MANILA – Interreligious dialogue has intensified and expanded in Asia after Islamist militants attacked New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington 11 years ago, says a Philippine prelate who leads the efforts of Asian bishops to advance interaction among people of differing faiths.
“From what I have read and experienced since 9/11 in 2001, I can see that dialogue has become intense as it has grown,” Archbishop Fernando Capalla, emeritus archbishop of Davao in the southern Philippines, said in an interview on the anniversary of the two terrorist attacks in the United States.
“There is a sense of ongoing dialogue, and people do listen here in Asia if not always in the West,” the 77-year-old bishop remarked while reflecting on his experience as chairman of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC-OEIA) {1}.
Malaysian Jesuit Father Jojo Fung, Resident Theologian at the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Quezon City, Philippines in a separate interview also noted efforts among scholars of interreligious dialogue in Asia to delve deeper into Islamic values and principles. Clearly, “Terrorism isn’t what Islam is all about,” Father Fung said.
In fact, Archbishop Capalla noted, the movement to dialogue has spread to other institutions charged with maintaining peace and pursuing national development. He cited the International Seminar on Religion and Peace Building Process in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to be held Sept. 17-19 in Bangkok {2}. He is slated to speak there on the Catholic Church’s experience of interreligious dialogue and network building among other religions in the region.
Asian bishops who worked for Rome’s approval of the FABC statutes in 1972 as well as those who served after them envisioned dialogue as a “way of being Church in Asia,” which they spoke of as the home of “great religious traditions.”
The Statement and Recommendations of the First Plenary Assembly of the FABC acknowledges, “Over many centuries, they (religious traditions) have been the treasury of the religious experiences of our ancestors, from which our contemporaries do not cease to draw light and strength.” The bishops could not help but ask, “How can we not give them reverence and honor?” {3}
Even so, since then and especially after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., Asian bishops have noticed growing religious extremism hampering the attainment of their vision. {4} In this regard, Archbishop Capalla observed, some bishops in Pakistan are still urging their government to change the country’s blasphemy laws.
When leaders of bishops’ conferences belonging to the FABC meet Nov. 19-25 in Vietnam for their Tenth Plenary Assembly, the leaders plan to discuss growing threats to religious freedom, which national laws fail to protect.
The latest unpublished draft of the assembly’s Working Paper asks how FABC initiatives in interreligious dialogue in past decades can promote “collaboration in resolving disputes, tensions and conflicts, and promote peace and harmony in Asia.”
This will be among issues to be discussed by more than 50 presidents and delegates of the 19-member bishops’ conferences, from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to East Timor (Timor Leste) in Southeast Asia. Their reflections will focus on the assembly theme: “FABC at Forty Years – Responding to the Challenges of Asia: The New Evangelization.”
“In the past, we had many works going on with ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, but lately the work on ecumenism is being done more at the regional level,” Archbishop Capalla reported. Two annual activities, he also pointed out, are co-sponsored with the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA): the Asian Conference of Theology Students and the yearly Congress for Asian Theologians. {5}
This November, the FABC assembly delegates will also be asked to look into concerns about Catholics who leave their Church to join Pentecostal and Evangelical communities, and how Catholic renewal groups, Small Christian Communities and other Church movements can inspire Catholics to not leave the Church.
Archbishop Capalla said Rome through the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) has been dialoguing with Christian groups and an interfaith meeting convened in Bangkok January 2011 with the World Council of Churches and the World Evangelical Alliance produced a code of conduct for dialogue among the groups.{6}
FABC OEIA
Asians account for 60 percent of the world’s people, but less than 3% of them are Christians. {7} “Mission According to the Catholic Church in Asia: A New Way of Being Church,” a paper by India’s Sister Clemens Mendonca, OEAI’s executive secretary, reflects this reality. Given the continent’s situation of plurality, she wrote, the mission of every religious tradition in Asia is to be “reconcilers and bridge builders between God, world and humans.”
She warned that propagating hatred and cultural superiority would only worsen the situation of “colossal poverty, oppressive social systems based on class, caste, race and gender disparity, and political disturbance and militarization.”{8}
This same concern drove FABC pioneers to highlight dialogue as the way for evangelization in Asia. Six years after the federation’s official establishment it formally created OEIA in 1978, and the office began its core task of instructing bishops on key issues of interreligious dialogue. Seminars and training were provided through a series of Bishops’ Institute for Interreligious Affairs (BIRA) that brought bishops together to discuss Church documents and theological issues and to study together their experiences in interreligious settings. {9}
OEIA later launched the FABC’s Seminar for Interreligious Affairs (SIRA) to provide a venue for bishops and priests already committed to interreligious dialogue to share on their ministry and approaches. Succeeding BIRA events organized under new OEIA leaders assembled groups of bishops with scholars and persons of other religions for days of face-to-face interreligious dialogue on “harmony.” That series included Muslim-Christian dialogue, Buddhist-Christian dialogue and Hindu-Christian dialogue, and Christian dialogue with Confucian and Taoist delegates. Its final session involved multilateral dialogue.
When De La Salle Brother Edmund Chia of Malaysia became OEIA’s executive secretary and Thailand’s Bishop Lawrence Thienchai Samanchit served as chairman, a special consultation with national secretaries of dialogue commissions in the region in 1997 resulted in the new priority for the Formation Institute for Interreligious Affairs (FIRA). It aimed to focus on grassroots formation for interreligious dialogue, but the formation of middle-level Church leaders instead of grassroots leaders emerged. Teachers, pastoral workers, youth leaders, catechists, parish priests were among the participants.
