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Many people feel that interreligious dialogue is about discussing dogma. Some might even believe that dialogue is a polite form of debate in which each part tries to prove the superiority of one’s views over thoseof one’s partners in dialogue. Others may consider dialogue a process of “softening up” the partner so that person can hear and accept the correctness of one’s own views.

I don’t believe that dialogue need be any of these things. Rather, interreligious dialogue occurs when two or more believers who are committed to their own faiths encounter one another in mutual respect, a desire to communicate and a readiness to learn. In dialogue we take the time to learn the beliefs and positions of others and we try to see how those views concur or disagree with our own. We try to discover on what points we might be in agreement and where we might cooperate.

Moreover, we can’t limit dialogue to talking.  Talking, listening, discussing, and debating is certainly one aspect of dialogue, but it is not necessarily the first or even the most important aspect.  From a Roman Catholic point of view, the term “dialogue” refers to a vast array of human relations between people of different faiths.  As Pope John Paul II noted in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio:

A vast field lies open to dialogue, which can assume many forms and expressions: from exchanges between experts in religious traditions or official representatives of those traditions to cooperation for integral development and the safeguarding of religious values; and from a sharing of their respective spiritual experiences to the so-called “dialogue of life,” through which believers of different religions bear witness before each other in daily life to their own human and spiritual values, and help each other to live according to those values in order to build a more just and fraternal society (RM, 56).

These forms or expressions of dialogue have been generally elaborated as four types of interreligious encounter in the documents produced by Vatican offices as the dialogue of 1) life, 2) action, 3) theological exchange and the 4) sharing of religious experience.  What is really involved here are various dimensions of our life as Christians shared with the followers of other religions, a way of living with others as Christians that involves interaction at the levels of being, doing, thinking, and reflecting on one’s experience of God or the Divine.  In the Church’s vision of life shared by Christians and the followers of other religions, talking or discoursing plays a role, as it does in all forms of human life, but discussion must not dominate, nor must the shared life denoted by the term “dialogue” be limited by or reduced to formal occasions and deliberations.

In the citation I noted from the 1991 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, “exchanges among experts” is granted a first-mentioned pride of place, but many bishops have sought to put the emphasis elsewhere.  Guided by an awareness that the Christians on the first line of contact with the followers of other religions are not the theologians but rather ordinary believing Christians living in day-to-day contact with other believers, the Asian bishops have given priority to the “dialogue of life.”  This, they said, is “the most essential aspect of dialogue.”  It occurs when:

“each gives witness to the other concerning the values they have found in their faith, and through the daily practice of brotherhood, helpfulness, open-heartedness and hospitality, each show themselves to be a God-fearing neighbor. The true Christian and [their neighbors of other faiths] offer to a busy world values arising from God’s message when they revere the elderly, conscientiously rear the young, care for the sick and the poor in their midst, and work together for social justice, welfare, and human rights.”

The shift of emphasis that occurred in the teaching of the bishops of Asia is significant for my topic of “religion and family.”  The bishops are moving the accent in dialogue away from being mainly a way “talking or discussing” to that of “a way of living together,” shifting the focus from scholars and religious leaders to ordinary believers, reformulating dialogue from being an activity of the scholarly elite to understanding it as the task of grassroots Christians and their neighbors.

It took the universal Church more than a decade to catch up with this central insight of the Asian bishops, but the Roman documents can be seen gradually to incorporate the idea, culminating in the Pope’s statement in Redemptoris Missio that “each member of the faithful and all Christian communities are called to practice dialogue, although not always to the same degree or in the same way” “For most,” the Pope continued, “this will be through what is called ‘the dialogue of life’ (RM, 57).”

From these statements, one can see that questions of the family certainly find a serious place in interreligious dialogue.  The practice of “brotherhood, helpfulness, open-heartedness, and hospitality” embraces values known not only to experts in theological discourse, but to every family member who takes their religious commitment seriously.  “Rearing the young, caring for the sick and poor,” and “working for social justice, welfare, and human rights” are tasks incumbent on ordinary believers in every walk of life, and it is this kind of question that has a proper and necessary place in our interreligious encounters.

In this light, I want to mention some elements of Christian teaching about the importance of the family in the light of the Roman Catholic tradition.  The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family is now in the process of organizing the Sixth World Encounter of Families, which will be held in Mexico City, Mexico in January 2009.  In a preparatory document for the conference, the Vatican has issued background material on the Catholic approach to family.  The document makes seven points about the social role of the family that are quite relevant for our interreligious discussions, and I offer these points here for your consideration:

1) The family is a key educative institution. The family educates men and women according to all a person’s various dimensions to fulfill their human dignity. It is the most suitable environment for teaching and transmitting the cultural, ethical, social, spiritual and religious values that are essential for the development and wellbeing of both the family members and society.  From this, one can see that the family is the first and primary school for instilling positive attitudes and values in children.

2) The family is a source of social virtues. The family is the first school of the social virtues needed by all peoples. The family helps people develop some fundamental values that are indispensable for the formation of free, honest and responsible citizens; e.g., truth, justice, solidarity, helping the weak, love for others, tolerance, etc.  The family is also the primary school in which children learn tolerance, esteem, and respect for the followers of other religions; thus, the family is the key institution for instilling positive attitudes toward the followers of other religions.  Some years ago I had this exchange with a woman who took part in a local seminar we had on interreligious dialogue. [add personal experience]

3) The family balances individualistic tendencies. The family is the best place to foster an appreciation of the importance of community and fraternal relations.  This awareness is a necessary corrective to the dominance of individualistic trends in society.  Many sociologists have noted that one of the characteristics of modern life is the primacy of the individual over society, a primacy that is reinforced by popular entertainment and media messages, marketing decisions, and many social agencies.  While the rights of the individual cannot be submerged into the demands of society, an exaggerated focus on the individual can have negative social repercussions.  It is here that the family has an important role to play by teaching the value of communal harmony, of give-and-take, of compromise for the sake of peace, and of pitching in to care for those in need.

4) The family is a place to learn love. Love is only possible if you sincerely give of yourself and are ready to serve others.  Loving means giving and receiving something that cannot be bought or sold, but only freely and reciprocally given. With love, each member of the family can be recognized, accepted and respected in his or her dignity. Love permits some of the deepest human bonds emerge, relations that last a lifetime and can form a source of stability and solidity in times of flux, crisis, and misery.  Experience shows that the family constructs a network of interpersonal relations and prepares people for life in society in a climate of respect, justice and true dialogue.

5) The family does not abandon the sick and elderly. The family teaches that their grandparents and the old people are not useless because they are not productive, or burdensome because they need the disinterested and constant care of their children and grandchildren.  To this end, hospice programs and other health-care systems that privilege the family make a positive contribution to society.

6) The family puts economic success in perspective. It teaches the new generations that there are other human, cultural, moral and social assets that are more important than the economic and functional.  Too many voices in modern life equate success economic success, fulfillment with wealth, motivation with self-interest.  The family teaches that there are values on which a price cannot be put, and that human love can be attained even amidst material poverty and want.

7) The family is where one learns to share life. The family helps discover the social value of the goods it possesses. A table where we all share the same food, adapted to the health and age of all the members, is an example, simple yet very efficient, that reveals the social sense of created goods. The child thus incorporates criteria and attitudes that are useful later on in that other bigger family, which is society.

These points, which we offer for your consideration, are not unique to a Christian understanding of family and its importance for the stability of society.  We look forward to learning in dialogue how other religious beliefs contribute to an understanding of the social role of the family, where we agree or disagree, and how we might cooperate to promote this understanding in our modern societies.