Narrow screen resolution Wide screen resolution
Korea: Encountering the world of religions Print E-mail
Written by Fr. Peter Njoroge Githaiga IMC   
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
One of the three dimensions of our missionary presence and activity in Korea is the Dialogue with other Religions. This cannot be achieved without proper formation and study. For this reason, we have our Fr Peter Githaiga attending the Jesuit University in Seoul, where he studies Compared Religions. I asked him to share with us about his academic experience. (Fr Alvaro Pacheco)

“Religion is a wizard a sibyl… She faces the wreck of the worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces the sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life.” (Felix Adler)

Mahatma Gandhi said that “A friendly study of religions is a sacred duty.” I am therefore glad as a student of comparative study of religions, to have had this opportunity not only to perform this sacred duty, but to savor, although just as a novice, the richness of the religious experiences of the world beyond the Christian world. The religious reality of the world is becoming ever more and more pluralistic and therefore whatever faith one professes, it must be lived in encounter and in dialogue with the faith of the neighbor.

“Time has come when inter-religious contacts based on courtesy and general knowledge are no longer enough. It has become necessary to know the religion of the dialogue partner in depth.”(Cardinal Arinze) The study of the world of religions is not just searching possibilities for harmonious co-existence or peaceful interaction but much more for mutual enrichment. When the study of religions is done with inter-religious dialogue in mind, it is important to accept that most of these other religions are the “ways of life of a greater part of humanity. They are the living expressions of the souls of vast groups of people. They carry with them the echo of thousands of years of humanity looking for God. And no matter what mistakes humanity may have made, we cannot doubt the sincerity of heart and the moral stature of many religious leaders along the corridors of history. Moreover, the world religions possess an impressive patrimony of deeply religious texts and of the assimilated wisdom of peoples and cultures. They have taught generations of people how to pray, how to live, how to die and how to look after their deceased ones.” (Pope Paul 6th Evangelii Nuntiandi, 53)

The heart of the matter therefore in the study of religions is the fact that, there is ‘out there’, beyond the confines of ones religious profession, what has been expressed in many different ways as, ‘religious experience’, ‘spiritual experience’, ‘experience of the sacred’, of the ‘higher powers’, of ‘the transcendent’, ‘divine experience’ etc. In the Abrahamic tradition we may call it the experience of God. This wide range of ‘religious experience’, without ignoring the reality of human error, is a deep, authentic and honest spiritual enterprise at the heart of the human experience in different generations of human history and in different geographical situations. And since no one can claim to have a complete, perfect and complete experience of God, the study of these other religious traditions cannot but enrich our own limited experience.

We do not fully understand the universe- we cannot talk about death when we do not know about life. At least as long as we exist, there is purpose in the world. And our will to believe in the wider purpose helps us to act as partners with “higher powers.” Our response to death must be to become partners with heaven and earth in the creation of a better universe. This goal cannot be achieved until we be open to the religious experience of the other.

Even within Christian theology in itself, the study of religions is of great importance. Without gaining a comparative world perspective, Christian theology can neither fully know its own strengths nor strengthen its weaknesses. Indeed, it cannot know itself. It is thus for its own sake that Christian theology needs to be grounded in the comparative study of religions.

One of the major goals of the study of religions is inter-religious dialogue. It is important in our age to promote the ‘culture of dialogue’ in the minds of people., “Dialogue as human and humane act has never been so indispensable in all fields of life as in our age of academic individualism. All our glib talk of ‘global village’ takes place on artificial screens under lock and key…” Raimon Panikkar. Peace and harmonious co-existence of people is threatened by extremism and terrorism. Hence there is an awakening amongst the right thinking people all over the world who are engaged in an effort to create an environment that would be friendly and amicable towards others’ religion.

The goal of inter-religious dialogue is in its turn is to remove our religious masks, which have nothing to do with our true religious experience. The real religious dialogical dialogue takes place only when it touches the depths of intimate beliefs and reaches the ultimate questions of the meaning of life. When one after the other the masks are removed, our entire person s immersed in the dialogue, something comes from within and then begins the ‘intra-religious dialogue’.

I conclude with the poetic sermon of Panikkar that is one among some impressive guidelines for ‘intra- religious dialogue:

“When you enter into an intra-religious dialogue, do not think beforehand what you have to believe. When you witness to your faith, do not defend yourself or your vested interests, sacred as they may appear to you. Do like the birds in the skies: they sing and fly and do not defend their music or their beauty.

When you dialogue with somebody, look at your partner as a revelatory experience, as you would–and should–look at the lillies in the fields.

When you engage in intra-religious dialogue, try first to remove the beam in your own eye before removing the speck in the eye of your neighbor.

Blessed are you when you do not feel self-sufficient while being in dialogue.

Blessed are you when you trust the other because you trust in God.

Blessed are you when you face misunderstandings from your own community or others for the sake of your fidelity to Truth.

Blessed are you when you do not give up your convictions, and yet you do not set them up as absolute norms….”
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 11 December 2007 )