In his address to the participants at the International Peace Conference at Al-Azhar (Cairo, Egypt) on April 28, 2017, Pope Francis reminded his listeners that dialogue on a global level may occur if three basic duties are observed: the duty to respect one’s own identity and that of others, the courage to accept differences, and the willingness to recognize the sincerity of the intentions of other people.
In Evangelii Gaudium (EG), his apostolic exhortation on “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis recalled that “true openness involves remaining steadfast in one’s deepest convictions, clear and joyful in one’s own identity, while at the same time being ‘open to understanding those of the other party’ and ‘knowing that dialogue can enrich each side’” (251). Being rooted in one’s own tradition and being open to the others are both constitutive features of Christian faith.
From the very beginning, the logos of Christian faith has been influenced by different cultural settings: Hellenization, Medieval Scholasticism, Reformation, Enlightenment, Modernism, Ressourcement and Pluralism. How can the logos of Christian faith remain faithful to its identity and at the same time be open to the cultural processes that are going on in our global and multi-faith setting?
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© Union of Catholic Asian News
2023
