The Llullian spirit of Ecclesiam suam

Abstract

Blessed Paul VI’s First encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (hereafter ES), which was promulgated towards the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1964, has been somewhat overshadowed by the Conciliar documents themselves, and in terms of dialogue, by the ground-breaking Declaration Nostra Aetate (hereafter NA) which was issued by the same pope in 1965. !e recent celebration of the fiftieth anniversaries of both documents has given cause to re-evaluate the nature and scope of interfaith as presented in both. Of the two, Paul VI’s encyclical presents a clear path for dialogue and is worthy of the epithet “epoch-making” in the changes that it advocates. Yet, the argument of this article will be that some at least of Pope Paul’s ideas were anticipated by the thirteenth-century Catalan Franciscan mystic, Ramon Llull. Although Llull is not mentioned by name in Ecclesiam Suam my contention will be that the spirit of Llull’s approach to dialogue pervades this encyclical letter and even today, fifty years after the event, offers a tangible path forward for interfaith dialogue in a world crying out for peaceful solutions to seemingly intractable problems.