1 Dialogue of Spiritual Life Between Catholics And

DIALOGUE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE BETWEEN CATHOLICS AND MUSLIMS

Entering into the Experience of “the Other” with the Thought of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul

II and Christian de Chergé

Shannon G. Wylie Faculty of Religious Studies McGill University, Montreal June 2015

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Religious Studies

Table of Contents Abstract ...... 4 Résumé ...... 5 Acknowledgements ...... 6 INTRODUCTION ...... 7 Chief Concern ...... 9 Secondary Concern ...... 12 Limitations ...... 12 CHAPTER ONE: VATICAN II BEGINNINGS ...... 14 Defining Dialogue ...... 14 Prior Steps ...... 15 Careful Balancing ...... 16 Concentric Circles ...... 16 Points of Contact with Islam: Nostra Aetate (1965) ...... 17 Connections to the Person and Community ...... 18 Gaudium et Spes (1965) ...... 18 “The Dignity of the Human Person” ...... 19 “The Community of Mankind” ...... 19 Betterment of Society ...... 20 Conclusion ...... 21 CHAPTER TWO WOJTYLA: PARTICIPATION OF THE PERSON IN THE COMMUNITY ...... 22 An Introduction to Wojtyla’s Concept of Person ...... 24 Participation: The Person with Others ...... 28 Acting Together ...... 29 Participating in Another’s Humanity ...... 33 “Profiles of Participation” ...... 34 I-you or Interpersonal Relationships ...... 34 We or Social Dimension ...... 35 Conclusion ...... 36 2

CHAPTER THREE: JOHN PAUL II: GOD’S TRINITARIAN LOVE FOR MAN ...... 38 Redemptor Hominis: Setting the Stage ...... 41 “In the Name of the Father…”: The Revelation of God’s Mercy ...... 43 “..and the Son”: Salvific Suffering of Christ ...... 46 “…and the Holy Spirit”: Continuing in Union ...... 51 Conclusion ...... 53 CHAPTER FOUR: JOHN PAUL II ON DIALOGUE WITH MUSLIMS ...... 55 Mutual Understanding in Theological Anthropology ...... 58 Man’s Origin and Destiny ...... 58 Morality...... 61 Common Goals ...... 63 Right to Freedom of Conscience...... 64 Peace ...... 65 Conclusion ...... 66 CHAPTER FIVE CHRISTIAN DE CHERGÉ: DIALOGUE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE ...... 68 Beginning a Dialogue of Spiritual Life ...... 69 Prerequisite of Humility ...... 72 Mystical Steps in Theology ...... 76 The All-Merciful ...... 77 God is One ...... 80 Mystical Steps in Life ...... 84 Obedience ...... 85 Prayer ...... 87 Scripture ...... 88 “A Love of the Furthest Ends” in a Dialogue of Spiritual Life ...... 89 CONCLUSION: LOVE AS A SINGLE REALITY ...... 93 Bibliography ...... 97 Appendix: Chronological List of John Paul II’s Significant Statements on Islam ...... 104

Abstract This thesis delves into post-Vatican II Catholic theology of dialogue with Muslims. I focus on the philosophical and theological anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and the dialogue of spiritual life of Christian de Chergé. Karol Wojtyla’s philosophical concept of the person’s participation in communities provides the essential aspects for achieving the level of unity that the Church seeks to establish when it involves itself in dialogue. John Paul II’s

Trinitarian thought opens up the analysis of community and dialogue to the inspiration from

God’s revelation of redemption and reliance upon God’s merciful, sacrificial, and unifying love.

This Trinitarian discussion introduces the significance of theological anthropology for the

Catholic understanding of community. Considering the contours of community introduced in

Wojtyla’s concept of participation and John Paul II’s Trinitarian theological anthropology, the themes for developing mutual understanding and community with Muslims are then explored in

John Paul II’s writings and speeches on the topic and Christian de Chergé’s method of a dialogue of spiritual life. Therein, I will seek to demonstrate the priority of a lived spiritual encounter in dialogue, one which does not bracket out debates between the two religious traditions concerning man’s relationship with God, in developing the unity necessary between Catholics and Muslims.

Résumé

Ce mémoire concerne la théologie catholique du dialogue avec les musulmans post-

Vatican II. Plus particulièrement, il y est question de l’anthropologie philosophique et théologique de Karol Wojtyla/Jean Paul II et de la méthode de dialogue de Christian de Chergé qui prend forme à travers la rencontre spirituelle. Le concept philosophique de Karol Wojtyla de la « participation » de la personne au sein des communautés fournit les aspects essentiels de l’unité que l’Église cherche à établir lorsqu’elle s’implique dans ce dialogue. La pensée trinitaire de Jean Paul II ouvre, quant à elle, l’analyse de la communauté et du dialogue à l’inspiration de la révélation de Dieu, à travers la rédemption et la dépendance de Dieu et de son amour miséricordieux, sacrificiel et unificateur. À travers ce discours trinitaire est introduite la signification de l’anthropologie théologique pour comprendre le concept de communauté dans la perspective catholique. Considérant les aspects constitutifs de la communauté introduits dans le concept de participation de Wojtyla et dans l’anthropologie théologique trinitaire de Jean Paul II, les thèmes suggérés pour la compréhension mutuelle et la communauté avec les musulmans sont explorés dans les écrits et discours de Jean Paul II ainsi que dans la méthode de dialogue de la vie spirituelle de Christian de Chergé. À cet égard, je vise à démontrer la priorité de la rencontre spirituelle – qui n’ignore pas les débats entre les deux traditions religieuses, en particulier sur le sujet de l’anthropologie théologique – mais qui a comme but de développer l’unité nécessaire entre catholiques et musulmans.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Gaëlle Fiasse for her continual encouragement and advice throughout the past two years of my Master’s degree and research for my thesis. She has always been available to answer my questions and to meet with me to discuss each stage of this thesis, consistently leading me to consider new subtleties of the subject. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Cere for taking the time to read the thesis and for providing helpful suggestions for the final edits, particularly with regard to a few additional secondary sources. I would also like to thank the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill, for the valuable academic formation I have received there and for the personal support I have received from my classmates throughout the thesis writing process. Lastly, I would like to thank my dear friends for their support in reading and writing alongside me this year and for my family’s continued personal support in pursuing my studies.

INTRODUCTION

This work on Catholic-Muslim Dialogue primarily features the thought of two “witnesses to hope” of the twentieth century: Saint John Paul II/Karol Wojtyla and Dom Charles-Marie

Christian de Chergé. As an introduction to the men who will be a chief concern of this work, it is of interest to begin from how each has received this title.

With regard to John Paul II, one may think that his title of “witness to hope” is due in part to the many dramatic details of Wojtyla’s life. That is, his story is one of hard-won victory; living through the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland and the oppressiveness of the Soviet occupation, Wojtyla’s response was to tirelessly defend the inalienable dignity of the person and the civil rights that belong to such a dignity. His positions as a professor-priest, archbishop, and, eventually, Pope allowed him to give his defence of dignity and rights a loud and influential voice.1 Yet, while using Witness to Hope as the title of John Paul II’s biography, George Weigel admits that it was John Paul II who first gave himself this designation in addressing the United

Nations in 1995.2

In this address, John Paul II defines himself as a “witness to hope,” not in connection to his own life, but rather in conjunction with faith in an inherent human dignity and a “merciful

Providence.”3 He desires to share this hope in working towards common goals with the United

Nations:

1 George Weigel, “Prologue: The Disciple,” in Witness to Hope (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999), 2-4. 2 Ibid., 4. 3 John Paul II, Apostolic Journey of His Holiness John Paul II to the United States of America, The Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, Address of His Holiness John Paul II, October 5, 1995, Vatican website, sec. 17, accessed February 9, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul- ii/en/speeches/1995/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_05101995_address-to-uno.html. 7

The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the twentieth century is the common effort to build the civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty. And the “soul” of the civilization of love is the culture of freedom…lived in self-giving solidarity and responsibility. (The Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, sec. 18; italics in the original)

The hope which John Paul II proclaims, then, is not solely representative of his own impressive life but is based in his faith in Providence and the communion of mankind.

The Trappist prior de Chergé, although a much lesser-known figure, has been similarly lauded for his witness to hope in the realm of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. In the case of de

Chergé, this title is explicitly tied to the Greek word for witness, marturion, the root of the

English word, martyr.4 De Chergé and his six brother monks, killed in the midst of Algerian political instability in 1996, were officially named martyrs by the Church in 2000 for giving their lives in witness to their faith.5 The connection to hope derives from the witness of peace and fraternity these monks provided from their simple monastic life in the Tibhirine Mountains of

Algeria, becoming “the seven sacraments of Christian hope at the end of the twentieth century, [a century] marked by the withdrawal of the self, the fear of the other, and religious sectarianism.”6

In contrast to the environment of fear of the twentieth century, these monks (whose witness is most accessible through the writings of de Chergé) offer hope in their “incandescent love, which was long-purified at the crucible of prayer, work, and sharing with the simplest of peoples.”7

4 Christian Salenson, “Witness, or the Question of Martyrdom,” in Christian de Chergé: A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 155-156. 5 Ibid., 157. 6 “les sept sacrements de l’espérance chrétienne en cette fin de XXe siècle marquée par le repli de soi, la peur de l’autre et le sectarisme religieux” (Bruno Chenu, “Présentation,” in L’invincible espérance [The Invincible Hope] [Paris: Bayard, 2010], 5). 7 “amour incandescent, qui s’était longuement purifié au creuset de la prière, du travail et du partage avec les gens les plus simples” (Ibid., 6).

Chief Concern

Although the foregoing introduction to the two men’s lives and witnesses may seem to suggest it, this work is not primarily a comparison of their thought. Rather, each has his distinct purpose in articulating a Catholic perspective of the “dialogue of life” within Catholic-Muslim

Dialogue. That is, as Jacques Dupuis describes it, a dialogue where each partner in the dialogue encounters “the other and the religious experience which that other bears within, together with his or her worldview.”8 This type of dialogue continues to be proposed by the Church in instances such as Pope Francis’s press conference in November 2014 through his recounting of an encounter with the Turkish Ambassador to the Holy See:

I saw an exceptional man before me, a man of profound piety. The President of that office was of the same school. They said something beautiful: They said: “Right now it seems like interreligious dialogue has come to an end. We need to take a qualitative leap, so that interreligious dialogue is not merely: 'What do you think about this?' 'We....' We need to take this qualitative leap, we need to bring about a dialogue between religious figures of different faiths”. This is a beautiful thing: men and women who meet other men and women and share experiences. We are not just talking about theology but religious experience. And this would be a beautiful step forward, beautiful. (Apostolic Journey of His Holiness Pope Francis to Turkey [28-30 November 2014], In-flight Press Conference of His Holiness Pope Francis from Istanbul to Rome)

In this reflection, Pope Francis reveals a preference for a dialogue of lived encounter between

Christians and Muslims rather than a dialogue based solely upon thought or, implicitly, theology.

This view of the limitations of a purely theological dialogue is explicitly stated later in the interview in connection with ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he asserts that we cannot wait for theologians to come to an agreement, but emphasizes rather a

8 Jacques Dupuis, “Interfaith Dialogue – Praxis and Theology,” in Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (New York: Orbis Books, 1997), 380.

10 spiritual path of praying and working together.9 In both interreligious and ecumenical relations, then, Pope Francis emphasizes the necessity of encounter, which he understands as tied particularly to the spiritual aspects of life.

In regard to the proposition of a lived spiritual encounter with Muslims, the ability to share spiritual experiences is not always accepted. Although both traditions profess belief in one God, they understand that God differently, and there is not always mutual recognition amongst members of each tradition that the other tradition worships the same God. In his chapter

“Disposing of Three Trios,” Rémi Brague challenges the several phrases used to bring

Christians, Jews, and Muslims together, including “three monotheisms.” He explains that such an umbrella phrase is inaccurate as the one Trinitarian God of the Christians is understood radically differently from the one, single God of the Muslims. To pretend otherwise would be to ignore an important debate between the two traditions that has lasted centuries.10

Despite the above challenges and many other debates and differences between Catholics and Muslims, the Church proposes a dialogue of spiritual life. Such a dialogue does not exclude differences, but enters into a relationship of respect. As G. K. Chesterton comments in regards to interreligious discussions, “It is indeed an excellent improvement that sincerely religious people should respect each other. But respect has discovered difference, where contempt knew only

9 Francis I (Jorge Bergoglio), Apostolic Journey of His Holiness Pope Francis to Turkey (28-30 November 2014), In-flight Press Conference of His Holiness Pope Francis from Istanbul to Rome, November 30, 2014, Vatican website, accessed May 19, 2015, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/november/documents/papa-francesco_20141130_turchia- conferenza-stampa.html. 10 Rémi Brague, “Disposing of Three Trios,” in On the God of the Christians: (and on one or two others) (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013), 5-9.

11 indifference.”11 That is, a respectful Catholic-Muslims dialogue should not exclude recognition or discussion of differences.

This thesis uses the thought of Wojtyla/John Paul II and de Chergé in order to navigate the contours of an authentically Catholic dialogue that recognizes these many differences and remains closely tied to the encouragement of actual interpersonal relationships between

Catholics and Muslims of a shared spiritual life. Each of these two thinkers inherit and develop the thought of Vatican II on dialogue and a relationship between the Church and the world based on the inherent dignity of the person. As such, the first chapter of this thesis provides an introduction to the importance of dialogue and the focus on the person within dialogue from a select number of conciliar-period documents. Following this opening, the second chapter deepens the Vatican II’s discussions of the person through a presentation of Wojtyla’s concept of participation. Through this concept, a basis for authentic interpersonal relationships is developed, where it becomes essential that each person enters into the experience of the other person. The third chapter will then discuss John Paul II’s Trinitarian theological anthropology, which provides a background for the Catholic’s experience of self as intimately tied to God the Father’s merciful love that draws close to man through the Son’s sacrificial love in suffering on the Cross and brings man into communion with himself through the Resurrection. This love continues to bring man into God’s “sheepfold” through the power of the Holy Spirit.

With the experience of the self established as tied to his neighbour and to God, the next two chapters will engage specifically with the encounter or love of neighbour in the area of

11 G. K. Chesterton, “A Meditation on the Manichees,” in St. Thomas Aquinas [Courier Corporation, 2012], 70.

Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. In chapter four, the tension between the Christian’s experience of himself and of God and sharing it in Catholic-Muslim Dialogue will become evident. While recognizing the dissimilarities, John Paul II invites Christians and Muslims to a dialogue of spiritual life. The manner in which differences can be respected and a dialogue of spiritual life truly established will be understood through the thought of Christian de Chergé.

Secondary Concern

While some secondary research of Christian de Chergé’s thought has been translated or written in English, his many articles and homilies that are drawn from in this thesis are not available in English. As such, the final chapter is also partially a work of translation. The original

French text will appear in the footnotes and my translation into English will be found in the main body of the text. In this manner, de Chergé’s particular insights into post-Vatican II, Catholic-

Muslim dialogue from a life of spiritual encounter with Muslims in Algeria are shared with the

English scholarly community.

Limitations

As has been shown in the preceding pages, this thesis is interested in articulating the relationship between Catholic faith and dialogue based in encounters between Catholics and

Muslims. While this thesis will touch on many subjects and texts, its focus will be a discussion of method in dialogue, one which seeks to remain immersed in the Catholic faith and seeks a dialogue of life with “the other.” In the process of setting up such a balanced method, I will touch on many topics that are foundational to understanding this style of dialogue. In order to

13 keep such a project manageable in size, I limited myself to a discussion of two figures: Karol

Wojtyla/John Paul II’s and de Chergé’s works offer a rich discussion on approach. As John Paul

II is a particularly prolific figure in philosophy and theology, I also largely limit the topics within his anthropology to those related to communion.

As the question of this thesis is particularly related to the Church’s method of dialogue with Islam (how Catholic thought can have an influence or place within the dialogue of life), it does not discuss a Muslim perspective on the issue.12 While this is regrettable in the sense that a dialogue concerns two parties rather than one, it is unavoidable given the space available. This misfortune, of course, does not exclude the possibility of a future work to bring Muslim thinking into the issues discussed throughout the current work.

12 For an introduction to the Muslim perspective on the matter, see the following: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad, “A Common Word Between Us and You,” Islamic Studies 47:2 (2008): 243-260, http://www.jstor.org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/stable/20839119.

CHAPTER ONE

VATICAN II BEGINNINGS

As a contextualization for the rest of this work, this first chapter will open many of the themes to be discussed in later chapters through three documents associated with the period of

Vatican II: Ecclesiam Suam, Nostra Aetate, and Gaudium et Spes. These documents all serve to encourage a relationship of open and friendly dialogue with persons outside the Church. Such an openness assumes particular form in Nostra Aetate with regard to the Church’s relationship with

Muslims. The ideals set forth in these documents influence and will be reflected in this thesis’s later discussions of the thought of Wojtyla/John Paul II and de Chergé.

Defining Dialogue

Inheriting the legacy of John XXIII, who had opened the Council, Pope Paul VI provided a complement to many of its themes on the state of the Church in the modern world with his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam (1964).1 Paul VI defines dialogue as communicating and fostering the state of mind “of one who feels within himself the burden of the apostolic mandate, of one who realizes that he can no longer separate his own salvation from the endeavor to save others.”2

He argues that, “the relationship of the Church to the world, without precluding other legitimate forms of expression, can be represented better in a dialogue.”3

1 Richard P. McBrien, “The Ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council,” in The Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 210. 2 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, First Encyclical Letter, Paths of the Church, Aug. 6, 1964, sec. 80 (Washington D.C., National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1964). 3 Ibid., sec. 78. 14

Prior Steps

This dialogue, Paul VI asserts, requires a prior step: the Church’s duty is to first “deepen the awareness that she must have of herself, of the treasure of truth of which she is heir and custodian and of her mission in the world” 4 through a renewal of its faith.5 That is, before and alongside the Church’s and any of its faithful’s engagement in dialogue to reach out to the world, they must educate and grow in the faith itself. Otherwise, as Paul VI explains in later sections, there are many dangers of inauthentic Catholic dialogue.

