Editorial

Tom Norris

As with conversation, so with daily living: it must be two-way, a dialogue. Nothing is so frustrating as someone who talks all the time and fails to recognise the other person and the significance of his word and ideas. For so long this was what happened both within each Church and even more so between them, especially since the Reformation. The very term Counter Reformation captures something of this monological isolation of the Churches over the past three centuries. What a change came about, however, with the two Popes of the second Vatican Council—John XXIII and Paul VI. The latter in his first Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam set the Catholic Church firmly on the pathway of dialogue. He called on the whole Church to set out on the path of dialogue within her own boundaries, with Christians in other Churches, with the members of non-Christian religions, and with those professing no faith at all. These dialogues became the very warp and woof of his papacy, and have been carried forward energetically by Pope John Paul II, whose first Encyclical Redemptor Hominis (1979) portrays the Church as a divine-human agent of dialogue uniting humankind «Godwards» and «neighbourwards».

At the core of the faith of all Christians lies the fact of a great dialogue—the dialogue of God with the whole of Creation. That dialogue reached its summit in the event of Jesus Christ, who, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews says, finalises God's dialogue with us, «At many moments in the past and by many different means, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our time, the final days, he has spoken to us in the person of his Son» (Heb 1:1). In Jesus Christ a permanent dialogue between God and humankind goes on. The public ministry of Jesus shows how his whole life expressed this dialogue both towards his Father and towards everyone he met, so that the Gospels are full of extraordinary encounters and touching dialogues as, to take but one example, that between the Samaritan woman and the Saviour.

This twofold dialogue, however, reached its highpoint in his experience on the Cross. In the words of Chiara Lubich, «Is it not the crucified and forsaken Jesus who has set man on the road towards universal dialogue? Does he not become the mediator between man and God precisely in the highpoint of his suffering and death, in that extreme and deepest humiliation?... Since human beings have been able to re-establish dialogue with God through the crucified Jesus, they have also found dialogue with one another: the crucified Jesus is also the bond of unity between people. Unity is the result of dialogue: every mature dialogue flows into it.»

The constitutions and decrees of the Council profile a Church of dialogue—in fact, a living body called at this point in her pilgrimage towards final union with the Risen One to live by the four dialogues we have just seen. The life of these four dialogues makes her the sacrament of Christ, the sign and the means of the unity of the whole human family with God and so also with itself (Lumen Gentium, 1). The Constitution on the Church highlights the dialogue among all the members of the Church, while the dialogue among all the Churches is dealt with in the Decree on Ecumenism. The relations between the Church and those belonging to other faiths is the subject of the important Decree, Nostra Aetate. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World suggests the way to those who have no formal belief in God. It may not be an exaggeration to read the decades since the Council as a time when Christians have been learning the art of living these dialogues.

The articles in this number of «Being One» all deal with the theme of dialogue. One or other of the four dialogues features in each contribution. For example, the address given at the recent meeting in Berlin of Evangelical Lutherans living the Focolare spirituality underlines both the unifying effects of the lived Gospel within the Evangelical communities and also between Lutherans and Catholics. If love is the essence of God, the soul of the Church and the breath of the Christian, then dialogue is the expression of that love, a love which builds up «1 Cor 8:1».