 
            related story). 
            In Borelli's domain, the only national dialogue is with Muslims, and 
            it began last October with an introductory session. At this year's 
            October meeting, Catholics will explain mission and evangelization, 
            be said, and Muslims will explain dawah, which is an Arabic word 
            that means invitation, the invitation to Islam. "They're sort of 
            parallel concepts," he said. 
            The national dialogue is an outgrowth of dialogues in U.S. cities 
            such as Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Boston (NCR, Feb. 8,1991). 
            
            National dialogues are difficult to structure with Muslims, 
            Buddhists and other groups that have no national structure, Borelli 
            said. In contrast, he explained that the Orthodox Church has its 
            Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America, SCOBA, 
            with an ecumenical committee that appoints theologians to national 
            talks. In tandem, the NCCB has its ecumenical and interreligious 
            relations secretariat. 
            With faiths that lack such structures, Borelli's work tends to be 
            more multilateral than bilateral he said. For instance, he has 
            spoken at sessions of Buffalo Area Metropolitan Ministry, which 
            originated as a council of churches but expanded to an interfaith 
            council to embrace Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs. 
            "On a national level, there really isn't a place for an organization 
            that's able to draw together various religious groups in any kind of 
            official capacity," Borelli said. So he will work with a group such 
            as the World Conference on Religion and Peace, which has a U.S. 
            chapter in New York and is a nongovernmental organization at the 
            United Nations. 
            Besides such multilateral encounters, bilateral discussions 
            proliferate at the local level, he said. For instance, Buddhists are 
            diverse - "many Japanese Buddhists, some Chinese Buddhists, many 
            Southeast Asian Buddhists ... and a good many (U.S. natives) who 
            have taken up Buddhism as their faith.' 
            Yet, "where you find Buddhism, you'll find a sangha, the community 
            of monks," and that council often engages in dialogue with 
            Catholics, as it does with the Los Angeles archdiocese. 
            And in Hawaii, where Buddhism is the second-largest faith community 
            after Christianity, "there's kind of a conciliar relationship 
            involving various Christian and Buddhist groups," Borelli said. 
            These deal with social questions, he said, or with questions of 
            prayer and spirituality in which the two sides "can instruct and 
            learn from one another. I think in the area particularly of what we 
            in the Christian tradition would call contemplative prayer, we're 
            finding an overlapping of interest between Christians and 
            Buddhists." 
            And Borelli has been involved in meetings such as a recent 
            Buddhist-Christian conference that involved scholars from the United 
            States and Asia. A subgroup that's made up of Christian scholars, 
            mostly theologians and some historians of religion like myself, and 
            Buddhists" also has been meeting separately for about 10 years, he 
            said. 
            With Hindus, dialogue is limited to a few local encounters such as 
            one in Los Angeles, Borelli said. "I have friends who are Hindus, 
            and I know one or two places where academic things are going on that 
            have engaged people quite personally," he said. 
            He keeps up contacts with Hindus, being responsible to answer 
            questions that arise about Hinduism, he said, but nothing official 
            is going on in Catholic-Hindu relations because the U.S. Hindu 
            community is small. Borelli is also responsible for dialogue with 
            American Indians, but not for the two-thirds of American Indians he 
            said are Christian. 
            The Catholics' Tekakwitha Conference "brings together Native 
            American Catholics who are engaged in evangelization," he said, and 
            they conduct an internal dialogue about the relationship between 
            Catholicism and American Indian traditional religions. 
            And he participates in discussions with non-Christian, American 
            Indian traditionalists. Academic conferences take place, and "a good 
            many things have been happening in this past year" arising from the 
            quincentenary of Columbus' arrival in America, he said. "So the kind 
            of academic-style dialogue that goes on among all these various 
            faith groups goes on with Native Americans, too."