Secondly, prior to the Church’s dialogue with persons outside her structures, the Church must understand the nature of God’s dialogue with man. Paul VI reminds the faithful that dialogue originates in the mind of God and that the first forms of dialogue that the Church can understand are thus between man and God. In this vein, prayer as well as revelation of the

Gospel and the Incarnation are forms of dialogue.6 Through the revelation given in the

Incarnation in particular, God “tells us finally how He wishes to be known: He is Love; and how

He wishes to be honored and served by us: Love is our supreme commandment.”7 This second step helps to remind the faithful of where they learn the nature of authentic Catholic dialogue.

They must remain immersed in their “dialogue with Christ” (e.g. through prayer, reading the

Scriptures, and seeking out Christ), in this manner, they learn what it is to love and be in communion with their fellow men.

4 Ecclesiam Suam, sec. 18. 5 Ibid., sec. 23. 6 Ibid., sec. 70. 7 Ibid.

Careful Balancing

Paul VI continues with his insistence on dialogue as a form of love when he discusses dialogue between the Church and the world. It begins, he states, with adopting “the common way of life – provided that it is human and honorable….we must make ourselves then brothers. The spirit of dialogue is friendship and, even more, is service.”8 However, while this is the best approach, it should not involve “a watering down or subtracting from the truth.”9 For, “An immoderate desire to make peace and sink differences at all costs is, fundamentally, a kind of skepticism about the power and content of the Word of God which we desire to preach.”10

Concentric Circles

In the last part of the encyclical, Paul VI lists the varying “contacts” for the Church to establish with the world. For this thesis’s theme of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, two of these contacts are of particular interest. The first, and most general, is that of “Mankind.” While Paul

VI maintains that there is a distance between the Church and the world, he insists that the Church shares a common human nature and life with the world, including “its gifts and its problems.”11

He sets the point of contact as the following:

In this primary universal reality we are ready to play our part, to acknowledge the deep- seated claims of its fundamental needs, and to applaud the new and, sometimes sublime, expressions of its genius. We possess, too, vital moral truths to be brought to men’s notice and to be corroborated by their conscience, to the benefit of all. Wherever men are striving to understand themselves and the world, we can communicate with them. Wherever the

8 Ecclesiam Suam, sec. 87. 9 Ibid., sec. 88. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., sec. 97.

councils of nations come together to establish the rights and duties of man, we are honored when they allow us to take our place among them. (Ecclesiam Suam, sec. 97)

Secondly, the Pope describes contact with those “who above all adore the one, Supreme

God, whom we too adore.”12 He includes Muslims within this circle and states, “We do well to admire these people for all that is good and true in their worship of God.”13 From this point of goodness and truth, Paul VI continues his themes from the first circle, to join up “in promoting and defending common ideals of religious liberty, human brotherhood, good culture, social welfare, and civil order.”14

Points of Contact with Islam: Nostra Aetate (1965)

The Vatican II document particularly concerned with inter-religious dialogue, Nostra

Aetate, repeats many of Paul VI’s themes in Ecclesiam Suam. Nonetheless, with its narrower purpose, it provides a more detailed account of the Church’s viewpoint on its relationship with

Muslims. Firstly, it acknowledges Muslims for adoring “the one God, living and subsisting in

Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth…[as well as taking] pains to submit wholeheartedly to His inscrutable decrees…[and revering Jesus] as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother.”15 It also sets the point of contact for the relationship with

Muslims, “to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote

12 Ecclesiam Suam, sec. 107. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., sec 108. 15 Catholic Church, Nostra Aetate [Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions], October 28, 1965, sec. 3, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 37-40.

18 together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.”16 Furthermore, in its conclusion, there is again an appeal to human dignity and rights, which states that the Church must treat all men in a “brotherly way,” no matter their “race, color, condition of life, or religion.”17 While this document is rather short, it provides a basis from which to build. It also demonstrates a continuity with Ecclesiam Suam; the two documents connect a relationship of dialogue with working towards common goods associated with human rights.

Connections to the Person and Community Gaudium et Spes (1965)

Ecclesiam Suam discusses dialogue as an attitude that the Church should take with the outside world that begins with God’s revelation of love to man and involves taking one’s

Catholic faith seriously and living in friendship and service. Nostra Aetate lists the similarities between Christianity and Islam and calls for growth in mutual understanding. The last Vatican II document in our trio is the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], which describes the Church’s relationship with the world according to man’s nature. Within this last document of this chapter’s discussion, the significance of the communion of persons for discussing and working against societal problems, which is given prominence in this thesis, is introduced.

16 Nostra Aetate, sec. 3 17 Ibid., sec. 5.

“The Dignity of the Human Person”

This encyclical begins a fostering of brotherhood by discussing man’s common nature.

This nature is defined in the first instance through Scripture: “man was created ‘to the image of

God,’ is capable of knowing and loving his Creator, and was appointed by Him as master of all earthly creatures that he might subdue them and use them to God’s glory.”18 This is immediately followed by an appeal to the companionship between Adam and Eve, establishing man’s nature as social, and thus meant for interpersonal communion.19

While beginning by upholding a religious, specifically Christian conception of man’s nature, the encyclical then continues on to include man’s conscience, his ability to love good and avoid evil.20 This aspect of man is proposed as a point of contact where, “All Christians and non-

Christians are united by following their conscience in their search for what is true.”21 That is, there is an ethical perspective within the Church’s definition of man’s nature that can be a hopeful beginning point for communion with non-Christians.

“The Community of Mankind”

Within its discussion of community, this encyclical maintains its focus on each person’s dignity: “For the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the

18 Catholic Church, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], Proclaimed by Pope Paul VI, December 7, 1965, sec. 12, in The Teachings of the Vatican Council: Complete Texts of the Constitutions, Decrees, and Declarations (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1966), 439-556. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., sec. 16. 21 J. Brian Benestad, “Doctrinal Perspectives on the Church in the Modern World,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 154.

20 human person which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life.”22

It also maintains the connection to God’s love for man that is based upon community in God’s fathership, who “willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”23 The community in mind here is one which is integrally connected to the

Church’s belief in man’s sonship in God.

The practical application of this viewpoint is that each person is seen as a brother:

“everyone must consider all his neighbors without exception as another self, taking into account first of all His life and the means necessary to living it with dignity.”24 This applies to everyone, no matter their social, political, or even religious opinions.25 The dignity referred to is then used to argue for the overcoming of any kind of discrimination, any harsh economic and social inequalities, and lack of education.26

Betterment of Society

These concepts, or definitions, Gaudium et Spes declares, are the basis for the dialogue between the Church and the world.27 That is, with the above understandings of the human person and community, the Church wishes to work towards the betterment of global society, sharing ideals with Ecclesiam Suam and Nostra Aetate. One of its foci for this betterment is that of fostering peace. Here, the Council admits that vigilant, lawful authority is necessary, but not

22 Gaudium et Spes, sec. 25. 23 Ibid., sec. 24. 24 Ibid., sec. 27. 25 Ibid., sec. 28. 26 Ibid., sec. 29-31. 27 Ibid., sec. 40.

21 enough. Rather, it is a more substantive definition of the common good which requires “attention to truth, justice, love, virtue, and duty in the social order.”28

This peace on earth cannot be obtained unless personal well-being is safeguarded and men freely and trustingly share with one another the riches of their inner spirits and their talents. A firm determination to respect other men and peoples and their dignity, as well as the studied practice of brotherhood are absolutely necessary for the establishment of peace. Hence peace is likewise the fruit of love, which goes beyond what justice can provide. (Gaudium et Spes, sec. 78)

Conclusion

The above discussion of a few Vatican II documents provides an introductory understanding to dialogue, specific points of contact with Muslims, and an emphasis upon the person and community that is essential to forming this dialogue. The following chapters will build upon these themes, discussing the dynamics of unity within communities from the philosophical perspective and the dialogue of God with man in the second and third chapters, respectively. From this point, the contacts with Muslims will be explored to discover the possibility of such a unity amongst persons within our two traditions.

28 Benestad, “Doctrinal Perspectives on the Church in the Modern World,” 157.

CHAPTER TWO

WOJTYLA: PARTICIPATION OF THE PERSON IN THE COMMUNITY

In the previous chapter, we discussed characteristics of dialogue and the person according to a select number of conciliar-period documents. At Vatican II, developing opportunities for encounter, especially with persons outside of the formal Church structures, becomes the prominent concern of the Church. Continuing in this spirit, this chapter will elaborate further upon this conciliar concern for the person. As previously outlined, our conversation partner for this elaboration will be Karol Wojtyla. Not only did John Paul II inherit the concern for the person of Vatican II as a post-conciliar pope and as a heavily involved cardinal in the Council,1 but his philosophical writings and his work as a professor at the University of Lublin prior to his election as pope were deeply invested in defining the person. It is these philosophical works that will be the focus of this chapter.

With the concern for the person in his philosophical thought, Wojtyla is known as the founder of the Polish Personalistic School.2 While this chapter will focus solely on Wojtyla’s personalism, it may be of help to introduce at least a general understanding of this philosophical school. In his chapter “A Personalism Primer,” Thomas D. Williams offers the following definition: “‘Personalism’ can legitimately be applied to any school of thought or intellectual movement that focuses on the reality of the person…and on his unique dignity, insisting upon his

1 During the time of Vatican II, Wojtyla reiterated this connection when he communicated over Vatican Radio in Polish regarding the concern for the person in the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council. (Karol Wojtyla, “On the Dignity of the Human Person” [1964], in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok [New York: Peter Lang, 1993], 177-180). 2 Thomas D. Williams, “A Personalism Primer,” in Who is my Neighbour?: Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 116. 22

23 radical distinction between persons and all other beings (nonpersons).”3 Its distinctive characteristics include this insistence on the “difference between persons and nonpersons, an affirmation of the dignity of persons, a concern for the person’s subjectivity, attention to the person as object of human action to be treated as an end and never as a mere means, and particular regard for the social (relational) nature of the person.”4

Wojtyla’s personalism is known in particular for linking insights on the person from

“modern phenomenological (especially Schelerian) philosophy to discoveries of the Aristotelian-

Thomistic and Augustinian tradition of philosophy.”5 Through this diversity of influences,

Wojtyla tries to overcome a one-sided approach dominant in modern philosophy that understands the “person primarily through knowledge and cognition.”6 As the current work is interested in relating Wojtyla’s personalism to the concern of developing authentic communities within

Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, this chapter will chiefly limit itself to Wojtyla’s concept of

“participation,” or his interpretation of the social nature of man, and, through this concept,

Wojtyla’s concept of community. Through this discussion, the dynamics of the relationship between Vatican II’s ideals of dialogue and encounter with the person can be understood (from the simultaneously Catholic and phenomenological perspective represented by Wojtyla).

3 Williams, “A Personalism Primer,” 108. 4 Ibid., 118. 5 Josef Seifert, “Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as Philosopher and the Cracow/Lublin School of Philosophy,” Aletheia (1981): 132. 6 Ibid.

An Introduction to Wojtyla’s Concept of Person

While this chapter will be largely focused on the person’s relation to others in forming a community, the discussion cannot begin without at least a preliminary definition of the person in

Wojtyla’s philosophy. With the importance of the person in Wojtyla’s thought, it is impossible to begin to understand participation and community as constructed within his work without such a definition. Due to the overall focus of this chapter, I will have to limit myself to a somewhat brief explanation of Wojtyla’s two major influences and of his terms of self-possession, self- determination, and self-fulfillment as they relate to his concept of person.7

As mentioned above, Wojtyla’s philosophy is heavily influenced by traditional Christian sources and modern phenomenological thought. This is true for his definition of the person as well. In his essay “Thomistic Personalism,” Wojtyla provides the definition of the person according to Boethius and St. Thomas: “The person…is always a rational and free concrete being, capable of all those activities that reason and freedom alone make possible.”8 Wojtyla is informed by, and agrees with, this traditional definition. Nonetheless, consistent with Williams’s third characteristic of personalism, Wojtyla argues that this traditional definition does not express the “uniqueness of the subjectivity essential to the human being…. [which can be built upon] the basis of experience.”9 In the emphasis upon subjectivity of the person and discovering

7 Describing Wojtyla’s seminal work on the topic, The Acting Person, Seifert states, “The thesis clearly seems to be that in acting as it involves free self-possession, self-determination, and self-governance, the person qua person realizes and shows himself most profoundly, especially in morally good action” (Seifert, “Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as Philosopher and the Cracow/Lublin School of Philosophy,” 132). 8 Karol Wojtyla, “Thomistic Personalism” (1961), in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 167. 9 Karol Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being” (1975), in Person and Community, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 212.

25 it through experience, Wojtyla reveals his connections with the phenomenological tradition.

Wojtyla himself praises phenomenological analysis for its valuable contribution towards

“understanding and explaining the subjectivity of the person.”10

Having established the basic grounding for Wojtyla’s thinking, we can now turn to his actual configuration of the person. In his essay “The Person: Subject and Community,” Wojtyla begins from the point of subjective experience to define the person: “In experience man is given to us as he who exists and acts. All men, and ‘I’ among them, participate in the experience of existing and acting.”11 According to Wojtyla, the person is to be understood from the perspective of both being and action, rather than one or the other. This dual emphasis continues throughout

Wojtyla’s discussion of the main dimensions of the person’s subjectivity.

The first of these dimensions is self-determination. Wojtyla asserts that experience reveals action particular to the person. The action of the person can be conscious, whereby the self is the

“author of the act and of its transitive and intransitive effects.”12 This authorship implicates the person’s will, which Wojtyla defines in his article “The Personal Structure of Self-

Determination” as “an act of a faculty of the subject directed toward a value that is willed as an end and that is also, therefore, an object of endeavor.”13 Directed outwards in both efficacy of action and recognition of value of an object, Wojtyla’s self-determination includes a turn inwards

10 Karol Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community” (1976), The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1979): 274, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20127345. 11 Ibid., 273. 12 Ibid., 281. 13 Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” (1974), in Person and Community, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 191.

26 as well, whereby the person himself becomes good or bad according to respective good or bad actions.14

In his article “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Wojtyla argues that a definition of the person based on self-determination – that is, the person’s free choice in his actions that can be directed towards a certain end – reinforces Aquinas’s definition of a person as persona est sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis. Wojtyla links the person who reveals himself as self-determining to the person’s characteristic self-governing and self-possessing.15 The free and conscious acts where the person determines himself are not possible if the person does not simultaneously govern and possess himself.

In following his reference to Aquinas’s definition of the person with a discussion of self- governance and self-possession, Wojtyla seems to translate alteri incommunicabilis as ‘self- possessing’ rather than with the literal translation ‘incommunicable.’ From the brief discussion in “The Person Structure of Self-Determination,” the reason for this is not immediately evident, but one can see the link between incommunicabilis and self-possession through Wojtyla’s definitions in his Love and Responsibility. In his first mention of incommunicable in Love and

Responsibility, he associates incommunicabilis with the will:

The incommunicable, the inalienable, in a person is intrinsic to that person’s inner self, to the power of self determination, free will. No one else can want for me. No one can substitute his act of will for mine. It does sometimes happen that someone very much wants me to want what he wants. This is the moment when the impassable frontier between him and me, which is drawn by free will, becomes most obvious. I may not want that which he wants me to want – and in this precisely I am incommunicabilis. (24; italics in the original)

14 Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 192. 15 Ibid., 192-193.

Wojtyla’s connection between incommunicabilis and the will in the above passage would seem to conflate it with sui iuris or self-governing. Later in Love and Responsibility, however, he extends the definition of incommunicabilis and reveals its relationship to sui iuris:

The person is always, of its very nature, untransferable, alteri incommunicabilis. This means not only that it is its own master (sui juris) but that it cannot give itself away, cannot surrender itself….The person as such cannot be someone else’s property, as though it were a thing. (96)

Sui juris, the ability to freely choose one’s actions, is thus a part of the incommunicabilis of the person. However, alteri incommunicabilis also includes the person’s ownership of oneself, or self-possession.

Self-determination is described in Wojtyla’s “The Person: Subject and Community” according to subjective experience of oneself and may seem more reflective of a phenomenological approach. Nonetheless, in “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” and Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla explains the connection between self-determination and

Aquinas’s traditional definition of the person as self-governing and self- possessing/incommunicable. In this manner, Wojtyla reveals his two main influences discussed above, but also the manner in which they are consistent with one another.

In “The Person: Subject and Community,” Wojtyla turns from self-determination towards the related dimension of self-fulfillment. He states that, “In these acts, through the moment of self-determination, the human self is revealed to itself, not only as self-possession and self- domination, but also as a tendency to self-fulfillment.”16 In a parallel manner to the outward and inward aspects of self-determination, Wojtyla relates the decision to perform morally good

16 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 284.

28 actions that take the person outside of himself, or to interact with his surroundings, to the fulfillment of the person’s self.17

The person according to Wojtyla is thus a subject who exists and acts, whose acts are particular as they are freely chosen, and whose self-fulfillment is achieved through choosing morally good acts. The dynamic between the person’s fulfillment and good acts is most complete, as Wojtyla asserts in “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” in the gift of self:

Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. ….[I]t is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. (194)

In this example, the person does not lose his self-determination nor his self-possession even though he freely gives himself. With the person transcending himself in morally good actions, and in this particular instance in the gift of self, the link between the person’s fulfillment and his relationship with “the other” is opened.

Participation: The Person with Others

The person who is revealed through experience as one who exists and acts is also one who exists and acts together with others. In order to keep the person at the centre when discussing the person’s relationships with others, Wojtyla explores the social nature of the person, which he refers to as “participation.” This section will discuss his chapter “Intersubjectivity by

17 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 287.

Participation,” in addition to his articles “Participation or Alienation?” and “The Person: Subject and Community” in developing the various dimensions of this social nature according to

Wojtyla.

Acting Together

As it is the last chapter of The Acting Person, “Intersubjectivity by Participation” continues the focus of the rest of the book. That is, participation is chiefly understood through man’s actions. In this case, however, Wojtyla recognizes that many of the person’s actions are performed with other persons.18 In regards to these communal actions, Wojtyla seeks to demonstrate how the person fulfills himself when acting together with others:19

First, the idea of ‘participation’ is used here in order to reach to the very foundation of acting together with other persons, to those roots of such acting which stem from and are specific to the person himself. Second, everything that constitutes the personalistic value of the action – namely, the performance itself of an action and the realization of the transcendence and the integration of the person contained in it – is realized because of acting together with others. (“Intersubjectivity by Participation,” 269; italics in the original)

With this dimension of participation, we see that actions continue to be chosen by the person rather than of a group, and in this manner, the person can work with others at the same time as working towards his fulfillment. Through this understanding of the person in relation to the community, Wojtyla establishes that each community has an obligation to “allow the person remaining within its orbit to realize himself through participation.”20

18 Karol Wojtyla, “Intersubjectivity by Participation” (1969), in The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 262. 19 Ibid., 267. 20 Ibid., 271.

With this understanding of the person and community, Wojtyla is able to reject the systems or philosophies that limit the person’s participation: individualism and objective totalism. In the former, the person only focuses on himself and his own good, which is understood as “opposed or in contradiction to other individuals and their good.”21 In this system, then, acting together with others has no positive meaning as it is understood as against the person. Totalism, on the other hand, understands the individual as “the chief enemy of society and of the common good.”22 While the latter values the society rather than the individual as the highest good, it also understands the individual and society as against one another.

Wojtyla’s personalism rejects both of the above forms of community on the basis that participation is laid aside. He insists, rather, upon a connection between the person and society, through the person’s social nature. This social dimension allows for the person’s fulfillment to be integrated into the “acting together with others.”

In this manner, “Intersubjectivity by Participation” focuses on “the community of acting.”

Wojtyla explicitly admits this concentration, stating that, “At present we are mainly interested in the “community of acting” because of its closer relation to the dynamic action-person correlation as a basis and a source of cognition.”23 At this point, he opens up to a discussion of the common good in order to discuss the relationship between the person within a community of acting and the possibility of fulfilling himself in his actions within that community.24 When considering the common good alongside the person’s fulfillment and his relationship to the community, Wojtyla

21 Wojtyla, “Intersubjectivity by Participation,” 274. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 279. 24 Ibid., 279-280.

31 defines the common good as “the good of the community inasmuch as it creates in the axiological sense the conditions for the common existence, which is then followed by acting.”25

As such, the common good is integrally related to being with others; while acting towards a particular goal with others remains important, it cannot be wholly understood without reference to the existence of various bonds.

From this point, Wojtyla sets up two authentic attitudes for persons within a community.

The first, solidarity, he describes as an attitude where the person has the “benefit of the whole in view” and is “ready to ‘complement’ by his action what is done by other members of the community.”26 Within Wojtyla’s discussion of solidarity, there is an emphasis placed upon the person’s looking to the common good of the community and the person’s own share in working towards that common good alongside other persons. The second of Wojtyla’s authentic attitudes is that of opposition. As understood by Wojtyla, opposition need not consist in a rejection of the common good, but rather aims “at more adequate understanding and, to an even greater degree, the means employed to achieve the common good, especially from the point of view of the possibility of participation.”27

Wojtyla ends his discussion of authentic attitudes with an insistence upon dialogue as a necessary condition for communities:

The principle of dialogue allows us to select and bring to light what in controversial situations is right and true, and helps to eliminate any partial, preconceived or subjective views and trends. Such views and inclinations may become the seed of strife and conflict between men, while what is right and true always favors the development of the person and enriches the community. (“Intersubjectivity by Participation,” 287)

25 Wojtyla, “Intersubjectivity by Participation,” 282. 26 Ibid., 285. 27 Ibid., 286.

The above discussion integrates the person and his fulfillment in action with the community. Wojtyla argues for a view of the person wherein the person works towards his own authentic good as he works towards the common good of his community. The person is not necessarily at odds with the community; a complementariness can be achieved when an atmosphere of dialogue is established, allowing and encouraging authentic attitudes of solidarity and opposition.

Wojtyla ends “Intersubjectivity by Participation” by opening his discussion of membership in a community to the community of mankind as a whole. Here, he introduces a more fundamental meaning of participation: “the ability to share in the humanness itself of every man.”28 He explains the juxtaposition between the neighbor and the self in the evangelical commandment ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ reflects this understanding of participation. That “I” should love the other as “myself” reflects a shared human nature.29 In order to understand Wojtyla’s perspective on the specifics of the ability to love or share in a common humanity and Wojtyla’s more fundamental meaning of participation, however, we must turn to discuss his articles “Participation or Alienation?” and “The Person: Subject and

Community.”

28 Wojtyla, “Intersubjectivity by Participation,” 295. 29 Ibid., 295-296.

Participating in Another’s Humanity

While the definition provided above does protect against individualism and totalism, its emphasis on the action of the person does not allow for a complete understanding of participation. In “Participation or Alienation?,” Wojtyla himself takes up again the fundamental meaning of participation as participating in the other’s humanity:

“The other” does not just signify that the being existing next to me or even acting in common with me in some system of activities is the same kind of being as I am….[But] ‘the other’ also signifies my…participation in that being’s humanity, a participation arising from my awareness that this being, is another I.30

At this point, participation cannot solely be understood as a trait belonging to each person.

It becomes more concrete as that which binds persons together, bringing them to experience one another. Wojtyla explains that, “Participation arises from consciously becoming close to another, a process that starts from the lived experience of one’s own I.”31 From this point, the community that arises from this participation can be understood not “as the plurality of subjects, but always the specific unity of that plurality.”32 Wojtyla constructs the unity of subjects from two points: the interpersonal, “I-you” relationships and the social, “we” dimension.

30 Karol Wojtyla, “Participation or Alienation?” (1975), in Person and Community, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 200. 31 Ibid., 201. 32 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 289.

“Profiles of Participation”33

I-you or Interpersonal Relationships

Wojtyla uses this first profile of “I-you” to denote the essential dimension within the many types of interpersonal relationships within communities, such as friendships, married couples, mothers and their children, or even two individuals “quite unknown to each other who unexpectedly find themselves within this pattern.”34 Although the various types of interpersonal relationships differ in many respects, as in “Intersubjectivity by Participation,” Wojtyla asserts that the elementary form of interpersonal relationships consists in “treating and actually experiencing ′the other one’ as one’s self.”35 In order for this to be truly the case, the “I” and the

“you” experience one another in their

deepest structure of self-possession and self-domination. Especially, it should reveal [each person’s] tendency to self-fulfillment which, culminating in the acts of conscience, witnesses to the transcendence proper to man as a person. In this truth of his personal reality, not only should man be revealed in the interpersonal relation “I-you,” but he should be accepted and confirmed. Such an acceptance and confirmation is the moral or ethical expression of the sense of the interpersonal community. (Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 296)

The main dimensions of Wojtyla’s concept of person remain integral to man’s relationships. As

“I” and “you” experience each other, they do so if they experience and respect the principal dimensions which define “the other” as a person. That is, each one experiences and respects the other’s free will, self-possession, and self-fulfilment (understood as transcending oneself in

33 This phraseology is borrowed from Kevin P. Doran’s discussion of participation, “Solidary in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla,” in Solidarity: A Synthesis of Personalism and Communalism in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 143. 34 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 295. 35 Ibid.

35 morally good action). These are the types of relationships that Wojtyla describes as the basis of authentic interpersonal communities:

In the relation “I-you” there is formed an authentic interpersonal community in some shape or variety only if “I” and “you” remain in the mutual confirmation of the transcendent value of the person – also understood as “dignity” and confirm this by their acts. It seems that only such a pattern deserves the name of a communion of persons (communion personarum). (“The Person: Subject and Community,” 297)

We or Social Dimension

The second profile of participation is that of “we.” Wojtyla uses this term for the social dimension of the community or group; the “we” signifies a set of many “I’s” and “you’s.”36 This plurality is still meant to include persons’ subjectivities and thus the use of the first-person pronoun rather than the third. “‘We’ signifies many people, many subjects, who in some fashion exist and act together.”37 As opposed to the “I-you” profile where “I” face “you,” as Kevin P.

Doran comments, “‘[w]hen persons are revealed as we, I stand with them.’”38 Specifically, “I” stand with “them” and “we” face and work towards the common good, which Wojtyla defines here as the following: “ ‘In common’ means that action, and together with it the existence of those many ‘I’s’ as well, is in relation to some value.”39

It is this common action directed towards a common value that unites the social dimension of the community. Persons are brought together in their shared effort towards a common good.

Wojtyla explains that this is complementary to the “I-you” relation; while the “we” dimension

36 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 297. 37 Ibid., 298. 38 Doran, “Solidarity in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla,” in Solidarity: A Synthesis of Personalism and Communalism in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 144. 39 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 298.

36 imposes further demands and responsibilities onto the “I-you” relation, it also enriches and further unites “I” and “you.”40 He provides the example of a married couple:

The best example is provided by matrimony in which the clearly outlined relation “I-you” as an interpersonal relation receives a social dimension. This occurs when the husband and wife accept that complex of values which may be defined as the common good of marriage and, potentially at least, the common good of the family. In relation to this good their community is revealed in action and existence in a new profile (“we”) and in a new social dimension. (“The Person: Subject and Community,” 298)

With this particular example and Wojtyla’s explanation of the “we” dimension, our discussion of his concept of participation arrives at its last aspect. In “acting together with others,” the person participates in the humanity of the others through sharing the goal of the common good that each discerns according to his conscience. That is, as each person is understood through their fulfillment in a true and honest good, participating in other persons’ humanity involves this relation to the good.41

Conclusion

In the foregoing discussion, the starting point for understanding communities is the person and his participation. From this perspective, community looks to how the person can find his fulfillment by participating in the community. As “Intersubjectivity by Participation” concludes, the most fundamental meaning of participating in the other’s humanity is to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ In turn, this becomes possible in interpersonal relationships, where the “you” as another

40 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 298-299. 41 Ibid., 300.

“I” is discovered more and more deeply, as well as in the social dimension where the connection of each person to the good, and therein to the common good, is discovered.

According to the above discussion, improved relations and a strong sense of community consist in a particular attention to the task of entering into the experience, or participating in the humanity, of “the other.” Such an understanding of participation, in turn, involves existing and acting together: facing “the other” to grow in understanding of “you” and oneself; and facing an objective common good, working towards it together. As Wojtyla explains in “Intersubjectivity by Participation,” such a unity is achieved through an atmosphere of dialogue, where authentic solidarity and opposition are both encouraged.

When the goal, then, is a standard of dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, all the above factors must be present. The dialogue of life or of encounter introduced at the beginning of this thesis must be encouraged in order to arrive at the unity and good that comes from interpersonal relationships. At the same time, the common good within and beyond these interpersonal relationships must be kept in mind. In regard to Catholic-Muslim relations, the common good can be considered manifold; as our discussion of Vatican II demonstrated, the

Church is looking towards ideals such as world peace and human rights in its dialogue with

Muslims. Ambitions to work towards such universal goals, however, must be complemented by a growth in mutual understanding. From the unity inherent in working towards common goals and mutual understanding, an authentic community between Catholics and Muslims can be built.

CHAPTER THREE

JOHN PAUL II: GOD’S TRINITARIAN LOVE FOR MAN

As Wojtyla’s work as a philosopher was accompanied by his ecclesiastical ministry as bishop and later as Pope, his concept of a person’s social nature should not only be understood through an account of man’s experience of this world, but should also be discussed from the standpoint of Christian revelation. The discussion thus far has not explicitly dealt with Wojtyla’s theological anthropology. However, as he was both a priest and a philosopher, Wojtyla’s personalism is conditioned by revelation. Even within the translated compilation of philosophical works Person and Community: Selected Essays drawn from in the previous chapter, there is a transcription of a radio broadcast where Wojtyla states, “The dignity of the human person finds its full confirmation in the very fact of revelation, for this fact signifies the establishment of contact between God and the human being.”1 In statements such as these and works such as

Sources of Renewal (1980),2 Wojtyla reveals the close connection between his philosophical personalism and his theology. In this respect, our discussion of Wojtyla’s view of participation and its foundational meaning as the call to participate in the humanity of the other in loving one’s neighbour, remains incomplete without his articulation of this call’s connection to

Christian revelation.

This theological discussion will begin at the same point at which John Paul II begins his papal writings, with his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis (1979). In this encyclical, there

1 Karol Wojtyla, “The Dignity of the Human Person” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, 179. 2 Cf. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Sources of Renewal: Study on the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, trans. P.S. Falla, London: Collins, 1980. 38

39 remains the utmost concern for man that is evident in Wojtyla’s philosophical writings.

However, in this case, the concern is expressed through the themes of Christ’s Incarnation and redemptive grace, therein taking the form of theological anthropology. As his biographer George

Weigel describes, through these themes John Paul II, “[offers] the world a Church in love with humanity, and for the most weighty of reasons – because God ‘had so loved the world’ (John

3:16) that He had sent his only son as the…redeemer of man.”3

In order to arrive at a more complete understanding of John Paul II’s theme of redemption and what this love for humanity means, we must look beyond Redemptor Hominis. While this first encyclical provides for a grounding of man’s dignity as the son of God, through Christ, the meaning of this ‘sonship’ is expanded upon especially through a few of John Paul II’s further writings. I have chosen three to discuss in detail to focus on the manner in which the three persons of the Trinity reveal this sonship: Dives in Misericordia in 1980 (on the Merciful

Father), Salvifici Doloris in 1984 (on the Suffering Servant), and Dominum et Vivificantem in

1986 (on the Unifying Holy Spirit). This particular trio, understood in connection with

Redemptor Hominis, allows for a more complete understanding of John Paul II’s theological anthropology. Remaining consistent with his philosophical works, this anthropology connects man’s fulfillment with the partaking in the love of neighbour to which man is called. In turn, it has an added dimension to understanding the person and community. In contrast to our previous discussion, this love is understood and defined first through a Christian understanding of God’s love for man. Thus each section of this chapter will reflect John Paul II’s reasoning from the

3 George Weigel, “‘Be Not Afraid!’” in Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999), 290.

40 point of revelation on each respective person of the Trinity and his characteristic love for man, in turn revealing man’s dignity in returning this love to his neighbour and an additional consideration for achieving unity amongst men.

It should be noted that this trio is slightly irregular. Charles E. Curran identifies Redemptor

Hominis, Dives in Misericordia, and Dominum et Vivificantem as the “Trinitarian triptych.”4

John Paul II himself links these three in Dominum et Vivificantem as all originating and being inspired by St. Paul’s words, “‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.’”5 While Salvifici Doloris is not admitted into this triptych, I have chosen it for this chapter’s discussion of the second person of the Trinity as it provides depth and detail to the relationship between Christ’s Cross and man’s dignity which

Redemptor Hominis does not address at length. This is meant to be helpful in adding to the scholarly discussion of love of neighbor in John Paul II’s theological anthropology. When

Thomas Williams takes up this issue in his chapter “Christ and Human Dignity,” for instance, he discusses man’s dignity through God’s merciful love and man’s calling to eternal life, but does not discuss the connection to the Cross at length.6 However, as the goal is to connect man’s dignity to the revelation of God’s love, and therein the manner in which man is called to love, the discussion cannot ignore the sacrificial dimension of this love revealed in Christ’s suffering.

While not ignoring the importance of Redemptor Hominis, then, this chapter will add John Paul

4 Charles E. Curran, “Introduction,” in The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 2-3. 5 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World, May 18, 1986, sec. 2, in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2001), 243-302. 6 Thomas Williams, “Christ and Human Dignity,” in Who is My Neighbor?: personalism and the foundation of human rights (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 212-216.

II’s theological discussion of God’s sacrificial love and its connection to man’s dignity and calling.

Redemptor Hominis: Setting the Stage

As discussed above, Redemptor Hominis will be used as a beginning point for the discussion of John Paul II’s theological anthropology. Following the approach of Charles E.

Curran, this section will treat Redemptor Hominis first as it “[sets] the tone for John Paul II’s pontificate,” tying the mission of the Church and Jesus the Redeemer together as, “fully revealing the meaning of the human and teaching the truth about the human person.”7 The current section, then, will discuss this theme as it is present in the encyclical, specifically as an answer to the Genesis narrative.

