Vatican cardinal poses interfaith challenge

BY AMANDA C DICKIE
A SENIOR Vatican cardinal has challenged British Catholics to commit themselves personally to the movement to improve relations between religions.
Hot from the historic meeting of world religious leaders in Assisi last week, Cardinal Francis Arinze, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told students at Oxford University that interfaith dialogue was a means to world peace.
He challenged universities to respond positively to religious pluralism in society by promoting interreligious encounters within their structures. This, he said, would equip today's students to positively influence the society of tomorrow.
Cardinal Arinze, who was the youngest bishop present at the Second Vatican Council's debates on religious freedom, said: "Each religion should be treated with respect."
But he warned against religious relativism, which he said was not a sign of a liberal mind, but of intellectual tiredness, because it denied the possibility of discovering objective truth.
The Nigerian cardinal, a convert from traditional African religion, said it was important to distinguish between evangelisation and proselytism, when speaking of the Church's mission.
Proselytism, he said, vvas condemned by Canon Law, "because it offends against the dignity of the human person". Social assistance to non-Christians should not be seen as a strategy to conversion, he added, although the needy had the right to become Christian if they chose to do so freely.
Commenting on September 11, Cardinal Arinze said he did not see civilisational clashes as inevitable. Universities and religions had an important role in promoting harmony, he said, and a duty to educate people to overcome suspicion and fear by identifying the causes underlying religious fundamentalism.
He saw hopeful signs in events like the symposium that was held on Saturday, sponsored by the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy and the Centre for Faith and Culture, at which Muslims and Christian academics engaged in lively theological debate.