During the past thirty years there has been a shift in the understanding of mission. In an interview Fr. Michael Amaladoss, an Asian theologian, reflects on some of the changes that have taken place

Dialogue and Mission

Asia is an enormous continent with countries as different as Japan, India and the Philippines. With such diversity of situations is it not a bit unreal to speak of an Asian Catholic Church? 

The diversity is certainly there. An obvious one is the difference between the Philippines which has a large Catholic majority and the rest of the continent where Catholics are a small minority in each country. But there is a commonality in terms of the challenges to be faced. The Federation of Asian Bishops Conference (FABC) for over 25 years has been focusing on the challenges to authentic evangelisation in Asia The bishops describe the process of evangelization as a threefold dialogue with a) the great religions, b) the great cultures and c) the poor. 

The great religions have millennial traditions of scriptures, of monks, of holy people. Just now in the wake of the colonial period they are having a resurgence. The concrete situation in each country may be different. For example in one place the religion is Buddhism, inn another Islam or Hinduism but the challenge remains the same. In relation to the great cultures of Asiaa, Christianity is not inculturated even now. It remains very much a Western religion. The third an aspect of dialogue is with the poor. There are rich countries like Japan but elsewhere even in the so-called richer economies like Singapore, Korea, or Hong Kong you still find many poor people. There are also various kinds of exploitation - sex tourism in Thailand, for example, or child workers. The concrete issues may differ from country to country and the Church has to find different ways of facing them but in the broad issues there is a certain commonality. I think the FABC, which last year celebrated its 25th anniversary has done a great service in bringing bishops together to reflect on these problems and to develop a common approach to them. 

What were the principal themes discussed at the last meeting of FABC in 1995? 

The main theme was life and the promotion of life. Life in this context meant not only life of people but also ecology, the life of the earth and cultural life. They were concerned about various areas of life - the poor, the oppressed, women and children. An important question for today is how can different religions work together in the promotion of life. The importance of inter-religious dialogue and inculturation can be seen from this perspective, our common commitment to life. 

Is there any simple way of explaining what you are talking about when you use the word dialogue? 

In its simplest form inter-religious dialogue happens when I as a Christian meet another believer, one who believes inn Hinduism, or Buddhism or Islam. Dialogue always supposes that I respect that person as the other. You don’t look upon him or her as one who is ignorant or not saved. You recognise that in this other person the Spirit of God is somehow active. Through the religion that he or she is practising they are also encountering God. The encounter with the other can happen at various levels. The Asian bishops and recent Vatican documents speak of four levels of dialogue - dialogue of life, dialogue of intellectual exchange, dialogue of spiritual experience and dialogue as collaboration in promoting common human and spiritual values. 

Could these four be spelled out in terms of our own experience? 

Take the first one, dialogue of life. Your next door neighbours may be Hindus or Muslims. You are constantly interacting. You may get invited to their celebrations and you invite them to your celebrations. Because of your common interaction you cannot but get to know these people not just as persons but as Muslims or Hindus. So you learn about their religion and what they think of yours. This kind of ordinary dialogue, especially if one makes the effort to ask questions can help to remove prejudice. 

We get to a second level if you take the time and have the interest to explore a little more what the real faith the religion of these people means. You might read a book on Hinduism or some of their scriptures. With a certain level of expertise you might meet with a group and dialogue at a more intellectual level. 

The third level is that of spiritual experience. For instance, in October 1986 Pope John Paul called together a number of religious leaders to pray together for peace in Assisi. This can happen at local levels where people come together for prayer, reading each other's scriptures or having common prayer where all can participate. Very often this can be focused on concrete issues such a justice or the promotion of peace. A Christian might go through a course in Zen or a course in Yoga. There has been inter-monastic dialogue. Buddhists monks from Japan have come to stay in a monastery in Europe and vice-versa. 

The fourth level is dialogue in collaboration for concrete projects such as helping the poor or working for human rights. At that level, though the participants may all be of different religions they share common human values. As individuals they may justify their commitment to their values in terms of their religious faith. Yet because all are committed to the same human values, freedom, for instance, they can work together for the promotion of freedom at a particular social level. 

Can the desire to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ then be harmonised with the principle of respectful dialogue? Or some people might object that missionaries who are not out actively promoting conversions are not doing their job! 

I think the problem arises when you equate preaching the gospel with increasing Church membership or with a form of proselytism. The document Ad Gentes of the Second Vatican Council says that mission is primarily the mission of God. God in his goodness wants to communicate his own life and sends his own Son, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. God manifests himself through creation and through a multiplicity of prophets. Pope John Paul in Redemptoris Missio, his most recent encyclical on mission, accepts that the other religions mediate God’s revelation. The Holy Spirit is active in the other religions. So when I proclaim the good news among a people of a different religion I am not among a people who are by nature devilish or against the good news. I am going to a place where the Spirit is already present. I am going to discover the God who is present. I have my experience of God in Jesus Christ. I find that the people to whom I go have not been deprived, they also have an experience of God. So even if I want to proclaim Jesus Christ, my experience of God, I must first try to understand the way in which these people also have a God experience and then see how these two God experiences can encounter each other. 

We can see how these are two things, proclamation and dialogue, are complimentary. The proclamation talks about my experience of God, dialogue respects the God experience of the other and through it I encounter the mystery of God in the other. 

So these past thirty years have brought a significant change in the understanding of what missionaries are about? 

In this new kind of vision there is a shift in what people call the goal of mission. For some people the goal of mission is still shaped by the belief that if you don’t baptise people they won’t be saved. But going back again to the Second Vatican Council, the document Gaudium et Spes, (22) says clearly that God has ways of reaching out to every human being. And every human being is given a chance to participate in the Paschal mystery in ways unknown to us. That means that no one is deprived of the possibility of encountering God in a salvific way. So the urgency of mission is not somehow to save people. Today the goal of mission has been redefined. It is primarily to promote the mission of God. The Church itself is sent at the service of this mission, the self-communication of God. In Lumen Gentium (1) for example you have, "the Church is a kind of sacrament or sign of intimate union with God." So the Church is not going to a place representing God as an ambassador. The Spirit is already there. The reality of the presence of God everywhere demands from the Church a certain respect. The primary thing is the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom values our faith in Jesus Christ and then our faith in the Church. Our aim should not be to push the Church as the main agend Conversion is not something I bring about. It is the Spirit who inspires people to come to God. Sometimes you find people like Mahatma Ghandi who admire Jesus Christ, who even claim to follow his teaching but for whatever reason do not appreciate the Church as they see it. It may be the Church’s own fault. Sometimes people may be call to become disciples of Christ, and we are most happy to welcome them. But bringing people into the Church is not the only goal of evangelization. 

And this view of mission is clearly reflected in Church teaching today? 

Since the second Vatican Council this is the standard teaching of the Church. For instance in Redemptoris Mission Pope John Paul II speaks of inter-religious dialogue, inculturation, working for the liberation of people, working for justice and so on as different ways of mission. When the focus of mission was on converting people to the Church social work, or inculturation were seen as means to bring about this conversion. Today people see that dialogue with other religions and dialogue of the gospel with culture is itself evangelization. In the process of dialogue with the other I am also sharing my faith. I am telling him or her who I am while I listen to his or her faith. Dialogue itself involves evangelization. The Pope sometimes uses the phrase, salvific dialogue. In the same way when I am promoting justice or freedom or community, I am actually promoting gospel values. That is also evangelization. 

Today evangelization is seen as an integral process which involves proclamation, inter-religious dialogue, inculturation and liberation. These are not to be seen as means towards conversion but are themselves evangelization. Now we speak more of evangelization rather than mission. Mission, for some, has a colonial connotation whereas evangelisation has a wider sense. 

Since the 1960’s there has been a whole new evolution in the way we understand mission and evangelization. We have moved away from the idea of going out to save people from hell or whatever. In a nutshell, we would say that the goal of mission today is primarily to promote the Kingdom of God. The Church is a servant and symbol of the Kingdom. The focus is not so much on converting people. You may find a Christian living and working with a people inn some part of India without having baptised anyone for 25 years. Yet he or she has been listening to the gospel, communicating gospel values and somehow bringing people closer to God. Promoting a better knowledge of Christ and Christian values, etc. Therefore this person is a missionary, even though the other person has not been converted. Yet there has been a certain communication of gospel witness. 

Today we look at mission and evangelization in a broad sense. Conversion is not merely a spiritual process whereby a person professes faith in Christ. He or she is also joining a social organization called the Church. And the Catholic Church still has a very western image, a foreign image, in much of Asia So conversion affects not just the spiritual dimension but also means joining a social organisation which is seen as a foreign group. In a sense it is the fault of the Church which has not become Indian, not become Chinese and so on. There are many people who are attracted to Christ but who are not ready to take this step which they consider alienates them from their own culture, their own traditions. 

These are complex situations. The word conversion should be understood in a very broad sense. It could include people like Ghandi, who I’m sure, was very much influenced by Christ and Who even claimed that if a Christian is someone who follows the teaching of Christ then he could claim to be a Christian. At an early stage of his life he may have thought of becoming a Christian but later on he never saw it as a practicalityfor him because he always thought the Church was very foreign