In his discussion of redemption, John Paul II begins with referring to the Book of Genesis, where God created man “‘in the image and after the likeness of God.’”8 This reference theologically establishes man’s dignity as rooted in his status as imago dei (created in the image of God). Continuing in his account of the Creation narrative, John Paul II attests that man’s dignity “‘was subjected to futility,’” due to the disobedience of Adam and Eve.9 John Paul II

7 Charles E. Curran, “Theological Presuppositions,” in The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 26. 8 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, Addressed by the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, To His Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate, the Priests, the Religious Families, the Sons and Daughters of the Church, and to All Men and Women of Good Will at the Beginning of His Papal Ministry, Mar. 4, 1979, sec. 9, in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2001), 47- 89. Cf. Genesis 1:27. 9 Ibid., sec. 8. Cf. Romans 8:19-21. It should be noted here that futility is used in this English translation for the Italian caducità. While futility is also used in Romans 20 in the English version of the Catholic Bible, the English and Italian word are not exactly equivalent. Whereas futility has the connotation of uselessness, caducità

42 connects this futility to global contemporary concerns such as pollution, armed conflicts, atomic weapons, and abortion.10 With these examples, he does not suggest that the dignity man was given as imago dei at Creation is completely destroyed. Yet, he does establish that there was a great loss to man associated with man’s disobedience in the story of Genesis. John Paul II seems to continue the theme of Gaudium et Spes in this regard: “Indeed, as a weak and sinful being,

[man] often does what he would not, and fails to do what he would. Hence he suffers from internal divisions, and from these flow so many and such great discords in society.”11 Man’s sin weakens his dignity as imago dei and this sin, in turn, causes many societal evils.

With the first sin of the Creation narrative, a need for redemption, for a return to the wholeness of man’s imago dei, is established. In answer to this need, John Paul II proclaims that,

“In Jesus Christ the visible world which God created for man…recovers again its original link with the divine source of Wisdom and Love.”12 Man’s imago dei is restored, which John Paul II connects explicitly to God’s characteristics of Wisdom and Love. The depth and form of this love is revealed particularly through the mystery of redemption, that is, in the Cross and

Resurrection of Christ.

This section emphasizes man’s dignity in the reception of God’s love, but also in his ability to partake, to act, in love. Without love, man

remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately with it. (Redemptor Hominis, sec. 10)

more denotes a frailty. In the context of original sin, futility could imply that man’s imago dei was indeed destroyed, whereas caducità would seem more to convey imago dei as damaged or hurt significantly. 10 Redemptor Hominis, sec. 8 11 Gaudium et Spes, sec. 10. 12 Redemptor Hominis, sec. 8.

Here, we encounter the theme of the current chapter; through the revelation of God’s love, man better understands his own calling to love. John Paul II elaborates upon this love of God for man and thus man’s call to love through his writings on the Trinity, to which the discussion will now turn.

“In the Name of the Father…”: The Revelation of God’s Mercy

In order to represent the first person of the Trinity’s love for man and, in turn, its basis in love of neighbour, the current section discusses John Paul II’s Dives in Misericordia. In this encyclical, God the Father’s love is first and foremost merciful, drawing attention to the dynamic between God’s love and the unworthiness of sinful man. With the reality of sin in this world,

God’s love is primarily revealed in the form of mercy, an embrace of man despite his sin.

John Paul II introduces the revelation of this merciful love through discussing the Old

Testament. The stories of the people of Israel are filled with appeals to God’s mercy when the people become aware of their infidelity.13 The prophets of the Old Testament begin to link mercy with the image of God’s love for Israel: “a love of a special choosing, much like the love of a spouse, and for this reason [God] pardons [Israel’s] sins and even its infidelities and betrayals.”14

Here, John Paul II also introduces the relationship between mercy and justice. He attests that justice is recognized as an authentic virtue in the Old Testament, but love must be understood as

13 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Dives in Misericordia of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, On the Mercy of God, Nov. 30, 1980, sec. 4, in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2001), 103-137. 14 Ibid.

44 more primary and fundamental than justice.15 At this point, the priority of love over justice is not fully explained, but John Paul II develops his meaning as he discusses the relationship between the two in the New Testament.

This development begins with the parable of the Prodigal Son. In summarizing this Gospel passage, John Paul II emphasizes the son’s sin and his loss of dignity. As the son has left his father and squanders his inheritance, his actions do not merit the love of his father. When the son decides to return, he thinks he will just be a servant in his father’s house, no longer a son. Due to his infidelity, this would be the demand of justice from a certain perspective; according to eye- for-an-eye justice, the son should lose “his dignity as a son in his father’s house.”16 John Paul II, however, maintains that the demands of the love of a father are stronger than the demands of this form of justice. As it is the relationship between a father and a son, the father still loves the son despite his infidelity. Therefore, when the son returns, “[t]he father of the prodigal son is faithful to his fatherhood, faithful to the love that he has always lavished on his son.”17 In returning, the son is restored to his dignity as son due to the merciful love of his father.

The above parable is an explicit allegory of God the Father’s love for man. The archetype for this love is “The Paschal Mystery”:

In the passion and death of Christ – in the fact that the Father did not spare His own Son, but “for our sake made him sin” – absolute justice is expressed, for Christ undergoes the Passion and Cross because of the sins of humanity. This constitutes even a “superabundance” of justice, for the sins of man are “compensated for” by the sacrifice of the Man-God. Nevertheless, this justice, which is properly justice “to God’s measure,” springs completely from love: from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love. (Dives in Misericordia, sec. 7)

15 Dives in Misericordia, sec. 4. 16 Ibid., sec. 5; italics in the original. 17 Ibid., sec. 6; italics in the original. Cf. Luke 15:11-24.

Whereas the story of the prodigal son forms a clear foundation for the mercy of God, the Paschal

Mystery demonstrates the extremity of God’s merciful love, which embraces justice. That is,

God’s love for man is a love that does not ignore man’s sin, but, as God is merciful, he atones for man’s sin with the sacrifice of the Cross.

Redemption of man through the Cross becomes intimately connected with man’s honoured place as the son of God, in turn guaranteeing his particular dignity. John Paul II elaborates upon the dignity found in the loving Father-son relationship between God and man (which in turn provides man with an elevated dignity over the rest of creation) as the opportunity for man to also partake in such a merciful love. It is here that the call to love one’s neighbour enters into his discussion of mercy; “Demonstrating from the very start what the ‘human heart’ is capable of

(‘to be merciful’)…reveal[s] in the same perspective the deep mystery of God: that inscrutable unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in which love, containing justice, sets in motion mercy, which in its turn reveals the perfection of justice.”18 Man’s ability to be merciful is understood to be a particularly valuable gift as it brings man into the experience of the love which exists among the persons of the Trinity.

The love of neighbour introduced in Redemptor Hominis as the love that helps man to understand and live his full dignity is specifically, with the discussion of Dives in Misericordia, established as a merciful love. Parallel to the manner in which this merciful love unites man with his Father, it can unite man to his fellow man and be the foundation for community. John Paul II turns towards his contemporary context, explaining that “an-eye-for-an-eye justice” deteriorates

18 Dives in Misericordia, sec. 8.

46 into spite, hatred, or cruelty, and in turn sometimes leads to the destruction of one’s neighbour.

He thus insists that, “justice alone is not enough.”19 Rather, in his effort to be just, man must learn from God the tempering of justice with love. John Paul II asserts that, in order to develop a civilization of love, the forgiveness that is more powerful than sin must become an essential feature of society.20

“..and the Son”: Salvific Suffering of Christ

The mystery of Redemption through God’s merciful love is more fully revealed with a reflection upon Christ’s suffering. The Cross reveals the manner in which God draws close to man, revealing a particularity of his redeeming grace and merciful love. This discussion is found in John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloris, where he insists that, “Born of the mystery of Redemption in the Cross of Christ, the Church has to try to meet man in a special way on the path of his suffering.”21 Parallel to our discussion of Redemptor Hominis and Dives in Misericordia, we will look within the “way for the Church” in this apostolic letter for an essential dimension of man’s

God-given dignity.

This letter opens in a philosophical manner with a discussion of man’s experience of suffering. John Paul II explains that the suffering of an individual is unrepeatable. This is

19 Dives in Misericordia, sec. 12. 20 Ibid., sec. 14. In his article “Dives in Misericordia and Sollicitudo rei Socialis: Mercy and Justice,” Mark Charlton draws a similar connection, pairing Dives in Misericordia with the more societally minded Sollicitudo rei Socialis due to the integral need for mercy in forming a just society. (In The Legacy of John Paul II, 208) 21 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris, Of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, To the Bishops, to the Priests, to the Religious Families, and to the Faithful of the Catholic Church, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, Feb. 11, 1984, Vatican website, sec. 3, accessed March 2, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john- paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html.

47 reminiscent of Wojtyla’s thinking regarding the person’s subjective experience. In suffering, the individual has a particular experience of their ‘I’ in relationship with reality that cannot be universalized. Others would be ignoring the element of subjective experience to say one’s suffering is the same as another’s. Alongside this unrepeatability, however, John Paul II does admit a social dimension, as there is a certain solidarity created amongst those who accompany one another in suffering.22 While each person is not able to enter the other’s experience completely, through each person’s own experience of suffering, one can approximate an understanding of the other’s suffering.

As subjectivity and social nature are both implicated in suffering, there is already a reference to its personalist dimension. John Paul II expands upon this personalist dimension through integrating the individual’s question of suffering into his quest for meaning: “It is obvious that pain, especially physical pain, is widespread in the animal world. But only the suffering human being knows that he is suffering and wonders why; and he suffers in a humanly speaking still deeper way if he does not find a satisfactory answer.”23 In this manner, the questioning of suffering is connected to man’s distinctive dignity. That is, amidst suffering, man’s particular intelligence is prompted to ask the reason for such pain.

Following his philosophical discussion of the question of suffering, John Paul II introduces us to its articulation in scripture. He begins with the story of Job, whose many hardships, unlike others recounted in the Old Testament, are unable to be described by his infidelity to, or sins

22 Salvifici Doloris, sec. 8. 23 Ibid., sec. 9.

48 against, God.24 As such, this story speaks particularly to the human incomprehensibility of suffering; “the suffering of someone who is innocent…must be accepted as a mystery, which the individual is unable to penetrate completely by his own intelligence.”25 In this reading, Job becomes the archetypal person who suffers.

At this point, John Paul II emphasizes God’s love for man, illustrated especially in Christ’s accompanying man’s suffering. This includes Christ’s earthly ministry of helping and healing many people who were suffering.26 It is present to an even greater degree in Christ’s experience of the Passion and Cross. While Christ willingly and freely accepts this suffering in order to save man, he directly experiences the great weight of this burden. John Paul II explains that Christ expresses his experience of the undesirability of suffering when he prays in the Garden of

Gethsemane, “‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.’”27 Additionally, in the midst his suffering on the Cross, Christ feels the weight of the temptation to believe God has abandoned man: “Christ through the divine depth of his filial union with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way this suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God.”28 With this discussion, John Paul II elaborates upon the condescension of God in becoming man. This merciful love, which is present in Redemption, restores man as the son of God, even in his lowest moments, where it can be the most difficult to perceive God’s presence.

24 Salvifici Doloris, sec. 10-12. 25 Ibid., sec. 11. 26 Ibid., sec. 16. 27 Ibid., sec. 18. Cf. Karol Wojtyla, “Meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries” in Sign of Contradiction (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), 73-74. 28 Ibid.; italics in the original.

Through an emphasis upon the personalist dimension of suffering, John Paul II already includes a connection to man’s dignity from a philosophical standpoint, but does not within this first discussion provide an answer to the why of suffering. Yet, with the discussion of Christ’s

Passion and the Cross, he reveals a constructive meaning to this most difficult aspect of human existence. He argues that this fecundity is revealed in two respects. Firstly, God’s Fatherly love for man in Christ’s suffering for man, affirms the utmost value of man’s life. This value man himself affirms when he endures suffering:

the individual unleashes hope…that suffering will not get the better of him that it will not deprive him of his dignity as a human being, a dignity linked to awareness of the meaning of life…meaning makes itself known together with God’s love. (John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, sec. 23)

Through the experience of suffering, man undergoes a process of growth in awareness. He begins to understand the degree to which God loves him in Christ choosing to undergo suffering on the Cross. Since man experiences how undesirable suffering is, he can receive the grace to perceive a glimmer of Christ's love in God using such an undesirable experience in order to save man. With a further understanding of this love, the value of life can be affirmed as beyond the pain of suffering. In this manner, man develops the virtue of steadfastness and strength.

John Paul II also emphasizes that, through Christ’s suffering, a particular grace has become associated with individuals undergoing suffering. As it is through the Passion and Cross that

Christ’s Resurrection occurs, man’s suffering can now follow a similar path.

To the suffering brother or sister Christ discloses and gradually reveals the horizons of the Kingdom of God: the horizons of a world converted to the Creator, of a world free from sin, a world being built on the saving power of love. (John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, sec. 26; italics in the original)

Man’s dignity is implicated in suffering here as it brings about such a great promise of an opening to eternal life. As it relates to man’s fuller union of love with God through the Holy

Spirit, this particular aspect of man’s dignity will be emphasized in the next section.

Accompanying his “Gospel of Suffering,”29 John Paul II insists upon the ideal of love of neighbor in the form of the “Good Samaritan.”30 As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, people should be compassionate and available to help those who suffer.31 This, John Paul II asserts, reveals another constructive aspect to suffering. That is, suffering is “also present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s ‘I’….The world of suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of ‘human love.’”32 Discussing the view of John Paul II on suffering, Peter Colosi describes this unleashing of love in three respects:

This “unleashing” of love is meant by John Paul in a threefold sense: (1) in the interior life of persons as the opening of a certain interior disposition of the heart, a sensitivity of heart that has an emotional expression unique to it; (2) in the external life, giving birth to works of love towards neighbor; (3) and in culture, transforming the whole of human civilization into a civilization of love.33

In suffering, through Christ’s redemptive grace, man’s awareness of his heart grows and his love for others can grow as well. This contributes in a manifold manner to this goal of civilization of love.

29 This is the subtitle in Salvifici Doloris for sections 25-27. 30 This is the subtitle in Salvifici Doloris for sections 28-30. 31 Salvifici Doloris, sec. 28. Cf. Luke 10:29-37. 32 Ibid., sec. 29; italics in the original. 33 Peter Colosi, “John Paul II and Max Scheler on the Meaning of Suffering,” in A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, vol. 12 no. 3 (2009): 20.

“…and the Holy Spirit”: Continuing in Union

The previous sections remain incomplete without this final discussion on the third person of the Trinity. There is much inspiration in scripture regarding God’s love for man and therefore there is much that man can learn about his own value and the degree to which he is called to love from knowing the story of God’s merciful love, which goes to the extreme of the sacrifice of the

Son on the Cross (where God becomes close to man in one of the most mysterious aspects of his existence). However, these stories also reveal man’s sin and infidelity and, therein, a continual need for God’s merciful love. It is with this continual need that the integral role of the person of the Holy Spirit becomes evident. In order to explain this importance in John Paul II’s Dominum et Vivificantem, this section will follow a similar line of thought to the previous two: it will trace the encyclical’s appeal to revelation in order to understand a part of the nature of the Trinity; explain the connection between the Holy Spirit and the revelation of man’s dignity; and lastly, illustrate the help of this third person of the Trinity for the civilization of love.

There are hints of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. John Paul II includes the reference in Genesis to the Spirit: “‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…, and the

Spirit of God (ruah Elohim)…was moving over the face of the waters.’”34 He also references the prophetic traditions’ belief in a coming Messiah, or one anointed with God’s Spirit.35 However, these references portray the Spirit more as a characteristic of God than a person of the Trinity.

John Paul II then turns to the New Testament, where the person of the Spirit is more explicitly revealed. At the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples that, although he will be leaving, “‘[he] will

34 Dominum et Vivificantem, sec. 12; italics in the original. Cf. Genesis 1:1. 35 Ibid., sec. 15.

52 pray [to] the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the

Spirit of truth.’”36 Christ’s promise comes to fruition at the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit rests on each of the Apostles.37 From this point, as John Paul II explains, it is through the Holy Spirit that Christ’s presence remains even though he has ascended into heaven. While the Holy Spirit was present with Christ during his life and ministry, as is attested to in the Baptism at the Jordan, he remains present with man through the Spirit.38 This means that God’s merciful love, whose height is revealed in Christ’s Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection, continues to reveal itself through the Spirit.

Much of John Paul II’s remaining discussion in the encyclical focuses upon this continual revelation in the Holy Spirit’s “convincing concerning sin” in his gift to man of the conscience:

“To man, created to the image of God, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of conscience, so that in this conscience the image may faithfully reflect its model, which is both Wisdom and eternal Law, the source of the moral order in man and in the world.”39 The Holy Spirit and the conscience are intimately connected to the dynamics of man’s original disobedience to God (marring man’s nature as imago dei), Christ’s redemption, and the eventual promise of eternal life, where,

humanity, subjected to sin, in the descendants of the first Adam, in Jesus Christ became perfectly subjected to God and united to him, and at the same time full of compassion toward men. Thus there is a new humanity, which in Jesus Christ through the suffering of the Cross has returned to the love which was betrayed by Adam through sin. This new humanity is discovered precisely in the divine source of the original outpouring of gifts: in the Spirit, who “searches…the depths of God” and is himself love and gift. (Dominum et Vivificantem, sec. 40; italics in the original)

36 Dominum et Vivificantem, sec. 3. Cf. John 14:15-27. 37 Ibid., sec. 25. Cf. Acts 2:1-4. 38 Ibid., sec. 15. 39 Ibid., sec. 36; italics in the original.

In relying on the Spirit, man also avoids distancing himself from God; God can remain present rather than solely an inspiration. This emphasis on God’s presence, which the Christian understands through the revelation of God’s merciful love in Christ’s Incarnation, Cross, and

Resurrection, allows an openness to God in the world and a reliance on him in the discovery of love:

Since the way of peace passes in the last analysis through love and seeks to create the civilization of love, the Church fixes her eyes on him who is the Love of the Father and the Son, and in spite of increasing dangers she does not cease to trust, she does not cease to invoke and to serve the peace of man on earth. Her trust is based on him who, being the Spirit-love, is also the Spirit of peace and does not cease to be present in our human world, on the horizon of minds and hearts, in order to “fill the universe” with love and peace. (Dominum et Vivificantem, sec. 67; italics in the original)

Conclusion

This chapter has presented a selection of John Paul II’s papal writings on the love from the three persons of the Trinity and its connection to man’s dignity as the imago dei and son of God.

