| At the invitation of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze visited Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, on October 29, 2000 to speak to a multicultural assembly about interreligious dialogue. As the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Arinze's responsibilities at the Vatican involve him with ongoing and extraordinary dialogues with members of the world's principal non-Christian religious traditions. The major exception is Judaism, which enjoys a distinct theological and administrative relationship with the Vatican.
Cardinal Arinze was educated in missionary schools and, at the remarkable age of 32, was named the first non-missionary archbishop of the Nigerian Diocese of Onitsha. He knows first-hand the horrors of conflict, having served as archbishop for 20 years during the catastrophic Biafran civil war.
Interreligious dialogue, he joked, is not limited to scholarly discussion, with “some learned professor offering a 40-page paper with 20 pages of footnotes. Although scholarly work is important, dialogue also includes contacts across the frontiers of religious experience in daily life. Religious plurality is a fact. Every human being is incurably religious - even under the most repressive and antireligious regimes. Each of us is bound to look for God, for the will of God. For us believers,” he noted, “religion is not ‘free,' it is obligatory because we recognize the necessity of responding to our God. But individuals should be left free to respond to their Creator in their own way. Religion should be proposed and never imposed.”
The cardinal also emphasized that dialogue with other traditions does not mean one gives up one's own understandings and insights. “Pluralism does not mean a supermarket where any religious tradition is just as valid as any other,” he said. “It is most important to be rooted in one's own faith and respectfully dialogue with others to follow the will of God.”
Created a cardinal in 1985, he is one of the top-ranking officials of the Catholic Church and has been considered by some to be a potential successor to Pope John Paul II. He encouraged the students in the audience to look for ways to create harmony and peace. “When you turn on the radio today,” he suggested with a wry smile, “the first story you hear is violence. The second story is violence. And the third story is…politicians! Work for a world that is better than the one we have. Work for a world where that first news story can be of peace-making. And the second story, of harmony. And maybe the third story could be…somebody being elected to something!”
He noted the special challenges that exist in the quest for peace in the Holy Land and cited a story of a rabbi who asked his student when he could tell it was daylight. The student responded quickly that it was when he could distinguish one tree from another. No, that wasn't it at all. Then it must be when he could tell a sheep from a cow. No, that didn't answer the question either. “Rather, you will know it is daylight when you look at another human being and recognize your brother or sister and not an enemy.”
Anthony J. Cernera, Ph.D., President of Sacred Heart University, was present at the lecture and said that his friendship with Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, has made him a better Christian and a better person. Rabbi Ehrenkranz agreed: “I am able to be a better Jew and rabbi because I have worked together with Christians, especially around issues related to peace and social justice.” |