Psychologies Magazine, May 2001 —
John Paul II's visit to the Great Mosque of Damascus on May 5th, where he will walk barefoot, is a historic event. Having already visited the Great Synagogue of Rome at the beginning of his pontificate, this gesture by the Pope represents a further step towards reconciliation between religions. Whether one is a believer or not, one cannot help but applaud. After centuries of war and contempt, religions are finally learning to understand one another and engage in dialogue.
This change in attitude is quite recent. My grandmother, a devout Catholic, told me that she had been taught in her childhood that all unbaptized people were destined for the flames of hell. The advent of the global village and the mixing of cultures have obviously rendered this kind of narrow-minded belief obsolete for most people. Moreover, no institution holds such views anymore, and interfaith dialogue is on the rise.
Does this mean that religions, at least in the West, have become tolerant? In the political sense, yes. In our pluralistic democracies, no religious community is tempted to impose a kind of "sharia," and all tolerate the presence of competing religions. But as Kant pointed out, the political legitimacy of tolerance can be separated from the moral commitment to tolerance. In other words, is being politically tolerant enough to be morally tolerant?
Taken to its logical conclusion, tolerance is indeed an ethical virtue that combines the strength of convictions with respect for others. It is no longer simply a matter of proclaiming one's truths with indifference or contempt for the convictions of others, but of engaging in reasoned debate with others in the shared pursuit of what is good and what is true. Let us be clear. It is natural for every believer to adhere to what seems to them to be the truest. This is the very definition of faith. No one would dream of criticizing a Jew for being convinced of the necessity of observing the Torah, a Muslim for the five pillars of Islam, or a Buddhist for meditation. But a profound divide is emerging between believers who think they possess a complete and universal truth and those who recognize that every truth, even their own, is relative.
For the former, dialogue is a purely formal act, since the other, adhering to "an inferior truth," cannot enrich them in any way. The latter, on the contrary, admit that what is best for them is not necessarily best for others. They therefore conceive of religious dialogue as "an exchange of treasures." This divide runs through all religious communities. Some Catholic theologians, for example, advocate a pluralist theology of religions. They are in Rome's crosshairs. For while extending a hand to other religions through strong symbolic gestures, John Paul II, like his predecessors, addresses the world as the holder of a universal, eternal, and immutable truth, and hierarchizes beliefs and human values, proposing to educate them. "One cannot have a dialogue with Catholics because they know," said Merleau-Ponty.
Among Buddhists, the trend is rather the opposite. While there are small groups that advocate the absolute superiority of "dharma" over other spiritual traditions, the Dalai Lama clearly states: "In this world, there is no universal truth. The same truth can take on different forms. It depends on the interpretations made through our intellectual, philosophical, cultural, and religious lenses." This conception aligns with that of Jewish Kabbalists, for whom all religions carry a spark of truth. None possesses it in its entirety because God, in this world, has a thousand faces.
"Rabbi, rabbi, why are all men different?" asked the child.
"Because they are all made in the image of God."
May 2001