No Dialogue without Hope: Interfaith Dialogue and the Transformation of a Virtue

Abstract

In this chapter, I will examine the way hope within interfaith dialogue has changed and developed in the Catholic Church. Speaking broadly, in early dialogues between faiths (which were more on the lines of monologues or debates), if hope was present, it was a hope to prove the other wrong or inadequate. Especially from the Christian side of such debates, one hoped to convert the Other to Christianity. In this regard, hope was often aligned with an aggressive, if subtle, means of defeating or silencing the Other. Such hopes were drastically re-aligned in the Catholic Church with Vatican II, and especially the promulgation of Nostra Aetate.

In this regard, hope shifted into a more ethical and dialogical framework: one hoped for opportunities to present one’s views and to listen to another’s views; one hoped to gain insights and truths from one’s dialogical partner. While not minimizing difference, one operating from this new Catholic perspective hoped to find shared spaces of communion, partnership, and solidarity. In more recent decades, there has been a backlash against some of these tendencies.

This backlash was most pronounced in Dominus Iesus (2000) and in some further Notes and clarifications issued by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. With a new emphasis on evangelization and mission, how one employs hope in interfaith dialogue may again be changing. This chapter will first look at hope as a virtue and the ethics of hope before tracing this change, particularly in the context of Jewish-Christian dialogue. It will ultimately argue that without the ethical and humble hopes of seeking to learn from and respecting the Other, no true interreligious dialogue will be possible.

Key Words: Interfaith dialogue, humility, pluralism, Nostra Aetate, virtue, Dominus Iesus.