Paul VI and Dialogue -- We Wouldn't Be Here Without Him

By Bishop Denis Madden

When Pope Paul VI, who will be beatified October 19, inherited the Second Vatican Council from John XXIII in 1963, his challenges included fulfilling the late pope’s wishes to “open a window” in the Church and to reach out to “our separated brethren.” Pope Paul’s approach to both of these was to introduce the concept of dialogue.

The Church hasn’t been the same since.

John O’Malley recounts in his book “What Happened at Vatican II” that the Council’s early draft on ecumenism didn’t use the word dialogue once. Then Pope Paul issued his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (On the Church) on August 6, 1964. In it, he repeatedly stressed the importance of dialogue, stating, “The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make.” The Council championed dialogue from then on.

November 1964 saw the Council’s Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), which called on “all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism,” that is, dialoguing with, praying together and simply building friendships with non-Catholic Christians.

In October 1965, the Council took dialogue beyond other Christians and applied it to the world’s religions with Nostra Aetate, a brief but groundbreaking document that swept away centuries of erroneous negative teaching about the Jewish people and held up examples, essentially starting points for dialogue, where the Catholic Church saw positive elements of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. The document noted that all religions seek answers to the big questions: What is the meaning of life? Why do people suffer? What is the road to true happiness? All of these call for dialogue.

Pope Paul put the call for dialogue with the world into action through his apostolic journeys to places including India, Portugal, the United States, Colombia, Turkey and the Holy Land. His reason for taking the name Paul as pope was to emulate the journey of the missionary disciple. His historic January 1964 meeting with Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem renewed the Catholic dialogue with Orthodox Christians and led the following year to the mutual rescinding of the excommunications of 1054 that had divided the churches.

In October 1965, during his visit to the United States, Pope Paul became the first pope to address the United Nations. His remarks, essentially to the entire world, included the famous call: “No more war, war never again!” The implications are clear. The Catholic Church does not simply engage in dialogue for dialogue’s sake, but because the fruits of dialogue—engagement, friendship, respect, recognizing the human dignity of people different than ourselves—are the seeds of peace and the Kingdom of God.

Through our dialogues with others, the Catholic Church has seen much good fruit over the past 50 years. We owe it to the grace of the Holy Spirit. But in a very practical way, we also owe it to Pope Paul.

Bishop Madden is an auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Prayers for Christian Unity Apply to Catholics Too

By Bishop Denis Madden

As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity draws to a close, maybe it would be a good idea for Catholics to resolve to spend the other 50 weeks of the year praying for Catholic unity. This is something Catholics already do at every Mass, praying for the Church and for the pope, whose unenviable job it is to hold the entire Church together. The least we can do, with our prayers and our actions, is make that job a little easier for him.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church in the United States suffers from increasing division. Journalist John Allen described this in 2009 as a kind of "tribalism" in which a variety of groups within the Church all "speak their own language, follow their own heroes, and engage members of the other tribes largely as sparring partners in ideological debates."

One could argue that Catholics get along better with members of other faith traditions who happen to share our views on certain hot-button issues than we do with our fellow Catholics whose lived-out faith has a different emphasis than our own. If this is the case, maybe it would help if Catholics involved in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue shared some of the lessons we have learned in promoting harmony between people of faith with divergent views:

1. Pray together. It's simple, but it's an essential part of ecumenical dialogue especially because prayer brings us closer to Christ. The classic image of ecumenism is that of different Christians like spokes on a wheel with Christ at the hub. The spokes are closest to each other when they're closest to the center. Catholics have the added benefit that they not only can pray the Creed and read the Scriptures together, but also share in the sacraments, the signs of God's grace that unite us as a Church.

2. Do good works together. This approach shifts the focus away from divisive issues and allows both parties to witness to their faith through actions. It could be volunteering at a soup kitchen, helping at-risk youth with their homework, visiting the sick and imprisoned or any of a number of ministries. We encounter Christ in the poor and the marginalized, so this work would allow otherwise warring Catholics to encounter him together.

3. Try to understand one another. Our culture often fixates on proving to the other guy how wrong he is. The goal of dialogue is to understand the other. It's easy to assume someone acts a certain way for the wrong reasons. But Catholics should recognize our differences as a vital diversity, part of the richness of the Church, the one body with many parts. As St. Paul says to the Corinthians in this Sunday's readings, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you.'" Whether someone is passionately defending the unborn, the poor, the immigrant, the worker, etc., all of these efforts are part of a consistent bigger picture.

4. Always charity. When all else fails, choose to love. The Church is a family. Family is about not always having things exactly as we want them, about learning patience. It's about loving and supporting one another in spite of our failures and flaws. Pope Benedict recently said that divisions among Christians "disfigure" the Church. We have no option but to put our best face forward.

Bishop Madden is an auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.