The limits of dialogue

Dialogue may be an exciting thing to do: it is venturing into an unfamiliar world and reaching out to others who are different from ourselves. On the other hand it is hard and demanding work. It is not easy to understand someone who grew up in another culture and has a different outlook on life. When religion is involved it becomes even more difficult: then areas of life are touched which go deep and the deeper they go the more sensitive they become.

Aston is a place where many cultures and many religions are in evidence. Churches and mosques abound and people in all kinds of dress are visible in the streets, from Western style clothes to the Muslim woman in full burqa. The differences are enormous and it is clear that observation does not get one very far. You may register the diversity but in order to enter the mindset of somebody else much more is needed than the look of an outsider.

One way of gaining some understanding is study, reading books and articles preferably written by representatives of the other cultures and religions. Let them talk about themselves and give them a chance to express who they are and how they live. Study is reaching out to them but not yet that close as that they are right in front of you and a perhaps uneasy face-to-face encounter becomes inevitable.

I have been studying Islam for months now and slowly I have gotten some inkling of what the Islam stands for. Time, I thought, to share what I have learned with my fellow members of the Catholic parish in Aston. They too live with Muslims all around them and they too may wonder what goes on in the Muslim world. A basic course on Islam might help them to deepen their contacts with their neighbours and understand both them and themselves better.

The course took place in five sessions. Material was gratefully borrowed from the Church of England and it covered five themes: The Origins of Islam; the Qur'an; Islamic Belief and Practice; Evangelism or Dialogue and Extremism. Attendance varied from 15 to over 20 people, both from Aston and neighbouring parishes. On the whole it went well with the exception of one highly confrontational session. The problem was that some of those present did not want dialogue, they wanted clear pronouncements against Islam and its teachings. They were not after understanding another faith but after proclamation of the Catholic truth in all its clarity.
Anything less would be relativity.

True dialogue does not mean that one gives up one's own convictions. On the contrary these will be brought in into the discussion, but what is definitely needed for dialogue is the willingness to understand the other in his or her faith and appreciate what that faith means to him or her. In the end persons are more important than doctrine and love is of a higher order than truth. When this awareness is absent, dialogue has reached its limits.

Ton