In 1993, the FABC signed an agreement in Hua Hin, Thailand, as part of a Joint FABC-CCA Task Force that planned to create an Asian Ecumenical Committee (AEC). The committe was assigned to carry out joint programs, foster ecumenical relations at national and local levels, and conscientize Christians of all Churches to work for Christian unity. The FABC approved the agreement in January 1995 at its plenary assembly in Manila and the CCA followed suit in June 1995 at its General Assembly in Colombo.
The FABC and the CCA have been gathering for years for ecumenical consultations. In July 1996, the AEC membership was defined: seven Roman Catholic members and seven Churches belonging to the CCA. The FABC later sent delegates to the first Congress of Asian Theologians (CAT I) that gathered more than 100 theologians from Asia in sessions in Suwon, South Korea, in May 1997.
A second AEC meeting held in Indonesia the following year to tackle CCA’s representation in the Asian Synod in Rome later that year, joint celebration of the 2000 Christian Jubilee, Catholic participation in the Asian Ecumenical Course in Oct. 1998. Rev. David Gill and Rev. Agustina Lementut, both AEC members represented CCA at the synod.
Ecumenical teams were also formed to give ecumenical formation courses at local and national levels. Joint Ecumenical Formation seminars were conducted in India in 1999 and Taiwan in 2002.
In May 1998, a CCA-FABC team visited the churches of Arabia/Persian Gulf to study the situation of migrant workers and to explore forms of cooperation with Churches serving migrants’ needs.
In 2001, organizers of the Asian Movement for Christian Unity’s third seminar chose the theme “Giving Shape to a New Ecumenical Vision in Asia.” Senior representatives of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity traveled to Chiangmai, Thailand to flesh out their vision.
Uphill Climb to Dialogue
Archbishop Capalla will attend the FABC plenary assembly this November, but his “fruitful and challenging” term as OEIA chairman will end in December.
“As OEIA head,” Archbishop Capalla said, “I have been trying to promote meetings with and for bishops and clergy to review our understanding of John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Missio {10} where interfaith dialogue is emphasized. I have also reviewed with the bishops the pope’s Ecclesia in Asia.” {11}
He urges bishops and priests to “own” John Paul II’s conviction, “especially Redemptoris Missio #56 in which the pope says, ‘Other religions constitute a positive challenge for the Church: they stimulate her both to discover and acknowledge the signs of Christ’s presence and of the working of the Spirit, as well as to examine more deeply her own identity and to bear witness to the fullness of Revelation which she has received for the good of all.'”
For the past two years, FABC OEIA has been preparing for the Second Asian Bishops-Ulama (Islamic scholar) Conference to be held in Jakarta in February 2013. In the Philippines, Archbishop Capalla is Catholic convener of the Bishops-Ulama Conference (BUC) {12}, along with Islamic scholars and Protestant bishops.
They work primarily for peace and development on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines where the government has created an autonomous region comprising areas with predominantly Muslim populations. In 2003, BUC organized the First Asian Bishops-Ulama Conference in Manila. BUC led in the creation of the First Indonesia-Mindanao Bishops-Ulama Network of Basic Human Communities three years later.
For the gathering in 2013, Archbishop Capalla noted, the sponsors will be the FABC, CCA, the Catholic bishops of Indonesia and Indonesia’s two largest Muslim groups, Muhammadiyah {13} and Nahdlatul Ulama. {14}
Reflecting on challenges FABC OEIA faces, he expressed his wish that more bishops, like lay people, would get involved in FABC activities on inter-religious dialogue and ecumenism.
Some bishops are also “wrestling with” a concern that the Vatican organization that deals with ecumenism and interreligious dialogue has “little to do with FABC.” Archbishop Capalla cited a Vatican-organized meeting two years ago on dialogue in Asia to which he was invited through the Philippine bishops’ conference. “When a bishop asked the cardinal sent by the Vatican why the FABC was not involved, he was told the Vatican Office deals with diocesan or conference groups, not continental groups,” Archbishop Capalla said.
{1} http://www.fabc.org/offices/oeia/history.html
{2} http://www.peace.mahidol.ac.th/th/document/IRC/Muslim_League-IRC_Revised_Program[1].pdf
{3} http://www.worldcat.org/title/evangelization-in-modern-day-asia-the-first-plenary-assembly-of-the-federation-of-asian-bishops-conferences-fabc-statement-and-recommendations-of-the-assembly-taipei-taiwan-22-27-april-1974/oclc/3556921
{4} http://www.fabc.org/fabc%20papers/fabc_paper_112.pdf
{5} http://mgocsmdiaspora.org/cca/?page_id
{6}http://www.worldevangelicals.org/pdf/1106Christian_Witness_in_a_Multi-Religious_World.pdf =10
{7} http://www.fabc.org/fabc%20papers/fabc_paper_112.pdf
{8}http://www.edinburgh2010.org/fileadmin/files/edinburgh2010/files/pdf/Clemens%20Mendonca%202009-2-27.pdf
{9} http://www.fabc.org/offices/oeia/history.html
{10}http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio_en.html
{11}http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_06111999_ecclesia-in-asia_en.html
{12} http://naminterfaithdialogue.com/?p=191
{13} http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/396507/Muhammadiyah
{14} http://www.philtar.ac.uk/encyclopedia/indon/nahdat.html
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