Rather than an emphasis on participating in the humanity of “the other,” there is a focus on the

Revelation of God’s love for man, of the intimate relationship between God and man. Through this discussion, the definition of the person and therefore of his experience of himself and others is added to the definition found in chapter two. According to John Paul II’s Catholic perspective, the person has been redeemed by God through his merciful love. This is a love that continues to be a part of his life and a part of the communion of men through the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is much richness added to the second chapter’s philosophical discussion of communion; participation is not solely a task which man has to go about accomplishing himself, but he can rely on Christ’s example and aid through the power of the Holy Spirit. With its

Trinitarian discussion, this chapter is specifically a Christian conception of the person, one that is not normally shared by a Muslim perspective, and thus the question remains as to how to establish a dialogue of encounter, entering into the experience of “the other,” when each side is deeply entrenched in its particular faith.

CHAPTER FOUR

JOHN PAUL II ON DIALOGUE WITH MUSLIMS

From John Paul II’s philosophical and theological perspective, man finds his fullest dignity in love for his neighbour. In Wojtyla’s philosophical writings, this is arrived at from the point of view of man needing to enter into communion with another in order to find fulfillment; the most fundamental meaning of participation becomes participating in the other’s humanity by loving

‘thy neighbour as thyself.’ Within John Paul II’s Trinitarian writings, this need is articulated according to its Christian meaning; God grants the capacity and continually helps men to love one another, to be merciful to the point of self-sacrifice, which in turn leads to true unity. It is through a merciful and sacrificial love of neighbour, then, that man acts according to his highest

God-given dignity.

With the relationship between love of neighbour and man’s fulfillment, the Christian has a strongly founded impetus to reach out towards “the other.” In the process of reaching out, the contemporary Christian finds a pluralistic world, one filled with conflicting ideas about man’s fulfillment and dignity. In his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, Paul VI links the situation of pluralism to the question of how the Church should reach out, that is, make contact, with the outside world.

One part of this world, as everyone knows, has in recent years detached itself and broken away from the Christian foundations of its culture….Another and larger part of the world covers the vast territories of the so-called emerging nations. Taken as a whole, it is a world which offers to the Church not one but a hundred forms of possible contacts, some of which are open and easy, others difficult and problematic, and many, unfortunately, wholly unfavorable to friendly dialogue. It is at this point, therefore, that the problem of the Church's dialogue with the modern world arises. It will be for the [Second Vatican] Council to determine the extent and complexity of this problem and to do what it can to devise suitable methods for its solution. But the very need to solve it is felt by Us – and by you too, whose experience of

the urgency of the problem is no less than Our own – as a responsibility, a stimulus, an inner urge about which We cannot remain silent. (Sec. 13-14)

In furthering his ideas and suggestions for the Church’s dialogue with the outside world in

Ecclesiam Suam, Paul VI defines dialogue theologically, instructing that it should remain parallel to God’s dialogue with man, that is, his dialogue of love in the revelation of the Incarnation.1

With the subsequent discussion of John Paul II’s Trinitarian thought, dialogue of love takes form in Christ’s coming and living amongst man, loving him to the point of self-sacrifice on the Cross.

In this manner, Jesus teaches man of God’s merciful love for him and the glory of eternal life, which is continually offered through the power of the Holy Spirit.2

The above is a sketch of Christian theological anthropology for dialogue. However, in regards to the particular relationship that the Church should take up with Muslims, in his

Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II notes the theology and anthropology of the Quran significantly differ from that of the Bible. Whereas Christian theological anthropology begins from the point of redemption of man through a God who became man and died for man sins,

John Paul II states that “the God of the Koran…is ultimately a God outside of the world….[and]

Islam is not a religion of redemption.”3 From this point of view, it would seem that Catholic theological anthropology, although it may inform the Christian perspective on dialogue, does not belong in the ministry of dialogue with Muslims itself.

1 Ecclesiam Suam, sec. 70-71. 2 In response to Vatican II, Cardinal Wojtyla specifically addresses dialogue in his chapter “Faith and Dialogue” as not only necessary, but helpful for developing a mature faith through “an examination on the truths of faith and our minds’ assent to them, [and] an examination concerning our love towards men and especially those of different beliefs and convictions – an examination that we undergo on the basis of faith, and not an easy one” (In Sources of Renewal, trans. P. S. Falla [London: Collins, 1980], 32). 3 John Paul II, “Muhammad?” in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ed. Vittorio Messori (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 92; italics in the original.

In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II implicitly suggests that the point of contact is rather religious practice:

Nevertheless, the religiosity of Muslims deserves respect. It is impossible not to admire, for example, their fidelity to prayer. The image of believers in Allah who, without caring about time or place, fall to their knees and immerse themselves in prayer remains a model for all those who invoke the true God, in particular those Christians who, having deserted their magnificent cathedrals, pray only a little or not at all. (93; italics in the original)

The theme of respect for the religiosity of Muslims in Catholic-Muslim relations, particularly evident in their daily prayers, would seem to be consistent with a dialogue based in lived encounters. Yet, as a part of this dialogue involves mutual understanding, there is still an interweaving with theology and the common goals that provides this lived encounter with content.

John Paul II included this interweaving in his Address during his visit to the Umayyad

Great Mosque. Alongside his invitation to a dialogue of life, he asks for explorations into

Muslim and Christian philosophy and theology, as well as solidarity in working towards the common good:

It is important that Muslims and Christians continue to explore philosophical and theological questions together in order to come to a more objective and comprehensive knowledge of each others’ religious beliefs. Better mutual understanding will surely lead at the practical level to a new way of presenting our two religions not in opposition, as has happened too often in the past, but in partnership for the good of the human family. [….] As members of the one human family and as believers, we have obligations to the common good, to justice and to solidarity. Interreligious dialogue will lead to many forms of cooperation, especially in responding to the duty to care for the poor and weak. These are the signs that our worship of God is genuine.4

4 “Vatican Council and Papal Statements on Islam,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accessed May 27, 2015, http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and- interreligious/interreligious/islam/vatican-council-and-papal-statements-on-islam.cfm.

John Paul II gave the above statements late in his papacy, but they are continuous with many of his speeches given on the subject of Islam or to Muslim audiences. Through investigating these various speeches, this chapter will provide the manner in which John Paul II constructs an invitation to a dialogue of life with suggestions for mutual understanding between

Catholics and Muslims and common goals of dialogue.

Alongside these discussions, the theological and philosophical definitions of dialogue provided earlier in this thesis should be kept in mind. With the discussion of Vatican II, dialogue is first understood from the standpoint of God’s dialogue with man, which is always one of love.

According to the discussion of Wojtyla’s concept of participation, dialogue is a principle of community where solidarity and opposition are encouraged in order to continually discern and work towards the common good and full participation of persons. John Paul II’s theological anthropology, while remaining deeply Catholic, holds a significant role within Catholic-Muslim

Dialogue; it provides content to God’s dialogue of love and should not need to be censored in a community that allows for solidarity and opposition in service of a true common good.

Mutual Understanding in Theological Anthropology

Man’s Origin and Destiny

Despite his affirmation of the significant differences in theology and anthropology between

Christianity and Islam, John Paul II relies heavily upon the dignity that both religions attribute to man given their shared belief in the one Creator God, who is also man’s final end. From this

59 point, John Paul II emphasizes a basis for brotherhood that follows an analogical organization to his theological anthropology. Irrespective of the differences between the creation narratives in the Bible and the Quran, John Paul II still begins from these stories, where he points to man’s honoured placed amongst all of creation:

as a result of this faith in God the Creator and transcendent, one man finds himself at the summit of creation. He was created, the Bible teaches, “in the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:27); for the Koran, the sacred book of the Muslims, although man is made of dust, “God breathed into him his spirit and endowed him with hearing, sight and heart,” that is, intelligence (Sura 32:8). For the Muslims, the universe is destined to be subject to man as the representative of God; the Bible affirms that God ordered man to subdue the earth, but also to “till it and keep it” (Gn 2:15).5

Here, parallel to John Paul II’s Christian theological anthropology in Redemptor Hominis, the starting point is creation. According to the Biblical perspective, man’s honoured place is related to being made in God’s image. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) affirms this relation, stating,

Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is “in the image of God”; (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created “male and female”; (IV) God established him in his friendship. (Sec. 355)

The Catechism expands upon each of these items, but in regards to the first (which is the current concern), it states the following:

Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession, and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead. (Sec. 357)

5 John Paul II, To the Catholic Community of Ankara, Nov. 29, 1979, sec. 3, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 219-223.

John Paul II compares the above Christian understanding of man’s dignity (attached to being in the image of God) to the Quranic creation narrative. To his discussion of the intelligence that God gives man in the Quran, can be added that, a few verses later, the same sura describes

Allah ordering the angels to bow before Adam.6 Both with John Paul II’s discussion and the added image, man is understood in both traditions as the pinnacle of creation.

While John Paul II does not engage with it, understanding man as the summit of creation in the two religions is a subject that also points to a divergence between the two. That is, according to the Quran, man was made from dust7 and, according to Genesis 1:26-27, man was made in the image of God. While Genesis 2:7 describes the creation of man from dust in a similar manner to the Quran, John Paul II does not then simply ignore that Genesis 1 and the Christian tradition’s understanding of man as the summit of creation. In this manner, he remains consistent with the statements from Crossing the Threshold of Hope but still uses the logic of theological anthropology as a basis for communion.

On another occasion in Senegal, following from a discussion of creation narratives, John

Paul II then introduces the call to a practical dialogue of life; he discusses the possibility of a

“witness to God’s presence at the center of human life” in order to combat the moral suffering in a world that has forgotten that “not all the needs of mankind are material.”8 Whereas there is a certain brotherhood amongst the whole human family, John Paul II specifies in another speech in

6 Quran 2:34. 7 Quran 35:11. 8 John Paul II, To the Islamic Leaders of Senegal, Feb. 22, 1992, sec. 6, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 475-479.

61 the Philippines that Christians and Muslims are “especially brothers in God, who created us and whom we are trying to reach, in our own ways through faith, prayer and worship, through the keeping of his law and through submission to his designs.”9 As John Paul II states in his speech to Moroccan youth, this brotherhood can thus be present in a shared “witness to our worship of

God, by our adoration, our prayer of praise and supplication. Man cannot live without prayer, any more than he can live without breathing.”10 Alongside prayer, this witness to faith in God takes form in fasting, almsgiving, repentance, and pardon.11

Morality

Within this general basis for brotherhood in faith in one God in his speeches, John Paul II often references the shared moral code within both traditions. From the faith in God the Creator, both traditions can agree that, “As God’s creature, man has rights which cannot be violated, but he is equally bound by the law of good and evil which is based on the order established by

God.”12 When writing on the same subject in his papal encyclical on morality, Veritatis Splendor

[The Splendor of Truth], John Paul II sharply contrasts this recognition of God’s law to

9 John Paul II, To Representatives of Muslims of the Philippines, Feb. 20, 1981, sec. 1, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 235-237. 10 John Paul II, To the Young Muslims of Morocco, Aug. 19, 1985, sec. 4, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 297-305. 11 Ibid., sec. 10. 12 To the Catholic Community of Ankara, sec. 3.

62 contemporary culture that “grant[s] individuals or social groups the right to determine what is good or evil.”13

In chapter three’s discussion of Dominum et Vivificantem, the intimate connection between the conscience and the voice of the Holy Spirit within Christian theological anthropology was explained. The Holy Spirit “convinces man concerning sin” – that is, of good and evil – speaking to man of the mystery of God.14 God’s law can thus be more easily followed through a continual openness on the part of the Christian to listening to the Holy Spirit, inviting him to speak to one’s conscience. In this sense, as the Christian understands it, God remains intimately a part of man’s life. While this cannot be wholly conformed to a God who is outside of the world, John

Paul II then connects the Christian belief to the Muslim emphasis on continual submission to

God’s will:15 “God asks that we should listen to his voice. He expects from us obedience to his holy will in a free consent of mind and of heart.”16

John Paul II also enters into how this similarity in belief allows for growth between the two traditions. If we are to follow God’s way or submit to his will, our relationship with moral law must be of a justice inseparable from mercy. In his speech To the Young Muslims of Morocco,

John Paul II reminds his audience that God “reveals himself as the one who pardons and shows mercy” when man repents after “having strayed into the disorder of sin and works of death.”17 In

13 John Paul II. Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, Addressed by the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, To All the Bishops of the Catholic Church Regarding Certain Fundamental Questions of the Church’s Moral Teaching, August 6, 1993, sec. 35, in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. J. Michael Miller, C.S.B. (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2001), 583-661; italics in the original. 14 Dominum et Vivificantem, sec. 32. 15 The three-letter root of the word for Islam is s-l-m, whose meaning is submission or obedience. 16 To the Young Muslims of Morocco, sec. 2. 17 Ibid.

63 his speech To Representatives of Muslims of the Philippines, John Paul II addresses this shared model of mercy:

Dear Muslims, my brothers: I would like to add that we Christians, just like you, seek the basis and model of mercy in God himself, the God to whom your Book gives the very beautiful name of al-Rahman, while the Bible calls him al-Rahum, the Merciful One. (Sec. 4)

If man’s relationship to God is marked by God’s mercy for man, so too must man’s relationship with his fellow man be characterized as such. This follows a similar logic to John

Paul II’s Dives in Misericordia, where God’s mercy for man is foundational for understanding how men ought to love one another. With the acknowledgement of a similar understanding within Islam of God as the Merciful One, John Paul II can also extend this to relations between

Christians and Muslims.

Common Goals

Within the goals of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue put forth by John Paul II, it becomes starkly evident that the above efforts of mutual understanding are integral to working to solve the needs of our shared world. In his theological definitions of mankind as the summit of God’s creation and as subject to obedience to God’s moral law, John Paul II sets up the basis for unity. From this point, Christians and Muslims can look outwards, using the unity already found, and strengthening it, through acting together in response to societal ills. Two of which, lack of freedom of conscience and violence, will be explored below.

Right to Freedom of Conscience

In addition to finding parallels between Catholic and Islamic theological anthropology in order to encourage a dialogue of life, John Paul II points to a great challenge for communion in the relations between the two traditions. That is, he staunchly defends freedom of religion, the lack of which is a significant obstacle for Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. Henri Teissier, Archbishop of Algiers from 1972 to 1981, listed this issue of right to freedom of conscience as one of four serious obstacles in this dialogue, finding the practice of actual, civil, social, and/or family death of a convert from Islam highly problematic for respect of the human person and God.18

Referencing the theme of human dignity, John Paul II argues for freedom of conscience as a necessary goal:

The Lord of heaven and earth cannot be pleased with a religious observance that is somehow imposed from without. What would then become of the wonderful gifts of reason and free will which make individuals privileged to bear personal responsibility and which constitute the worth and glory of the Creator’s beloved sons and daughters?”19

On the other hand, when freedom of conscience is not accepted, one goes against human dignity:

To try to impose on others by violent means what we consider to be the truth is an offence against human dignity, and ultimately an offence against God whose image that person bears.20

18 C. W. Troll, “Catholic Teachings on Interreligious Dialogue. Analysis of Some Recent Official Documents, with Special Reference to Christian-Muslim Relations,” in Muslim-Christian Perceptions of Dialogue Today: Experiences and Expectations, ed. Jacques Waardenburg (Paris: Peeters, 2000), 260. 19 John Paul II, To the Representatives of the Various Religions of Tanzania, Sep. 2, 1990, sec. 4, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 438-441; italics in the original. 20 John Paul II, Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2002, sec. 6, accessed May 30, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul- ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20011211_xxxv-world-day-for-peace.html.

Peace

Alongside the above point of religious tolerance, John Paul II’s speeches encourage peaceful coexistence:

God created all men equal in dignity, though different with regard to gifts and talents. Mankind is a whole where each one has his part to play; the worth of the various peoples and diverse cultures must be recognized. The world is as it were a living organism; each one has something to receive from the others, and has something to give to them. (To the Young Muslims of Morocco, sec. 7; italics in the original)

One particular avenue for the general goal of peace to follow is working against terrorism.

John Paul II addresses this issue in his Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace on January 1, 2002 a few months following the 9/11 attacks:

The various Christian confessions, as well as the world's great religions, need to work together to eliminate the social and cultural causes of terrorism. They can do this by teaching the greatness and dignity of the human person, and by spreading a clearer sense of the oneness of the human family. This is a specific area of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation, a pressing service which religion can offer to world peace. [….] In bearing common witness to the truth that the deliberate murder of the innocent is a grave evil always, everywhere, and without exception, the world’s religious leaders will help to form the morally sound public opinion that is essential for building an international civil society capable of pursuing the tranquillity of order in justice and freedom. In undertaking such a commitment, the various religions cannot but pursue the path of forgiveness, which opens the way to mutual understanding, respect and trust. The help that religions can give to peace and against terrorism consists precisely in their teaching forgiveness, for those who forgive and seek forgiveness know that there is a higher Truth, and that by accepting that Truth they can transcend themselves. (Sec. 12-13; italics in the original)

John Paul II lists working towards the common goal of peace, specifically in regard to terrorism, as an integral part of interreligious dialogue. While including the necessity of religious leaders to

66 speak out against violence, there is also an emphasis upon a strong relationship built on cooperation and forgiveness.

Conclusion

Across the speeches discussed above, John Paul II consistently looks to growth in mutual understanding, exploring possible parallels in Christian and Muslim theology and areas where this mutual understanding can be applied towards common goals. With much content and thought provided by John Paul II in Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, there is still the need for it to be connected to a dialogue of lived encounter.

In his article “Catholic Teachings on Interreligious Dialogue,” Troll categorizes two types of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. He argues that, due to the different contexts of Vatican diplomatic relations and local churches, the Church’s leadership is often constrained to polite, somewhat general, and optimistically edged discourse and it is the local churches that are better able to discuss and address the most pressing needs of dialogue.21 It is from this perspective that a large part of Troll’s article list the particular obstacles and issues from discussing the Algerian context of a small Catholic church within a Muslim-majority country, where archbishops Teissier and, later, Claverie engage in a dialogue centred in coexistence.22

These two categories, however, are not necessarily antithetical; across our above discussion, John Paul II encourages his audiences to engage in this coexistence through an attitude of openness to one another and to God. In his speech To Representatives of the Various

21 Troll, “Catholic Teachings on Interreligious Dialogue,” 270. 22 Ibid., 252-268.

Religions of Tanzania, he even explicitly states that, dialogue “‘includes the daily living together in peace and mutual help….Where circumstances permit, it means a sharing of spiritual experiences and insights.’”23 Although the local context is more able to have a dialogue of life in this sense, John Paul II engages in this sharing in such events as the World Day of Prayer for

Peace in Assisi in 1993, where, addressing the European Islamic Community, he states,

To our prayers we have added an act of fasting. Can we not see in this double sign: that we acknowledge our own weakness, and that we are open to divine assistance? Our prayers for peace include the plea that we too may be strengthened to act always as peacemakers.”24

With such an openness to coming together with Muslims from the themes discussed throughout this chapter and the invitation to a dialogue of life from John Paul II, there is a prompting to continue the discussion from the perspective of local context of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, broadening the field of the dialogue of life and, therein, better understanding its possibility to engage in dialogue without bracketing out the experience of one’s spiritual life.

23 To Representatives of the Various Religions of Tanzania, sec. 2. 24 John Paul II, To Representatives of the European Islamic Community, Jan. 10, 1993, in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963-1995), ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), 504-505.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHRISTIAN DE CHERGÉ

DIALOGUE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE

In the previous chapter, we extended John Paul II’s anthropology into the realm of

Catholic-Muslim dialogue. His points of emphasis – creation narratives, God’s moral law, freedom of conscience, and peace – introduce the necessity of community, which can be accomplished through a dialogue of life and can include man’s relationship to God. Within the context of the Church’s dialogue with Muslims, the “dialogue of life” becomes necessary to ensure the reality of strong communities; reaching past the leadership’s directions and ideas, the members of the faithful can integrate with one another to share their lives, creating the basis of personal relationships seeking the common good within a strong community. John Paul II’s theological anthropology remains applicable to the discussion; the relationship of persons gains the prior starting point of God’s love for man; before man could ever love his fellow man, God loved all men in creating them. As discussed in chapter three, God remains faithful to mankind, continuing to show them his love in the form of mercy, saving them from sin through the Cross and Resurrection. In this manner, God reveals to man how he is called to love his fellow man, and he also continually offers his Spirit to guide man towards communion. Believers are thus given an example and a helping hand in loving their neighbour, or in forming community.

The dialogue of life attempts to engage the identity and life of the believer – both of which are entrenched in a relationship with God, one’s Creator and destiny – and share this with the other believer. It is this form of dialogue that is championed by Christian de Chergé, whose

69 writings in Catholic-Muslim dialogue reflect his shared spiritual life with his Muslim Algerian neighbours and friends. Within de Chergé’s dialogue of spiritual life,1 his desire for a shared spiritual life gives rise to limited but significant theological concerns of Christian and Islamic understandings of man’s relationship to God and many practical concerns of ways for Christians and Muslims to be in communion as Christians and Muslims.

This chapter begins with explaining de Chergé’s own eschatological starting point within his “dialogue of spiritual life;” it discusses his rooting of dialogue in the reflecting upon God and growing in relationship with him. From this point, this chapter will discuss the theological priorities that are created by this desire for a shared spiritual life, reflected in de Chergé’s discussions of a common word in God’s mercy and of a sense of communion in theological differences. It will then expand upon de Chergé’s points for sharing his spiritual life with Muslim spirituality – namely, prayer, scripture, and obedience. These theological and practical discussions culminate in his witness to God’s love in de Chergé’s act of martyrdom.

Beginning a Dialogue of Spiritual Life

The Catechism of the Catholic Church titles its section on the vocation to celibate life

“Virginity for the Sake of the Kingdom” and describes this life as “a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return, a sign which also

1 Another manner of describing this form of dialogue can be found in Mario I. Aguilar’s chapter “Contemporary Dialogues: The Trappists of Algeria,” where he provides the phrase “contemplative presence as dialogue” to emphasize the aspect of shared spirituality in de Chergé’s dialogue. Aguilar asserts that this type of dialogue allowed de Chergé to treat Muslims as “brothers and sisters rather than as ‘non-Christians’” (In Church, Liberation and World Religions [New York: T&T Clark, 2012], 57; italics in the original).

70 recalls that marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away.”2 As John Paul II proclaimed in his speech To the Young Muslims of Morocco, Christians and Muslims share their belief in the one God who is man’s origin and destiny.3 The Church’s various forms of celibate life, though, are called to be living signs of man’s destiny that is beyond this world. It is from this monastic vocation, to dedicate a life as a symbol of the beyond, that de Chergé’s dialogue forms. When de Chergé describes mystical dialogue in his article “Chrétiens et musulmans: Pour un projet commun de société” [Christians and Muslims: For a Common Project of Society], it is man’s destiny in God from which de Chergé begins: “We are all marked, we and the others, by the call from a beyond.”4

As this call is so deeply engrained into de Chergé’s life, it is not strictly a theological point, but a point from which he enters into communion. Salenson places de Chergé as following the modern turn in thought of Rudolf Bultmann, Jürgen Moltmann, and Charles Péguy – in which eschatology, e.g. “theology of the last things,” widens its application to the present life. This is in contrast to the long history of theology from the scholastic period to the latter part of the nineteenth century where eschatology limited its application to the hope of entering the kingdom of God after death.5 Analogical to his vocation to virginity, de Chergé’s eschatology draws from the hope to be with God after death and applies it to the meaning of communion in this life:

the faith tells us, here and there, that there is a place for a new “third world,” one of hope…And if the monk can add his word here, it is less as an effective builder of the city

2 Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica, sec. 1618 (New York: First Image Books, 1995). 3 To the Young Muslims of Morocco, sec. 2. 4 “Nous sommes marqués, les uns et les autres, par l’appel d’un au-delà.” (Christian de Chergé, “For a Common Project of Society,” in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu [Paris: Bayard, 2010], 170) 5 Christian Salenson, “Eschatology,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 123-129.

of men (though…) than as a resolute follower of a way of being in the world which would have no sense outside of what we call the “end times” of hope (eschatology). …. [T]he first logic of this beyond is that it would be better to make it amongst us, today, together.6

With the context of “a Cistercian ‘shipwreck’ in an ocean of Islam,”7 de Chergé engages in how his eschatological vocation can be shared with his Muslim friends. His goal, for Christians and Muslims to be witnesses to a hope in eternal life that the world has forgotten, reflects this position. This life in communion with Muslims that originates in a special vocation to the beyond takes form in what de Chergé describes as a ladder. In view of a shared spiritual development between Christians and Muslims, de Chergé draws from John Climacus’s image of the mystical ladder.8 This image has always been popular in the Christian monastic tradition as a way to meditate on the reaching towards heaven through one’s spiritual life.9 Each upright of de

Chergé’s ladder represents Christians and Muslims, respectively, and each of the rungs of his ladder represents points upon which Catholics and Muslims can come together on this climb towards communion with God. These “rungs” will be discussed in this chapter as the mystical steps in life.10

6 la foi nous dit, ici et là, qu’il y a place pour un “tiers-monde” inédit, celui de l’espérance…Et si le moine peut avoir son mot à dire ici, c’est moins comme constructeur efficace de la cité des hommes (encore que…) que comme adepte résolu d’une façon d’être au monde qui n’aurait aucun sens en dehors de ce que nous appelons les “fins dernières” de l’espérance (eschatologie). …..[L]a logique première de cet au-delà, c’est qu’il y a mieux à faire entre nous, aujourd’hui, ensemble. (De Chergé, “For a Common Project of Society,” 169-170) 7 “‘épave’ cistercienne dans un océan d’islam” (Ibid., 167-168) 8 Ibid., 175-176. 9 Christian Salenson, “The Dialogue with Islam,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 59. 10 In “Contemporary Dialogues,” Aguilar describes this communion with God as an alternative to proclaiming God to others without knowledge of the Christian God (69). The following discussion of “rungs” will emphasize not so much an opposition between communion and proclamation, but rather the integration of de Chergé’s Christian monastic life into his dialogue.

Prerequisite of Humility

In de Chergé’s article “L’échelle mystique du dialogue” [The Mystical Ladder of

Dialogue], he uses much of the same content that is found in “For a Common Project of

Society,” but his introduction is slightly different. Prior to beginning to climb the mystical ladder, de Chergé calls those who are engaged in dialogue to “humility and spiritual emulation under the gift of the Spirit.”11 His perspective on humility can be elaborated upon from three standpoints: his exegesis on the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, his Muslim friend’s sacrificial love, and his reflections on his meeting with Sayah Attiah, the head of the Armed Islamic Group

(GIA) of the monks’ region in Algeria.

In regards to the former, de Chergé compares Mary’s visit to Elizabeth and the relationship between the two babies they are carrying to the relationship between Christians and Muslims in dialogue. He writes,

And it is in him [Christ] as such that our Church carries within her the Good News – and our Church is in each of us – and we have come a little like Mary, first to give service (really, that is our first purpose)…but also, in carrying this Good News, how do we go about saying it…and we know that those whom we have come to meet, they are a little like Elizabeth, they are carriers of a message that comes from God. And our Church does not tell us and does not know the exact link between the Good News that we carry and this message which sustains the other. And when Mary arrives, it is Elizabeth who speaks the first words. Not exactly, but Mary said: as salam alaikum! Peace be with you! And this is one thing that we can do. This simple greeting made something, someone vibrate in Elizabeth. And in this vibration, something was expressed…that is, the Good News, not the total Good News, but what we can perceive in the moment. From where does [your child] come that the child in me has

11 “où tous sont appelés à l’humilité et à l’émulation spirituelle sous le charme de l’Esprit” (Christian de Chergé, “The Mystical Ladder of Dialogue” in Islamochristiana 23 [1997], 1).

leapt? And likely, the child who was in Mary leapt first. In fact, it is between the children that all of this happens...And Elizabeth liberated Mary’s Magnificat.12

In his exegesis of the Visitation, de Chergé connects dialogue to a meeting, but a meeting where the Church is recalled to its Mother and her humility in carrying Jesus. There is a confidence here that the Church has indeed been the given the Good News in the revelation of

Jesus Christ. Yet, there is also humility in two respects: to acknowledge that Islam has been given another revelation by God and to approach dialogue in simplicity, allowing the Good

News to speak for Himself. As Salenson describes, this approach to Islam and to revelation is one of respect and interest in the other’s faith: “the other’s faith [is] a gift from God, even if I do not truly understand this gift and it remains very mysterious from my viewpoint. This gift that is given to the other is, in a certain sense, a gift that is given to me.13

Prior to his ordination, de Chergé was assigned as a French officer in the Sections

Administratives Spécialisées [Specialized Administrative Sections] in Djebel during the Algerian

War for Independence (1959-1961). During this time, de Chergé became good friends with a

12 Et il en est ainsi de notre Église qui porte en elle une Bonne Nouvelle - et notre Église c'est chacun de nous - et nous sommes venus un peu comme Marie, d'abord pour rendre service (finalement c'est sa première ambition) ... mais aussi, en portant cette Bonne Nouvelle, comment nous allons nous y prendre pour la dire ... et nous savons que ceux que nous sommes venus rencontrer, ils sont un peu comme Élisabeth, ils sont porteurs d'un message qui vient de Dieu. Et notre Église ne nous dit pas et ne sait pas quel est le lien exact entre la Bonne Nouvelle que nous portons et ce message qui fait vivre l'autre. Et quand Marie arrive, voici que c'est Élisabeth qui parle la première. Pas tout à fait exact car Marie a dit: as salam alaikum ! Que la paix soit avec vous! Et ça c'est une chose que nous pouvons faire. Cette simple salutation a fait vibrer quelque chose, quelqu'un en Élisabeth. Et dans sa vibration, quelque chose s'est dit... qui était la Bonne Nouvelle, pas toute la Bonne Nouvelle, mais ce qu'on pouvait en percevoir dans le moment. D'où me vient-il que l'enfant qui est en moi a tressailli? Et vraisemblablement, l'enfant qui était en Marie a tressailli le premier. En fait, c'est entre les enfants que cela s'est passé cette affaire-là …Et Élisabeth a libéré le Magnificat de Marie. (Christian de Chergé, “Retraite aux petits sœurs de Jésus au Maroc en 1990” [Retreat to the Little Sisters of Jesus in Morocco in 1990], excerpt in Le Verbe s’est fait frère [Montrouge: Bayard, 2010], 62-63; italics in the original) 13 Salenson, “The Dialogue with Islam,” 57-58.

74 local village policeman, Mohammed.14 As the result of Muhammed defending him in the midst of a military skirmish and being found killed the next day,15 de Chergé was deeply marked, knowing by experience, and receiving the gift of, sacrificial love of a Muslim friend. It is from this experience that de Chergé discovered the “call to bind himself to a people, to Algeria:”16

In the blood of this friend, I knew that my call to follow Christ would have to find itself living, sooner or later, in the same country where I had received this pledge of the greatest love. By the same token, I knew that this consecration of my life would have to involve a prayer in common in order to be truly a witness of the Church. And then also began a pilgrimage towards the communion of saints where Christians and Muslims, along with others, share the same brotherly joy. For I know I can place at least one Muslim under this term, this beloved brother, who lived up to his death the imitation of Jesus Christ.17

In a certain respect, this discovery is parallel to Mary’s Magnificat that is liberated upon meeting

Elizabeth; Christian discovered a great gift, freedom in his own Christian faith, through his encounter with Muhammed. His reflection on Muhammad’s death also reflects his eschatological emphasis, treating Christian-Muslim prayer as turned towards the eternal life of the saints.

In the above two instances, humility is described according to a meeting, a discovery of

“the other,” of God, and one’s own relationship to God. The focus is placed upon an attitude of openness in meeting the other. De Chergé also insists upon humility amidst the violence of the

14 Christian Salenson, “The Foundational Experiences,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 23. 15 Ibid., 24. 16 Ibid. 17 Dans le sang de cet ami, j’ai su que mon appel à suivre le Christ devrait trouver à se vivre, tôt ou tard, dans le pays même où m’avait été donné ce gage de l’amour le plus grand. J’ai su, du même coup, que cette consécration de ma vie devrait passer par une prière en commun pour être vraiment témoignage d’Église. Et puis a commencé alors un pèlerinage vers la communion des saints où chrétiens et musulmans, et tant d’autres avec eux, partagent la même joie filiale. Car je sais pouvoir fixer à ce terme de mon expérience au moins un musulman, ce frère bien aimé, qui a vécu jusque dans sa mort l’imitation de Jésus-Christ. (Christian de Chergé, “Prier en Église à l’écoute de l’islam” [Praying in the Church by Listening to Islam], Chemins de Dialogue 27 (2006): 19)

Algerian Civil War in the 1990s. Reflecting upon his prayer after a meeting with the GIA – where its leader Sayah Attiah interrupted the monks’ Christmas celebration and miraculously accepted de Chergé’s refusals to his group’s demands18 – Christian explains,

I couldn’t ask of the Good God, “[K]ill him.” But I can ask, “[D]isarm him.” After, I realized, “Do I have the right to ask, ‘[D]isarm him,’ if I do not begin by asking, ‘[D]isarm me and disarm us in our community.’” This is my daily prayer, I simply entrust it all to you.19

Placing himself, a Cistercian monk devoted to a life of peace and prayer, as a sinner alongside the leader of an armed rebellion group in praying for both himself and Attiah to be disarmed, de

Chergé witnesses the extent and omnipresence of humility in his dialogue.

He speaks of humility as necessary through his discussion of the Visitation and reasonable through his experience with Muhammad to begin a dialogue. However, it is not only necessary to begin an approach to dialogue but necessary in every meeting in his dialogue of spiritual life, no matter the other’s faults. The issue of reciprocity arises in this instance, but there is also a manner in which the divergence between the official Vatican dialogue and the dialogue of life is made evident. Reciprocity is indeed to be hoped for and worked towards. In de Chergé’s position, it is not that he ignores the sin of mass violence but that he extends his benevolence to

Sayah Attiah in praying for him and in solidarity in this worldly life’s experience of sin.

18 Cf. Jean Maynard, “Between Christendom and Islam: The Martyr Mystic Christian de Chergé,” in Catholics in Interreligious Dialogue: Monasticism, Theology and Spirituality, eds. Anthony O’Mahoney and Peter Bowe OSB (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2006), 84-85. 19 Je ne peux demander au bon Dieu : tue-le. Mais je peux demander : désarme-le. Après, je me suis dit : ai- je le droit de demander : désarme-le, si je ne commence pas par demander : désarme-moi et désarme-nous en communauté. C’est ma prière quotidienne, je vous la confie tout simplement. (Christian de Chergé, “L’Église, c’est l’Incarnation continuée” [The Church: The Incarnation Continued] in The Invincible Hope, 314)

Mystical Steps in Theology

In his chapter “The Dialogue with Islam,” Christian Salenson comments that

interreligious dialogue cannot be reduced simply to a dialogue about the partners’ respective religions. Dialogue concerns the whole of life. Conversely, though, interreligious dialogue cannot remain silent about the respective faiths of the dialogue participants….even if it takes the concrete form of interpersonal relations, cannot be reduced to these relations. It is called to open itself up to a positive consideration of the other’s religious tradition. (47)

In relation to this thesis’s larger discussion, including both Catholic thought and practice, both theology and encounter, must be included within the ministry of dialogue.

