An ecclesiology for interreligious dialogue

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Church’s understanding of its relation with members of communities who do not profess the Christian faith. This relation portrays a healthy tension between dialogue on the one hand and proclamation and living witness on the other. The document Dialogue and Proclamation, published jointly in 1991 by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples,1 sought to address the question of how interreligious dialogue and proclamation (that is, announcing the Gospel in order to invite people to accept it and be incorporated into the Church through baptism) are in mutual accord. This paper, however, is concerned with the structure and modality of this relationship. It takes as its basis chapter 2 of the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church Lumen Gentium (nos. 12-17), which applies the term ‘People of God’ in its description of the Church, the analogy adopted by Pope Paul VI in his first encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, wherein he employed the imagery of “concentric circles” (see nos. 92-115), and the way this latter example was taken up by Pope Benedict XVI during the General Audience of 6 December 2006, a short while after his pastoral visit to Turkey.