by Joseph Sikora

What do we mean when we talk about religious experience and what role can religious experience play in interreligious dialogue?

The Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interreligious Dialogue welcomed Professor William Storrar, Director of the Centre of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, to the Conforti Institute in Coatbridge to explore these two fundamental questions for interreligious dialogue.

The Committee was also pleased to welcome Fr. Paulin Batairwa Kubuya, sx, Under-Secretary of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, to reflect on what the future holds for interreligious dialogue.

For those attending the colloquium it was a real privilege to have two keynote speakers with such a profound wealth of experience and insight to share.

Two questions

Professor Storrar began the conversation by posing two questions that were fundamental to the discussions which followed: How do we define religion and how do we define religious experience?

There is an essential link between religious tradition and religious experience. For some, religious experience resides in the extraordinary encounter with the divine but there is also the sense that the divine can be experienced in the ordinary. For both, it is reference to the religious tradition that make the experience, whatever its form, a religious experience. Making the distinction between the religious experience and what many would call a spiritual experience. The spiritual experience therefore is a sense of being part of something greater but without reference to a specific religious culture and tradition.

Religion, Professor Storrar suggested, is a distinctive and universal aspect of human society and there are certain commonalities in religions that make it possible to engage in dialogue about religious experience in a meaningful and enlightening way.

He discussed with Fr. Paulin and Dr. Maureen Sier, Director of Interfaith Scotland  the types of experience they had had in their own lives that they would describe as religious experience. It was clear that religious experience can vary greatly but that setting and personal background play an important role in how we understand these experiences.

The first evening concluded with a short evening prayer in the oratory.

The secular world

The following morning the participants considered how people of faith can dialogue about religious experience with the secular world. We were reminded that for people of faith religious experience is tested and sifted through the religious tradition of the person having the experience.

But in a secular society, where we are often confronted by hyper-individualism, an individual’s system of religious belief may co-opt strands of multiple religions chosen by the individual usually without much theological consideration. This means there is often an ignorance of cultural and religious experience and tradition.

Professor Storrar suggested we look to the text of Nostra Aetate, Vatican II’s Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, and quoted section 2 which says, ‘From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history’. When we look to the questions that are central to the human condition and our common humanity, we can find a common ground on which to build a dialogue.

However, the hyper-individualism creates a situation in which the supremacy of the individual opinion or feeling overrides the social and community elements of religious communities and traditions. This presents a challenge to the flourishing of the common good in society.

If we are working on the assumption that religious experience is a point of common ground through which we can dialogue with those of other faiths, then the challenge of the secular society is that it undermines the very religious traditions and cultures on which that religious experience is founded.

The participants discussed the question of how we respond to this as religious communities. How do we dialogue with spiritual experience in a secular society? They considered how we should engage with people who find it difficult to understand that a person can remain free and at the same time be faithful to a religious tradition and its teachings.

Future

Later on the Saturday morning, the colloquium was invited to reflect on the future of Interreligious Dialogue by Undersecretary to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, Fr. Paulin Bataiwra Kubuya.

He noted that no future is completely disconnected from the present and the past and went on to quote Pope Paul VI in Regimini Ecclesiae where we read that the purpose of interreligious dialogue is ‘to search for methods and ways of opening a suitable dialogue with non-Christians’, specifying that ‘it [the Secretariat] should strive, therefore, in order that non-Christians come to be known honestly and esteemed justly by Christians, and that in their turn non-Christians can adequately know and esteem Christian doctrine and life’.

He drew attention to the words of Cardinal Francis Arinze, former President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who observed that interreligious dialogue is not always easy, that there are difficulties to be overcome especially in situations where there has been a ‘rise of extremism and fundamentalism… and the denial to others of the right to religious freedom in some parts of the world’. However, he also noted that the Cardinal appreciated ‘the possibilities and the potentialities of dialogue are many. And the results so far recorded are not inconsiderable’.

Fr. Paulin referred to The Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, which we as a committee had celebrated just a couple of weeks earlier, as an example of what can be achieved through dialogue. Not only that, but he also stressed that other believers and their traditions can also be a source of inspiration for Catholic doctrine. Pope Francis overtly acknowledges the inspiration gathered from his friend the great Imam Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayeb, who is cited five times in the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, to assert how other believers and their traditions can also be a source of inspiration for Catholic doctrine.

He concluded with the view that the future of interreligious dialogue ‘depends on the maturity and the awareness of those involved’. He further observed that ‘There are also those for whom interreligious dialogue calls on encounters “with the religious other”’. During these encounters, the ‘religious’ specificities are highlighted for their potentials for mutual enrichment.

The colloquium concluded with a final session in which Professor Storrar engaged in conversation with a panel of people closely involved in interreligious dialogue over many years. Sr Isabel Smyth SND, Dr Maureen Sier, Director of Interfaith Scotland, and Lawrence Toner of Focolare shared some of their experiences with the group, including the challenges that engaging in interreligious dialogue can involve.  So the colloquium concluded with a demonstration of the passion and commitment that drives individuals and communities to work together to build deeper and more positive relationships among religious communities, and in so doing, build a better society for all to share.

Joseph Sikora is the Interfaith Officer for the Committee for Interreligious Dialogue of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland.