My path into Interfaith
By Dr. Gerardo Gonzalez[1]
Although I still feel young in my heart, I have
been walking my life for almost seven decades. Although I am living again in
the same city where I was born –Santiago of Chile-, along the last 40 years of
my life I had the opportunity to live in different places of the world –among
them Paris, Hanoi, Kathmandu and New York—and to visit many others, as
international officer of the United Nations. Being in touch in those places
with an amazing diversity of cultures and religions allowed me to discover that
Humankind is more complex in spiritual terms than the uni-dimentional religious
environment where I lived my childhood and adolescence.
Actually, I was born in an observant Roman
Catholic family (one of my uncles was a Jesuit priest) and in a country where
at that time around 90 percent of the population identified themselves as
“Catholic”. I went to a Catholic school and high school ran by the Jesuits and
from 18 to 25 years old I was a Jesuit myself, starting studies to become a
priest. All that happened before the
Vatican II Council, which produced a Copernican revolution within the Catholic
Church, particularly as far as its relations with other Christian churches and
other religions are concerned. So, I was taught that “there is no salvation
outside the Catholic Church” and in secondary school we had a course of
“apologetics” where we learned how to defend our faith from the poisonous
teachings of the Protestants.
Nevertheless, I never had to use those teachings because all the people
I was dealing with were Catholic. Actually, my first contact with Protestants
–mainly Pentecostals—took place when I was in the Seminar of the Jesuits and,
strictly speaking, was not a contact, but only a competition to proselytize
families living in slums.
I started opening my mind, heart and soul to
other religions rather late in my life, when I went in 1985 with my family to
live in Vietnam Nepal Santiago
The way in which I presented in 1999 the
concept of a “spiritual forum” to the participants of a seminar in Geneva
“Allow me to start with a powerful
image. Close your eyes and visualise a wide field at night illuminated by a
tenuous light produced by many oil lamps spread around. They are made of
different materials: iron, bronze, stone, glass, clay. They are different in
size and shape. They are burning different kinds of oil. But they have in common that each one of them
produces a beautiful flame. Imagine now that these lamps start moving closer
each other, forming a circle, none of them in the centre. And see now how the
light coming from all these lamps, melts in a common shinning light, while
their shape and the unique colour of each individual flame remains intact. This is how we anticipate that the UN
Spiritual forum will be: The place for different spiritual energies strengthening
each other in the common goal to build up a genuine peace in the world.”
This text helps to
understand what is for me interfaith dialogue and cooperation (ID&C) and
why I have devoted my life to this cause.
Firstly, ID&C is feasible and makes
sense when there is a common cause, which in this case is “peace”. I realised that when we focus on “doxa”, id
est, on the doctrine, believes system or cosmo-vision, the differences among
the large variety of religions, spiritual traditions and emergent spiritual
movements active in the world are usually deep and difficult to overcome. Actually, most of the religiously motivated
violence in the history of Humankind has been caused by differences in
doctrine, with the self-proclaimed “orthodoxes” persecuting and even killing
the “heretics”, or the dominant religious communities forcing the dominated
minorities to converse themselves to the “true religion”. Instead, when we
focus on their value systems and ethical paradigms, we find a lot of
similarities and convergent trends. Consequently, if interfaith dialogue
focuses mainly on share values --such as justice, solidarity, respect and
love—common goals will easily emerge, calling for cooperation among individuals
and communities professing different faiths or following diverse spiritual
traditions. So, in the above vision, the
light of the lamps must be understood as spiritual energy –the transforming
power of love- rather than the possession of the “truth”.
Secondly, an important condition for a
productive ID&C is mutual respect.
Large and small communities, people belonging to old religions and to
emergent spiritual movements treat each other respectfully. Being in a circle
with an empty center means that nobody is heading or dominating the
others. All are united because they are
inspired in common values and share common goals. Actually –this is my personal view—what we
respect in ID&C are not necessarily the believes of the others, but their
right to remain in the religion or spiritual tradition of their parents or to
chose a new one ... or no one. Because we respect the religious freedom of our
partners, we approach respectfully to their respective faiths, with an open
heart ready to find admirable teachings, which can enrich our spiritual life.
So, --speaking from my own Christian faith-- appreciation of diversity in
nature, in culture and in spirituality as a marvellous gift of God is a basic
condition for cultivating ID&C.
These are some of the principles that I
have learnt while practicing ID&C for already ten years at the local level
in our “Spiritual Forum of Santiago for
Peace”, with the participation of people from 14 different spiritual
traditions and linked to 23 value-oriented organizations; and at the world
level, within the United Religions Initiative, with its more than 280
cooperation circles, as well as in the Partnership Committee of the project “Towards the creation of a spiritual forum
for world peace at the United Nations” , to which I am devoting now the
best of my energy and love.
[1] Gerardo Gonzalez, doctor in Social-Psychology by the Paris University
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario