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Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue

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Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue Exchange 47 (2018) 313-334 brill.com/exch Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue Enrico Beltramini Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont USA [email protected] Abstract This article presents an intellectual analysis of different streams of Hindu-Christian di- alogue. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically from 1939-55, to establish an advanced form of interreligious encounter with Hinduism. The article focuses on the difference among these priests’ and monks’ distinct interpretations of the interfaith dialogue rather than the general goals behind their engagement with India. In the light of Dominus Jesus, their distinct interpreta- tions, rather than their convergent motivations, deserve detailed consideration. Keywords Roman Catholicism – Hindu-Christian dialogue – India – West Christianity – World Church 1 Introduction Relevant literature exists on each of the great Roman Catholic (hereforth ‘Catholic’) pioneers who attempted to ‘indigenize’ Christianity into Indian idioms and to explore the spiritual dimensions of Christianity in dialogue with forms of Hindu spirituality.1 Jules Monchanin (1895-1957), Swami 1 I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for provid- ing insightful comments and directions for additional work which has resulted in this im- proved version. A previous, partial, deficient, and circumscribed version of this article was © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/1572543X-12341497Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 314 Beltramini Abhishiktånanda (1910-1973), Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010), and Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) were Catholic priests who settled in India over a sixteen-year time period, from 1939 to 1955. They shared a broad vision of a Hindu-Christian encounter as a vehicle for interfaith dialogue, and the reciprocity of such di- alogue. Broadly speaking, these pioneers agreed on the fact that an unpreju- diced meeting with India was necessary in the overall mission of the Church to reach “the ends of the earth,” (Acts 1:8) and, at the same time, that Christian theology could benefit in its development in dialogue with Hindu thought. In sum, the integration of the Hindu lineage — understood in terms of the socio- religious multiplicity of the Hindu traditions — in the Catholic tradition (the deposit of faith and knowledge) was at the same time a missionary strategy to activate a new self-understanding of India in Christian form, and a source of hermeneutical frameworks for enlarging and deepening the self-understand- ing of Christianity. While a multitude of studies about these men exists, only a small proportion of the available literature examines them comparatively. As a matter of fact, a growing number of collective studies in different languages and from different perspectives on these Catholic priests is underway. These studies privilege a unifying interpretation of these thinkers’ works and lives, in which the points of convergence have priority over points of divergence.2 These pioneers of the interfaith dialogue came to consider the dialogue with Hinduism as a source of regeneration, a means of revitalizing Western Catholicism and transcending the Westernized framework of the modern Church. In summary, the interests of these four Catholic clergymen come down to the re-spiritualization of the Western Church and the construction of World Christianity. This article aims to do the opposite, that is, to give priority to the points of divergence over points of convergence.3 As a matter of fact, these men exhib- ited significant differences in how they eventually applied these initial ideas published as Enrico Beltramini, “Modernity and its Discontents: Western Catholic Pioneers of the Hindu-Christian Dialogue” in International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 21-52. In that article, the focus was the similarities among the clergymen; here the focus is on the differences. 2 Sonia Calza, La contemplazione via privilegiata al dialogo cristiano-induista. Sulle orme di J. Monchanin, H. Le Saux, R. Panikkar e B. Griffiths (Roma: Paoline Editoriale Libri, 2001); Johannes Sandgren, Jules Monchanin, Henri le Saux, François Mahieu, Bede Griffiths (Skellefteå, Sweden: Artos & Norma, 2011); Mario I. Aguillar, Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves, and Sacred Rivers. Christian-Hindu Monastic Dialogue in India, 1950-1993 (Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishing, 2016). 3 At this regard, a seminal work is: Edward T. Ulrich, “Convergences and Divergences: The Lives of Swami Abhishiktananda and Raimundo Panikkar,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 24, (2011), 36-45. EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 315 in their lives. Although they shared a common vision and agreed on a number of goals, these pioneers of interfaith dialogue expressed different inclinations, manifested distinct sensibilities, and engaged in specific projects. Consider the notion of Indianesses of Catholicism as an example. On one hand, Monchanin and Abhishiktånanda mentioned several times in their private notes, public speeches, and published papers the necessity of a cross-fertilization between Hindu philosophy and Christian theology, but Monchanin gave that up in the last years of his life and Abhishiktånanda preferred to pursue a synthesis between the two spiritual traditions in the very depths of his experience. On the other hand, Panikkar quietly and relentlessly assembled a vocabulary and a constellation of philosophical and theological ideas to expand Catholic con- sciousness and bring it, as he put it, to the bank of the Ganges river.4 The recovery of the complexity of their thought and the multiplicity of their spiritual and theological paths is particularly important in light of the chal- lenges set down by Dominus Iesus.5 In a post-Dominus Iesus age, it is no longer possible to embrace the voices of dialogue as a generic course of action; rather, Catholic theologians are called to discern and distill from their predecessor’s work whatever it represented in terms of a resource for a fresh engagement with orthodoxy. Catholic theologians involved in interreligious dialogue are asked to approach the resources of the past with a genuine sense of loyalty to all central texts and tenets of the faith. What to do, then, when four think- ers are exemplars of Hindu-Christian dialogue and at the same time poten- tial sources of theological tension? Placed as they were at the border between Christianity and Hinduism, theology and mysticism, the intellectual and the experiential, the institutional and the informal, it is not surprising that these Catholic priests articulated peculiar interpretations of the Hindu-Christian dialogue. In a nutshell, Monchanin sought a return to the Christian mystery and Abhishiktånanda to a re-sacramentalization of Christian consciousness, while Panikkar moved beyond a Hellenized Christian thought and Griffith moved toward a translation of samnyāsa into Benedictine terms. 4 Raimon Panikkar, “The Jordan, The Tiber and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, eds. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), 89-116. 5 Dominus Iesus is a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith within the Roman Catholic Church in September 2000 to reaffirm Catholic teaching regarding the unique role of Jesus Christ and his Church in salvation and set boundaries to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. The main point of the document is that canon and creed must be embraced fully and all, as it is no longer possible to avoid or explain away central texts and tenets of the faith because they are inconvenient for dialogue. EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 316 Beltramini 2 Catholic Clergymen in India In the decades before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Christian theo- logians who were taking up non-Christian religions in the Roman Catholic Church (also ‘Catholic Church’ or ‘Church’) were hard to find. Hinduism in particular was not seriously considered as a meaningful area of theologi- cal enquiry. Even rarer was to meet clergymen so seriously preoccupied with Hinduism that they engaged personally and intellectually with its living tradi- tion. Four outstanding exceptions to the norm were Jules Monchanin, Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktånanda), Raimon Panikkar, and Bede Griffiths. They were Catholic priests and monks who moved from Europe to India over a period of the two decades before the Vatican Council and subsequently spent several decades immersed in Indian culture and society. The first and probably more important common element in their lives and experiences in India was the realization that the interfaith ‘dialogue’ was actually a monologue. While the shift in these men’s attitude from mere evangelization to dialogue was sincere and undisputable, there were “few Hindus who are interested in (contempo- rary) Christian theology, and there are fewer still who have a desire to enter into dialogue with their Christian counterparts.”6 Thus, it seemed that, in the end, the monologue of the missionaries had been replaced by the monologue of the dialogists. How did these men react to this absence of reaction from the Hindu side? More precisely, how did they maintain
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