De Chergé’s engages theology within his spiritual dialogue similarly to John Paul II, through man’s relationship to God. Even with a spiritually based dialogue, tensions and differences of opinion between Catholics and Muslims can still easily prevail. For instance, there can be doubt from each side as to whether the other worships the same God. Following from this, there is a divergent manner in which the two understand the relationship between God and man.

De Chergé navigates these issues through discussing foundational beliefs in both traditions regarding the characteristics of God: namely, mercy and unity. Throughout, he largely relies upon textual support from the Quran. This reliance is purposed towards understanding the

Muslim theological anthropology, i.e. the relationship between man and God according to the

Quran, and explaining (and sometimes arguing for) certain Christian beliefs according to

Quranic verses. In this manner, de Chergé avoids the danger of “syncretism” through addressing the differences and debates within dialogue rather than ignoring them. He demonstrates that

77 these debates are also part of a dialogue of encounter.20

The All-Merciful

In his article “Coming Towards a Common Word,” de Chergé widens Dives in

Misericordia’s mission to aid Catholics in rediscovering the mystery of God’s merciful love to aiding both Catholics and Muslims to make this discovery together. This is consistent with his form of spiritual dialogue as it is a matter of God’s love for man despite his sin, reflecting both

God’s character and his relationship with mankind. De Chergé chooses the particular characteristic as it is deeply engrained in both traditions. In this work’s discussion of Dives in

Misericordia, from the Catholic perspective, mercy was the starting point for man to understand

God’s love. Similarly, it is a fundamental characteristic by which Muslims understand God’s love. As de Chergé discusses, it is everywhere in the Quran, the Arabic root for mercy appearing

339 times.21

From this shared point, de Chergé believes that Christians and Muslims will be able not only to arrive at “a common word” but a “conjoint word.”22 It is insufficient to simply agree on a theological point for de Chergé. While he is certainly entering into that territory with this

20 Through my following explanation of de Chergé’s theological thought, I hope to elaborate upon the integration of Christian theology and a dialogue of encounter rather than placing them in opposition. This diverges slightly from other commentaries on dialogue of spiritual life such as Pierre-François de Béthune’s chapter on “Monastic Interreligious Dialogue,” where he states “[t]he practice of dialogue at the level of spiritual experience, precisely because it involves an encounter with the ineffable produces a certain deconstruction of doctrinal formulations” (In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Interreligious Dialogue, ed. by Catherine Cornille [John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2013], 45). 21 Christian de Chergé, “Venons-en à une parole commune : Chrétiens et musulmans, témoins et pèlerins de la miséricorde” [Coming Towards a Common Word : Christians and Muslims, Witnesses and Pilgrims of Mercy], in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 2010), 74. 22 Ibid., 69.

78 discussion, he is explicit that it must be directly linked to a lived spiritual experience.23 If mercy from the Catholic perspective is the manner in which sinful man discovers God’s love, it is intimately tied to the Christian’s daily experience of God. Man has to continually ask for God’s forgiveness for his sins and the Church commemorates this through the Eucharist, the apex of this mercy in Christ’s death and resurrection.

De Chergé looks to understand a similar link between the Quranic understanding of God’s love and the Muslim’s spiritual life:

In order to understand the Quranic notion of mercy, we can do nothing but return to the concrete sense of the Semitic root rhm….The nominal rihm (plural arhâm) designates the uterus of the mother, the seat of the fetus, and, by extension, the familial ties. Employed in the feminine, the participle râhim serves to designate a woman who has a tumor in the uterus, or who dies in childbirth.24

This Quranic meaning of mercy is intimately tied to the unconditional and sacrificial love of a mother, who completely embraces her child. De Chergé progresses then to the link between a mother’s love and God’s love: “The Quran comes back often as well to God’s presence in the mother’s womb.”25 God is involved in a mysterious manner in the creation of each individual.

This, de Chergé points out, is particularly true with the birth of Mary the Mother of Jesus. The

Quran tells the story of Mary’s mother consecrating Mary to God’s protection.26 It is from this connection between a mother’s love and God’s love that the Arabic root then takes the form al-

23 Cf. Christian Salenson, “The Place of Islam in God’s Plan,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 42-45. 24 Pour bien comprendre la notion coranique de miséricorde, on ne peut faire l’économie d’un retour au sens concret de la racine sémitique rhm….Le substantif rihm (pluriel arhâm) désigne l’utérus de la mère, le siège du fœtus et, par extension, les liens de parenté. Employé au féminin, le participe râhim sert à désigner une femme qui a une tumeur à l’utérus, ou qui est exposée à mourir des suites de ses couches. (De Chergé, “Coming Towards a Common Word,” 75) 25 “Le Coran revient souvent, lui aussi, sur cette présence de Dieu au secret du sein maternel” (Ibid., 76). 26 Ibid., 77.

79 rahîm (The All-Merciful or the Compassionate One), which appears 115 times in the Quran.27

This link between God and a mother’s love leads de Chergé to a significant point of divergence between Catholics and Muslims, God’s embrace of man as son. While this work has previously discussed man’s sonship in God through the sacrifice of the Son of God, Muslims vehemently reject this concept of divine filiation. De Chergé cites the verse often used in defence of this position in sura 19:

They said: ‘The All-Merciful begot a son!’ They attribute a son to the All-Merciful! It does not suit the All-Merciful to beget a son! All those in the heavens and on Earth appear to the All-Merciful as simple servants.28

However, de Chergé contextualizes this verse, arguing that it was specifically referring to the idolatry in the pantheon in Mecca.29 He argues that it was not meant in such a categorical and strict manner. De Chergé asks his Muslim friends to reconsider, reflecting with him upon God’s intention in revealing himself as having “entrails of mercy.”30 Specifically, he asks them to look at and meditate upon the Quranic verses that include the Annunciation to Mary. In the Quranic account, God also gives Mary a baby that is from him. De Chergé insists through this account that it is Mary’s womb that holds the secret of the All-Merciful.31

De Chergé then turns, similarly to John Paul II, to discuss man’s sharing of God’s mercy, which he refers to as an “open treasure.”32 While de Chergé acknowledges the limitations of

27 De Chergé, “Coming Towards a Common Word,” 78. 28 “Ils ont dit : ‘Le Miséricordieux s’est donné un fils!’ Ils ont attribué un fils au Miséricordieux! Il ne convient pas au Miséricordieux de se donner un fils! Tous ceux qui sont dans les cieux et sur la terre se présentent au Miséricordieux comme de simples serviteurs ([sura] 19,88 [and] 91-93)” (Ibid.). 29 Ibid., 81. 30 “entrailles de miséricorde” (Ibid., 81). 31 Ibid., 82. 32 Ibid., 83.

80 man’s mercy (insisted upon in the Quran), he argues that man can still participate in God’s mercy through good works. Quoting the Quran, de Chergé states, “‘The mercy of God is close to those who do good.’”33 Nonetheless, man always receives God’s mercy first; man is given life, intelligence, Revelation, the Law, etc.34 It is particularly due to all these gifts from God that man, following Jesus’s example, can live his highest vocation to reflect the merciful presence of his

Creator.35

Linking God’s gifts and man’s vocation, de Chergé returns, then, to the subject of “filial language.”

And if God appears as “the most merciful of the merciful” ([suras] 7, 151; 12, 64; 92; 21, 83)…it is truly because He gave to man, in creating him, this incredible ability to resemble Him in forgiveness and love.36

In this sense, a part of God’s mercy is integrally tied to man’s vocation to be a sign of God’s image of mercy. De Chergé is clear that this vocation to mercy should not be understood individualistically, just between a man and God. Rather, as mercy comes directly from the unity within God, it is naturally the principle and guarantor of unity amongst men.37

God is One

Given its focus within both traditions, drawing from God’s mercy is meant to be an empowering source of unity for Christians and Muslims in a dialogue of life. This unity,

33 De Chergé, “Coming Towards a Common Word,” 84. 34 Ibid., 85-87. 35 Ibid., 89-90. 36 Et si Dieu se présente comme “le plus miséricordieux des miséricordieux” (7, 151; 12, 64; 92; 21, 83), ou encoure comme “le meilleur des miséricordieux” (23, 109, 118), c’est bien parce qu’il a donné à l’homme, en le créant, ce pouvoir inouï de lui rassembler en pardonnant et en aimant. (Ibid., 91) 37 Ibid., 98.

81 however, is often challenged by the stark and important differences that exist between the two traditions (e.g. the “filial language” discussed above). Although motivated by his experience of living in Algeria, de Chergé still intuits a need to engage in a theological discussion regarding the meaning of differences amongst men in both Christianity and Islam:

a road already long traveled in a Muslim country has definitively taught me that we cannot live as “pray-ers” amongst other “pray-ers” without fumbling for, with more or less impatience, towards the divine sense of what separates us men. And what if the facts of difference take on their significance in the Revelation that God made us of what He is? Nothing should thus prevent us from taking it just as we do faith itself, that is, as a gift from God.38

In the above passage, de Chergé provides his agenda for his article “Christians and Muslims: Do our Differences have a Sense of Communion?,” that is, searching in revelation for the meaning of differences. Over the course of this article he draws from both Biblical and Quranic sources, as well as Christian and Muslim theologians, in order to argue for the integral significance that differences take in forming unity.

De Chergé begins with two of the most deeply entrenched differences between Christianity and Islam: the Trinity and Jesus’s divine nature. In regards to the former, de Chergé provides the

Quranic reasoning for this disapproval: “‘Yes, those who say, ‘God is truly the third of three,’ are impious.’”39 De Chergé reminds Muslims that, in their tradition, God is known as different

38 un chemin déjà ancien en pays musulman m’a appris qu’en définitive on ne peut vivre comme priant parmi des priants autres sans tâtonner, avec plus ou moins d’impatience, vers le sens divin de ce qui humainement nous sépare. Et si la différence prenait son sens dans la Révélation que Dieu nous fait de ce qu’Il est? Rien ne saurait empêcher alors de la recevoir comme la foi elle-même, c’est-à-dire comme un don de Dieu. (Christian de Chergé, “Chrétiens et musulmans : Nos différences ont-elles le sens d’une communion?” [Christians and Muslims: Do Our Differences Have a Sense of Communion?], in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu [Paris: Bayard, 2010], 112) 39 “‘Oui, ceux qui disent : ‘Dieu est en vérité le troisième de trois’ sont impies’ ([sura] 5,73)” (Ibid., 125).

82 from all others, completely unique.40 He then explains that Christians understand this unique nature of the one God in a different manner, but that this does not mean that the two views are mutually exclusive.41 While the Trinity does speak of three persons, they are all one, in complete unity.

In light of this unity within God, De Chergé turns to discuss the special vocation of man:

It is humanity as a whole that received in advance the capacity to signify the Unique One. That which makes the difference of man in creation is the mutual link with his own kind, a link constitutive of his nature and which takes all its sense in the common proclamation of the uniqueness of God.42

While it is true that there is a wide diversity within creation and mankind, man was given a unique vocation within creation to communion. This signifies that within this diversity, this manifold of differences, there is a necessity to come together. De Chergé argues that the

Incarnation of God in Jesus allows man to do so: “Because he went freely to the extreme of love for all men, Jesus continues to offer himself to us as the living sign where the human community fulfills itself in sharing the difference which signifies God.”43 Through his discussion of the

Trinity and the Incarnation, de Chergé explains that the “differences” within God – that is, the three persons – are simultaneously a form of unity, this form of unity is meant to be shared with man through Christ’s redemption. Reminiscent of the theological anthropology of John Paul II, from the Catholic perspective, the unity within God’s Three Persons encourage and imbues men

40 De Chergé, “Do Our Differences have a Sense of Communion?”, 125. 41 Ibid., 128. 42 C’est l’humanité tout entière qui reçoit par avance capacité de signifier l’Unique. Ce qui fait la différence de l’homme dans la création, c’est ce lien mutuel avec ses semblables, un bien constitutif de sa nature et qui prend tout son sens dans la proclamation commune de l’unicité de Dieu (Tawhîd). (Ibid., 130) 43 “Parce qu’il est allé librement ‘jusqu’à l’extrême de l’amour’ (Jn 13:1) pour tous les hommes, Jésus continue de s’offrir à nous comme le signe vivant où la communauté humaine s’accomplit en partageant la différence qui dit Dieu” (Ibid., 132).

83 with the power of communion.

The reasoning above for communion between persons is authentically Christian and, as has been the concern throughout this thesis, the issue also arises with de Chergé as to how to encourage communion theologically amongst Christians and Muslims. In this vein, de Chergé cites the unity that is encouraged and formed by God the Gatherer in the Quran: “Our Lord! You are truly the One who will reunite men one day; no doubt is permissible in this regard, since God never forsakes his promise ([sura] 3,9).”44 In conjunction with this Muslims belief, de Chergé recognizes the actualized unity that is present in the observances of the five pillars of Islam, followed by all branches of Islam, as a gift of unity amongst brothers.45

Alongside this praise of unity, de Chergé follows with a challenge as to whether unity can be established solely on the basis of similarities, that is, whether unity should be understood as uniformity. As the difference within God in the form of the Trinity may be difficult for the

Muslim to accept, de Chergé argues for the significance of differences based in the Quran and

Creation. Citing the Quran, he writes:

If God had willed it, he would have made you a single community. But he wanted to test you in the gift that he has given you. Seek to outdo one another in good actions. Your return to all will bring you towards God; he will enlighten you in regards to your differences. ([sura] 5, 48).46

In an analogical manner to the above passage, de Chergé proposes that engaging with the

44 “Notre Seigneur! Tu es en vérité Celui qui réunira les hommes un jour; nul doute n’est permis à ce sujet, car Dieu ne manque pas à sa promesse ([sura] 3,9)” (De Chergé, “Do Our Differences have a Sense of Communion?”, 142). 45 Ibid., 143-144. 46 Si Dieu l’avait voulu, il aurait fait de vous une seule communauté. Mais il a voulu vous éprouver par le don qu’il vous a fait. Cherchez à vous surpasser les uns les autres dans les bonnes actions. Votre retour à tous se fera vers Dieu; il vous éclairera alors au sujet de vos différends ([sura] 5, 48). (Ibid., 152)

84 diversity that exists in Creation is a way in which one can discover God’s way of unity.

Especially with regard to the differences between man and woman, he argues for the unity that can be the result of the relationships between those who are different from one another.47

Throughout this article, de Chergé addresses the manner in which differences are indeed closely related to the unity that has such high priority in both Catholicism and Islam. Through his use of Christian and Muslim scripture, he argues that God has created diversity in the world not to divide man, but for man to enter into communion. The manner through which this will be achieved, however, remains a mystery and thus de Chergé encourages a dialogue of life to discover communion:

One cannot insist too much upon the importance of this mutual presence where the differences that would scandalize are left to become, across the simplest of daily routines, both a sign and a path of communion. We must believe that even without waiting for the end times, God can open other paths to His mystery where our differences will be explained.48

Mystical Steps in Life

When de Chergé describes his method in his article “The Mystical Ladder of Dialogue,” he reiterates the necessity of a dialogue of life. For him, dialogue is “the fruit of a long ‘living together’ and of shared concerns, sometimes very concrete [,]….rarely of a strictly theological order.”49 Although his theology was emphasized above and provides important insights to the

47 De Chergé, “Do Our Differences have a Sense of Communion?”, 156-157. 48 On n’insistera donc jamais assez sur la nécessité de cette présence mutuelle où la différence qui effarouchait se laisse apprivoiser pour devenir, au fil du quotidien le plus simple, à la fois signe et chemin de communion. Il faut de même croire que, sans attendre la fin des temps, Dieu peut ouvrir d’autres voies d’accès à son mystère où s’expliciteraient nos différences. (Ibid., 166) 49 “le fruit d’un long ‘vivre ensemble’ et de soucis partagés, parfois très concrets[,]….rarement d’ordre strictement théologique” (De Chergé, “The Mystical Ladder of Dialogue,” 1).

85 development of communion between Christians and Muslims, it remains a task. Commenting on this approach, Salenson notes that de Chergé “kept abreast of developments in theology, [but] he was determined not to abandon the plane of concrete life – not out of pragmatic skepticism” but rather of a commitment to follow God’s call to come together with Muslims to worship the one

God and to share with all.50 From this point, then, de Chergé enters into practices where he can live his Catholic faith in communion with his Muslim friends.

De Chergé writes that his monastic life puts him in a privileged position for growing in communion with Muslims. In his article “Dialogue intermonastique et islam” [Intermonastic

Dialogue and Islam], he sets up the ‘rungs’ or ‘steps’ of a mystical ladder of dialogue – that is, religious practices that are integral in both the life of a monk and a Muslim. Specifically, he lists obedience, prayer, and lectio divina [divine reading].51 As he expands upon these briefly in this article and further in other meditations, we turn as well to his meaning of these ‘steps,’ providing a more complete picture of the manner in which he lived out his dialogue of spiritual life.

Obedience

This first step of intermonastic dialogue, understood as submission to the will of God, is an attitude which encompasses all of life. It is also an attitude that de Chergé asserts as fundamental to both Christians and Muslims. Obedience is “at the heart of the Son, and thus the Gospel (and

50 Christian Salenson, “The Place of Islam in God’s Plan,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 37-38. 51 Christian de Chergé, “Intermonastic Dialogue and Islam,” in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 2010), 207-208.

86 the Rule).”52 While the Gospel is a part of every Christian’s life, the call to obedience finds its continual reminder in de Chergé’s own monastic life in the following the Rule of St. Benedict.

Obedience is also integral to the Muslim’s life, who is, by name, the one who submits to God’s will.53

De Chergé uses this meaning of “muslim” to describe Jesus, who he describes as the only perfect muslim.54 He expands upon the meaning of true obedience in a short homily for Good

Friday in 1995. Therein, he points to a passage in Hebrews where Jesus “learned obedience.”55 In this short homily, de Chergé points to the contrast between the world’s obedience and God’s true obedience. Jesus learned the distorted obedience of the world, where man condemns Jesus in the name of God’s law: “was it not in the name of Your law that we condemned you?”56 However, obedience to God’s law is rather to be freely loyal to him as the Son, who taught the world of

God’s love for man through his suffering on the Cross.57 Through this meditation, de Chergé conditions his meaning of the shared “step” of obedience between Christians and Muslims.

Although man sins and perverts the meaning of obedience, God’s revelation to man reminds him that obedience is foremost a loving loyalty.

52 “au cœur du Fils, et donc de l’Évangile (et de la Règle)” (De Chergé, “Intermonastic Dialogue and Islam,” 207). 53 That is, Muslim is the active participle for the root s-l-m in Arabic, which means to submit. 54 Christian de Chergé, “L’obéissance” [Obedience], in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris : Bayard, 2010), 256. 55 Ibid., 257. Cf. Christian Salenson, “Obéissance,” in Prier 15 Jours avec Christian de Chergé, 66-70 56 Ibid., 258. 57 Ibid., 259.

Prayer

When de Chergé lists prayer as a point of communion, he also provides a short description of this inter-monastic “step:” as formal daily prayer is a required part of the monastic life,

Christian and his brothers had a special point of contact with Muslims, who are called to prayer five times a day.58 He adds that this is important as many of his Muslim friends believe that

Christians do not pray.59

Remaining consistent with his goal to truly enter into a spiritual dialogue with Muslims, de

Chergé himself took part in interreligious prayer. He records his own experience of the communion possible in interreligious prayer in his meditation “Nuit de feu” [Night of Fire]:

From that moment on, our prayer of two voices. Arabic and French mixed together, joined together mysteriously, responding to one another, melting and merging together, completing each other and combining with one another. The Muslim invokes Christ. The Christian submits to God’s plan for all believers, including the Prophet Muhammad as one of them. Then the one and the other seek to enter into the love which is proclaimed by God.60

In this contemplation, de Chergé was able to live his spiritual life with another Muslim by praying with him, asking together with him for God’s love. It shows itself as a “step” along the

“mystical ladder” as they both invite God’s presence and an authentic sense of communion is created, entering into de Chergé’s communion of saints in this world.

58 De Chergé, “Intermonastic Dialogue and Islam,” 207. 59 Ibid., 207-208. 60 Dès lors, notre prière à deux voix. L’arabe et le français se mélangent, se rejoignent mystérieusement, se répondent, se fondent et se confondent, se complètent et se conjuguent. Le musulman invoque le Christ. Le chrétien se soumet au plan de Dieu sur tous les croyants, et sur l’un d’entre eux qui fut le prophète Muhammad. Puis l’un et l’autre cherchent à pénétrer ensemble dans l’Amour qui dit Dieu. (In The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu [Paris: Bayard, 2010], 35)

Scripture

De Chergé’s theological arguments provide a part of his view or method with regard to the last “step” of our discussion. He portrays an expertise with the Quran, particularly in regard to bringing together Muslims values with debates between Muslims and Christians. In his address of the largest debates between the two traditions, he shows a path to mutual understanding in his extended treatments of the chief attributes of God from the Muslim perspective: mercy and unity.

This “step” is also influential within the daily reading of Scripture, lectio divina, which de

Chergé treats as a path out of the Earth’s “desert:”

The Scriptures are the treasure where the Christian likes to search, day and night, the new and the old. “Ausculta, o filii!” Listen, son! These are the first words of the Rule of St. Benedict. “Iqra!” Recite! This other command opens the Koran. Every Muslim takes it for himself. And so begins for many an exodus even further than the fixed letter: “Borrow the ear of your heart,” says St. Benedict.61

The Scripture in this instance becomes not only helpful in navigating theological debates, but also in entering into one another’s dialogue with God. In this manner, the Quran, as Salenson describes, is treated by de Chergé not as “the Word of God, [but] at least a Word of God.”62 That is, from a Christian point of view, de Chergé can still read the Quran to gain insight into the

“seeds of the Word” given to Muslims. While designating only the Old and New Testaments as inspired texts and correctly relativistic understanding of various religions’ holy texts, the

Church’s document Dominus Iesus does explain that, “the sacred books of other religions, which

61 Les Écritures sont le trésor où le chrétien aime à chercher, jour et nuit, du neuf et de l'ancien. “Ausculta, o filii!” Écoute, fils! Ce sont les premiers mots de la règle de saint Benoît. “Iqra!” Récite! Cet autre impératif ouvre le Coran. Tout musulman l'entend pour soi. Et commence alors pour beaucoup un même exode plus loin que la lettre figée: "Prête l'oreille de ton cœur," précise saint Benoit. (De Chergé, “For a Common Project of Society,” 177) 62 Christian Salenson, “Reading the Quran,” in A Theology of Hope, trans. Nada Conic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 66.

89 in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of

Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.”63

“A Love of the Furthest Ends” in a Dialogue of Spiritual Life

De Chergé’s dialogue of spiritual life includes a total devotion of his life to God and to his

Muslim neighbours. Beginning with an attitude of humility, he tries to enter into the experience of his neighbours theologically and through shared spiritual practices. In chapter two, the engagement with the other’s experience was granted the capacity to go so far as to choose freely to sacrifice for the other. In chapter three, sacrificial love was also demonstrated to be the climax of God’s merciful love for man; only through the Cross is the glory of the Resurrection achieved.

De Chergé discusses the tenet of sacrificial love within his spiritual dialogue through his discussion of martyrdom. The meaning of martyr, both according to its etymology and denotation, is to witness. This is the case, de Chergé argues, in both Christianity and Islam: the word martyr comes from the Greek word “marturion” for “to witness” and the Arabic word for martyr, “shouhada,” shares the same three letter root, sh-h-d, as “shahada,” the name for the

Muslim profession of faith.64 De Chergé insists that this witness is specifically a witness of

God’s love for man. Within this context, he speaks of Jesus’s witness:

The witness of Jesus to the point of death, his “martyrdom,” is a martyrdom of love, of love for man, for all men, even for the robbers, even for the assassins and [etc.]…. It is the martyrdom of love that includes forgiveness….“For you, and for the

63 Catholic Church, Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Declaration “Dominus Iesus,” On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, Aug. 6, 2000, sec. 8, in Sic et Non: Encountering Dominus Iesus, ed. Stephen J. Pope & Charles Hefling (New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 3-23. 64 Christian de Chergé, “Le ‘martyre’ de la charité” [The Martyrdom of Charity], in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 2010), 225.

multitude, in forgiveness of sins.”65

From this perspective, Jesus shows man how to love, “‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’”66 At the same time, De Chergé mentions many times that this love is not easy for us, for, “From experience, we know that [even] the little gestures often cost a lot.”67 De Chergé compares mankind to Pilate, describing both as muddled, and yet pleading non-guilty in front of the Cross.68 That is, although we are guilty of sin, we want to avoid suffering and pretend, or perhaps believe, we are innocent.

These incapacities, however, are not to be treated as outside of the process of loving to the point of self-sacrifice. The point, rather, is that the strength of this love that comes from God brings man to rely on God. This relationship becomes clear in de Chergé’s reflection “Le

‘martyre’ de l’espérance” [The Martyrdom of Hope]. Here, de Chergé calls man’s silence and fear of witnessing a strange “Good News.”69 He recalls the Gospel story of the women who went to Jesus tomb and were afraid when they found the stone rolled away. With this fear, the angel at the tomb still tells them to go tell the other disciples the good news of the resurrection.70 De

Chergé thus describes the relationship between fear and hope as the following:

The silence and fear of the women brings them to the exact juncture of the faith which knows how to speak, even with intrepidity, and of the hope that must accept its own logic

65 Le témoignage de Jésus jusqu’à la mort, son ‘martyre,’ est martyre d’amour, de l’amour pour l’homme, pour tous les hommes, même pour les voleurs, même pour les assassins et [etcetera]…. C’est que le martyre d’amour inclut le pardon….“Pour vous, et pour la multitude, en rémission des péchés.” (De Chergé, “The Martyrdom of Charity,” 227) 66 “‘Pas de plus grand amour que de donner sa vie pour ses amis’” (Ibid., 230). 67 “D’expérience, nous savons que les petits gestes coûtent souvent beaucoup” (Ibid., 228). 68 Christian de Chergé, “Le ‘martyre’ de l’innocence” [The Martyrdom of Innocence], in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 2010), 235. 69 Christian de Chergé, “The Martyrdom of Hope,” in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu (Paris: Bayard, 2010), 238. 70 Ibid., 240.

made from silence and distance. The Holy Spirit will make this link.71

Through these parallels, martyrdom becomes truly a witness of God’s love, for man cannot love to this point by himself. He is often sinful and afraid, yet he can rely on God to love his brother, to be a witness, a martyr, of love.

These beliefs are reflected in de Chergé’s last testament “Quand un à-Dieu s’envisage…”

[Facing a GOODbye…].72 With the situation worsening in Algeria, de Chergé writes a letter to his family in France to be opened in the case of his death. He writes of his own weakness and sin: “[my life] does not have the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know my own complicity in the sin that seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even that which would hit me blindly.”73 While stating that he does not wish to be a victim of terrorism as he knows that it could further propagate a certain extremist caricature of Islam, he does refer to the honour to give one’s life for his loved ones as it is linked to the Lord’s own love.74

De Chergé’s continued emphasis on the beyond in relation to dialogue is evident through his looking forward to

plunging his regard in that of the Father to contemplate with him his children of Islam such as he sees them, completely illuminated by the glory of Christ, fruits of his Passion, imbued by the gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion

71 “Le mutisme et la peur des femmes se situent à l’exacte jointure de la foi qui sait comment parler, avec intrépidité même, et de l’espérance qui doit accepter sa logique propre faite de silence et de distance. L’Esprit saint fera le lien” (De Chergé, “The Martyrdom of Hope,” 241). 72 As it is difficult to articulate an equivalent for de Chergé’s double meaning of “à-Dieu,” as it means both towards God and goodbye, I have borrowed Nada Conic’s translation of the title in the English translation of Christian Salenson’s A Theology of Hope, found on page 199. 73 “[ma vie] n’a pas l’innocence de l’enfance. J’ai suffisamment vécu pour me savoir complice du mal qui semble, hélas, prévaloir dans le monde, et même de celui-là qui me frapperait aveuglément” (Christian de Chergé, “Facing a GOODbye…”, in The Invincible Hope, comp. Bruno Chenu [Paris: Bayard, 2010], 222). 74 Ibid., 221.

and re-establish likeness, playing with the differences.75

In this manner, de Chergé continues his vocation to spiritual dialogue. In looking towards entering heaven, his desire is to further understand Muslims and God’s love for them.

The foregoing is meant as a conclusion to de Chergé’s witness to hope. For, it demonstrates the extreme degree to which a dialogue of spiritual life can reach. De Chergé so fully enters into the experience of the “other” and so authentically depends on God’s love that he gives his life to Algeria. In his writings and life, we see a hope for a shared spiritual encounter that the style of the dialogue of life requires.

75 “plonger mon regard dans celui du Père pour contempler avec lui ses enfants de l’islam tels qu’il les voit, tout illuminés de la gloire du Christ, fruits de sa Passion, investis par le don de l’Esprit dont la joie secrète sera toujours d’établir la communion et de rétablir la ressemblance, en jouant avec les différences” (De Chergé, “Facing a GOODbye…”, 223).

CONCLUSION: LOVE AS A SINGLE REALITY

In the background of this thesis has been an interplay between the love of neighbour and man’s relationship to God in forming a solid community between Catholics and Muslims. In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI addresses this relationship between God’s superabundant love for man and the love in turn to be shared amongst men.1 He explains the nature of eros as man’s need for love, and agape as the love that God gives to man in return. The dynamic between the two requires a unity:

The more the two [eros and agape]…find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from who pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34). (Deus Caritas Est, sec. 7)

According to Benedict XVI, the ascending and descending love described above is applicable to

“each member of the faithful.”2 This is a reminder that the ministries in which the Church is involved, where her members encounter the outside world, also require a lived faith. Through this lived faith, the Church’s members draw on the love of God to share with those whom they encounter in their ministries.

1 Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est, Of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, To the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, Men and Women Religious, and All the Faithful, On Christian Love, December 25, 2005, Vatican website, sec. 1, accessed May 19, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict- xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html. 2 Ibid., sec. 20. 93

It is with this brief interlude to Benedict XVI’s words on love that our review of this thesis begins. For, the unity of love, a unity of life and faith, that has been the goal of discussing the interplay between encounter and divergent spiritual lives. The hope was to ensure that the discussion of a Catholic-Muslim Dialogue of encounter maintained its integrity as Catholic, i.e. an expression and involvement with the Catholic life where God is present in this life, and yet maintained its goal of encountering the “other.”

I began, then, with Vatican II’s mandate of dialogue, of encountering the outside world, which is suggested through a particular focus on the dignity of the person. In this vein, in chapter two, I provided an in-depth discussion on the person and his fulfillment in complete participation. Philosophically, we saw that the person is incomplete on his own; in order to be fulfilled, he must go beyond himself. At this point, he discovers others around him to whom he can relate to on the dual basis that “the other” is like him – experiencing this more and more as he grows in an interpersonal relationship with a specific “other” – and that the two both seek the common good for their community and, more generally, for mankind.

I then followed with another perspective, how the person’s dignity and experience of his dignity is understood from John Paul II’s theological perspective. There are many points at which these two chapters agree; the overall fulfillment of the person is still achieved in loving his neighbour with chapter three. Nevertheless, chapter three possesses an awareness of how man is loved first. Man, then, is not left alone to love his neighbour, but, rather, he is granted the grace to know love and share it with others.

Beginning with chapter four, a tension appears: how is God’s love to help with an

95 encounter if the partner, the “you,” in the dialogue perceives God as outside the world? Although this may seem a facetious question in a certain sense, for, differing perspectives are a challenge for any encounter. Even within the Church, experiencing the “other” as another “I,” loving them to the point of self-sacrifice is not to be taken for granted. On the other hand, friendship, marriages, and other interpersonal relationships are based in this type of love, this fully engaged participation. Perhaps, then, the better questions are the following: (1) How does participation manifest itself particularly in the realm of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue; and (2) How do we enter into dialogue with Muslims and bring with us our experience of faith in, and continual search for,

God the Redeemer of Man and God eternally present? John Paul II suggests a dialogue of life that tries to understand the Muslim’s relationship to God and a sharing of spiritual experience in prayer and submission to God’s will.

For the most part, this remains an invitation in John Paul II’s speeches on Catholic-Muslim

Dialogue. It is with de Chergé’s witness that the full engagement, full participation, in the life of the “other” who is Muslim can be understood. The depths of his faith are shared, both the central tenets of faith in his theology and the central spiritual practices through his “mystical ladder of dialogue.” In this sharing, he provides an understanding of Islam, of its honoured principles, and, through this understanding and his study of Islam, he explains debates in Quranic language.

In his letter “Facing a GOODbye…”, de Chergé writes of those who would consider his efforts in dialogue naïve: “My death, surely, will seem to affirm those who quickly judged me naïve or idealistic.”3 Yet, this thesis has continually touched upon the dignity associated with

3 “Ma mort, évidemment, paraîtra donner raison à ceux qui m’ont rapidement traité de naïf, ou d’idéaliste” (Christian de Chergé, “Facing a GOODbye…”, 223.

96 sacrificial love. In chapter two, the “I” most fully goes beyond himself and reaches fulfillment in the sacrificial love of neighbour. This love can be understood as logically powerful as it brings persons together despite many sins and problems in communities and in our larger community of mankind. In chapter three, the discussion of Salvifici Doloris demonstrated the particular dignity and grace associated with suffering for someone else in love. Therein, a mysterious opening to the redemptive grace, to Christ’s presence in the world, is provided:

The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world’s redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering. In so far as man becomes a sharer in Christ's sufferings – in any part of the world and at any time in history – to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world. (Sec. 24)

One could protest the method of de Chergé, as others did, for being overly idealistic.

However, the strength of his witness of love, the manner in which he enters into the life of the

“other” to the point of giving his life, cannot be ignored. This love has been shown to be the foundation of community, the result of a path of mutual understanding through a complete sharing of his spiritual life.

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Appendix: Chronological List of John Paul II’s Significant Statements on Islam

The following is a chronological list of the statements from John Paul II on Islam that have been most significant in composing this thesis:

November 29, 1979: To the Catholic Community at Ankara February 20, 1981: To Representatives of Muslims of the Philippines August 19, 1985: To the Young Muslims of Morocco April 13, 1986: To Representatives of the Jewish Community of Rome December 22, 1986: To the Roman Curia February 3, 1989: To the Latin Bishops of the Arab Region on Their Ad Limina Visit September 2, 1990: To Representatives of the Various Religions of Tanzania April 3, 1991: Message to the Faithful of Islam at the End of the Month of Ramadan November 26, 1991: To the Bishops of North Africa February 22, 1992: To the Islamic Leaders of Senegal Jan. 10, 1993: To Representatives of the European Islamic Community 1994: “Muhammad?” in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 91-94. May 6, 2001: Address on his Visit to the Umayyad Great Mosque January 1, 2002: Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace

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