Religion

“Nostra aetate” profoundly reshaped dialogue between Catholics and Muslims. From John Paul II to Pope Francis, the Holy See has pursued its work of encounter and fraternity. This is the third installment in our series. It is hard to overstate the impact of the 1965 declaration Nostra aetate on relations between the Catholic Church and the Arab-Muslim world. To grasp this fully, nothing is more helpful than reading the text itself, which presents no dogmatic difficulty. Here is the passage that concerns us directly: “(…) The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

In our first article, we looked at the circumstances that gave rise to Nostra aetate , the Vatican II declaration on the Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions. Clear and precise, the text leaves nothing in the shadows and avoids a different “substitution”: replacing the Church’s mission with dialogue. But that is another story. Regarding the Jews, Nostra aetate explicitly rejects the notion of collective responsibility for Christ’s death, as some have interpreted passages of the Gospel, including the crowd’s cry: “His blood be on us and on our children!” It makes clear that “what happened during the Passion cannot be ascribed indiscriminately either to all the Jews then living, or to the Jews of today.”

“Thank you for coming” is probably one of the phrases Leo XIV heard most often during his stay in Lebanon. For many, the popular welcome given to the Pope came as a surprise. Leo XIV praised the “simplicity” of our faith. He must have rediscovered in Lebanon something of the faith of the peasants of Peru, that of a people untouched by the intellectual sophistication of the West. “Wow! Thank you to Peru, and especially to Chiclayo, for having so beautifully shaped this man of God, so full of zeal and compassion,” wrote a retired engineer on Facebook who spent three days glued to the television. Mother Marie Makhlouf, the superior of the Sisters of the Cross, and the two women who received the comfort of his embrace, in Bkerké and at the port, would certainly agree. Now, Pope Leo XIV knows Lebanon intimately, and the people saw the joy of the encounter on their faces.

In 2019, Pope Francis was the first pope to make an official visit to Abou Dhabi. During this visit, Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al Tayeb, made history by jointly signing a document on human fraternity calling for tolerance, universal peace, and reconciliation between all religions. To commemorate this historical visit and in line with the charter of human fraternity, the government of the United Arab Emirates decided to build on Saadiyat Island the Abrahamic Family House, an architectural space of nearly 6,000 square meters dedicated to the three monotheistic religions. Inaugurated in 2023, it includes a church, a mosque, and a synagogue, as well as a forum.

The Vatican and the global Catholic community, including Lebanon, are currently marking the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate , the declaration promulgated by Pope Paul VI on the Catholic Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions. In Lebanon, a conference was held in Bkerké on November 8 to commemorate the event. The statement has often been called prophetic , and rightly so. It was written at a moment when, despite growing contact between peoples through modern transport and communication, religion was increasingly being used as a tool of violence across the five continents. The culture of religious and racial hatred had reached its darkest point in Europe during World War II, with the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazis.