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I have touched on these two above, but it is time to be explicit: what does the Council teach about mission? Three things are clear in numerous Council documents. First, it is the nature of the Church to be a light to all nations, to call all men and women to the good news that Christ has come to bring salvation into the world.46 There is no exception to the extent of evangelization, for to exclude anyone would be to exclude them from God’s great gift to all men and women. Second, while there is a call to universal mission, there is also a call to respect the dignity of every human person and thus their freedom of conscience.47 No one should be coerced to follow Christ, and mission does not call for disrespect or belittling of other beliefs and practices. I have also noted how after the Council, the Church has officially recognized that Catholics have not always followed their own teachings. Third, mission means planting Christian communities in every nation so that all cultures and creation can join in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the triune God. Mission involves the gradual transformation of the Church through a critically sifted process of inculturation.

This third point is worth dwelling on further, for it raises the important question: What elements from other religions might transform future Christian practices and beliefs? The answer I think is in principle simple: anything that is good, true, and holy in the cultures of the world can and should be incorporated into the Church. In practice the answer is far more complex. After the discovery of the ‘New World’, as it was called, Catholic missionaries engaged with all types of religious cultures, some of which had appalling dark elements and others which elicited high praise and respect. It goes without saying that the same was true for the missionaries’ own religious culture. Discerning dark from light is sometimes rather complex and incorporating the good and positive elements likewise. Today, for example, we would not necessarily share the judgement of a Jesuit in India who found in the practice of widow immolation (sati) something so noble and dutiful, that it would truly challenge Hindus if Christians could engage in such self-sacrificial martyrdom!48 And Christians might evaluate certain rites very differently. Some Catholic missionaries were perhaps uniquely able to appreciate what some of the Protestant missionaries could only see as Hindu ‘idol worship’ in the practices of Hindu puja. Those Protestant missionaries of course saw idol worship in the practices of Catholicism!

Regarding inculturation (the use of cultures to give shape and form to the proclamation of the gospel) it is a fair generalization to say that within Catholicism the Western Latin tradition dominated for historical and geographical reasons. As Newman has argued, the Latin tradition was a long slow process of critical inculturation of Greek and Roman traditions, practices and conceptualities.49 Harnack and earlier Reformers judged this to be sometimes the dilution and falsification of Christianity, but since I am accepting the basic dogmatic legitimacy of the Western Latin tradition I am not going to get bogged down in this debate. The inculturation of ‘positive elements’ from non-Christian traditions forms the historical explication of ‘faith’, which as ‘faith’ cannot be reduced to any single culture. Nevertheless the culture through which Christianity was transmitted in the West does takes a privileged but contingent role in that it critically forms that which is called ‘tradition’, and tradition contains all sorts of normative statements (in Councils, for example) that are determinative for shaping developments and articulations of the faith in different cultural mediums. With the slow crumbling of European economic and political power this issue will become more and more acute in the Western Latin tradition. In 1659, in the early days of the discovery of the New World, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (now known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) issued an instruction to new missionaries to China, regarding the matter of adapting to local customs and respecting the habits of the countries to be evangelized: ‘Do not act with zeal, do not put forward any arguments to convince these peoples to change their rites, their customs or their usages, except if they are evidently contrary to the religion and morality. What would be more absurd than to bring France, Spain, Italy or any other European country to the Chinese? Do not bring to them our countries, but instead bring to them the faith, a faith that does not reject or hurt the rites, nor the usages of any people, provided that these are not distasteful, but that instead keeps and protects them.’50 It might be said that the famous Chinese rites controversy was not entirely about inculturation but rather a battle between the Dominicans and Jesuits. The lifting of the ban of 1705 against using local rites in 1939 by Pius XII was politically motivated regarding the Catholic Church’s operations in China.51

LG continues in this tradition of respect for cultures but with a sharp critical eye, recognizing that the process of incorporation will often transform the dynamic of that which is incorporated:

Through her work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God, the confusion of the devil and the happiness of man. (17)

An example from the Asian Church will be helpful here.

Some Catholics employ meditational techniques from the yoga tradition of Hinduism and from Japanese Buddhist practices. Breathing, posture, stillness and concentration, it is sometimes claimed, are immensely helpful ways of stilling the mind to be receptive to God. Examples could be drawn from the French Benedictine Dom Henri Le Saux, later called Swami Abhishiktananda, who learnt meditation under a Hindu guru; or the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who found great wisdom in Zen meditation resonating with his own contemplative Trappist tradition and engaged deeply with D. T. Suzuki; and my colleague in this book, Paul Knitter, who testifies to how his Catholicism is fed and nourished by Buddhist spirituality.52 Furthermore, some Asian Catholics are trying to think through dogmatics with the aid of Sankara and Ramanuja in the same way that Aquinas employed Aristotle. Just as Aristotle and Plato were central in shaping the thinking of some early Christian intellectuals, why should Sankara, Ramanuja and Nagarjuna not shape a new generation as they reflect on their ‘faith’?53 As LG put it, all that is good in people’s hearts, rites, cultures will be raised and purified in this transformation into a hymn of praise to God when incorporated into a Church which we might find very difficult to recognize.

While there are important and exciting developments, some critical problems should also be registered, for the stream of engagement with other religions and cultures entails complex currents. While legitimately drawing on Sankara, can the Latin heritage simply be seen as ‘European’ so that the Indian Church is not tied to this Latin tradition as is argued by some radical Indian theologians?54 John Paul II argued against such a move in his encyclical Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio, 1998), 72: ‘the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Graeco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and history.’ This is not to privilege the Graeco-Latin heritage, but to argue for an organic continuity for the Church in different cultures. He then continues: ‘This criterion is valid for the Church in every age, even for the Church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes from today’s engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this inheritance fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves into the future.’ So rather than adopt a Harnackian-like nineteenth-century Liberal Protestant view about the Catholic Church, what is at stake here is valuing cumulative traditions and allowing fresh formulations to be accountable to the Bible and earlier traditions. This does not reify a static monolithic block called ‘tradition’, which is why I have used ‘traditions’, but it draws into an organic unity the local and universal Church.

In the West we have seen this issue arise with the employment of Marx by some (not all) liberation theologians. One must be sensitive to the way some philosophies and practices can contain presuppositions and accompanying worldviews that if not challenged and questioned can turn ‘inculturation’ into uncritical assimilation. When this happens, as in the case of some forms of liberation theology, the Church can suddenly be viewed in primarily sociological categories of power rather than in sacramental terms. And with the use of some types of Eastern meditational practices by Christians, this might lead (but not at all necessarily) to pseudo-gnosticism which aims to liberate the soul from matter and body into a state of superior knowledge. It might also lead to ‘Messalianism’, named after the fourth-century charismatics who identified the redeeming grace of the Holy Spirit with the experiences of the Spirit’s sustaining and enlivening presence in the soul. Both errors are in danger of attempting to overcome the distance separating creature from creator and to bypass the humanity of Christ and the sacraments of the Church. But these are only dangers, not intrinsic to proper inculturation, but that happen when uncritical syncretism or assimilation takes place.55 To note these dangers is important, but they should in no way inhibit critical inculturation as affirmed in LG, as the Church’s very catholicity is otherwise compromised.

In the future, who knows what the Indian Catholic Church might look like in its customs and rites and theology – and this organic growth, when done under the guidance of the bishops, can be understood as the Holy Spirit’s uncovering ever anew the face of Christ. Christ’s face is both known and unknown, but never seen in its fullness until we come to see Christ face to face in the eschaton. The Vatican called upon the Benedictine and Cistercian monastic orders, precisely those trained in meditation and prayer, to engage with Eastern religious traditions and communities to further this important quest for both better understanding of the ‘Other’ as well as deep learning through this process. The Monastic Interreligious Dialogue committee has developed its activities over many years and in many different countries.56

I should touch on one last issue before moving on, and that is the issue of prayer. If Judaism and Islam are involved with the real and living God, is interfaith prayer possible between Catholics and these religious traditions? Indeed, is interfaith prayer possible between Christianity and other theistic traditions such as Sikhism and strands of Hinduism? The formal teachings on this matter clarify three issues. First, authentic prayer is addressed to God as Trinity, is moved by the Holy Spirit, and draws us into an active and real relationship with the living God.57 Second, the prayers of Israel in the Psalms are seen as authentic, even though they are not addressed explicitly to the trinitarian God. Third, as we see from point two, while not denying the ‘authenticity’ of some forms of non-Christian prayer, interfaith prayer is quite problematic because the explicit ‘object’ of prayer is different (Jews and Muslims, let alone Sikhs, do not pray to Father, Son and Spirit).

This last point is worth dwelling on, as the issue is addressed in Redemptoris Missio, 29. It is said that the prayers from other religions can arise from the movement of the Holy Spirit within a person’s heart and be a genuine seeking after God. Pope John Paul II tried to clarify his presuppositions behind the Assisi meeting he convened in 1986 and again in 2002 after substantial concerns were expressed by some of the Roman curia, including the then Cardinal Ratzinger. In an address to the curia the Pope said:

Every authentic prayer is under the influence of the Spirit ‘who intercedes insistently for us’ . . . , because we do not even know how to pray as we ought, but he prays in us ‘with unutterable groaning’ and ‘the One who searches the heart knows what are the desires of the Spirit.’ (See Rom. 8.26–7) We can indeed maintain that every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.58

This insight, slightly modified, has subsequently entered into an encyclical with teaching authority. In Redemptoris Missio, 29 it is said that the

Church’s relationship with other religions is dictated by a twofold respect: ‘Respect for man in his quest for answers to the deepest questions of his life, and respect for the action of the Spirit in man.’ (*) Excluding any mistaken interpretation, the interreligious meeting held in Assisi was meant to confirm my conviction that ‘every authentic prayer is prompted by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in every human heart’.59

The action of the Holy Spirit in human hearts and cultures has now been repeated in a number of teaching documents, so in one sense, its application to prayer as one element of culture is unsurprising. But these prayers cannot be understood to be a full participation in the life of the triune God, but a form of participation that will find its fulfilment in trinitarian prayer and praise. Needless to say that the heart of the non-Christian might be more receptive and transformed (and thus their lives) in such prayer than that of a Christian who prays the Lord’s Prayer without receptivity to the Spirit. The objective forms of beauty, reverence and solemnity such as the Muslim call to prayer properly recited, or the ecstatic joy and transformative rhythms of Sufi sung prayer, are remarkable. I have learnt greatly from both forms of prayer in their reverent and ecstatic witness, and have been deeply moved myself into prayer. I came to greatly appreciate the importance of communal public prayer and bodily movement in prayer, and also the importance of charismatic ecstatic prayer where we lose the security of a liturgy and leap into the abyss of the Spirit. I have met Muslims whose prayer life has caused me to feel shame for the lack of sincerity and regularity of my own prayer life. All this is of course a very different act from interfaith prayer, which while possibly legitimate in some limited cases,60 cannot be possible as a regular practice given our deep differences in understanding God. I do not want to accentuate the intellectual dimension of prayer, but this aspect cannot be negotiated away either. Ratzinger makes a good case for deep respect and reverent witnessing to the prayers of others, but cannot see a strong case for interfaith prayer.61