Thursday, September 29, 2005
THE THEOLOGY OF ENCHILADAS
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A U.S. theologian said the best milieu for interreligious discussions with his Buddhist friends is over a hot plate of cheese enchiladas.
Father James Fredericks, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said people often talk of interreligious dialogue as being based on big spiritual mysteries, "like the Holy Spirit or some transcendent reality, but no, the foundations of interreligious dialogue in Los Angeles are cheese enchiladas."
Sharing a meal is not only "the basis for dialogue, it's the fruit of a dialogue" that even involves the Catholic food service workers at the university's kitchens "who, in loving service, do the best job they can to cook these enchiladas for these monks from Sri Lanka," he told Catholic News Service Sept. 27.
Well, I'm not a theologian, but it does seem that Catholics can sit down at a table with Hindus or Buddhists and have a conversation that is amiable and peaceful. In fact they do it all the time on college campuses. Why does it work? Because they don't talk about religion. They talk about other stuff that they share in common, and that's how they become friends. But if religion is placed on the table for discussion, chances are the friends will butt heads. So why do it?
My theory on world peace is based on my daughter's experiences at Ohio State where she at first found the Chinese students to be off-putting, unlike the Indian students she had known at Kent State University, where a couple of them had been her close friends.
After she got to know a couple of Chinese students at Ohio State, the barriers came down. They even planned a baby shower together for another Chinese graduate student. In other words, they shared commonalities, not differences. I asked her once how they handled the religious differences. Very simply she answered. They didn't talk about it.
Not talking about it precludes making statements like this one from Fr. Fredericks:
Father Fredericks said Christians engaged in dialogue should be prepared to set their theologies aside during encounters with other faiths.
"We shouldn't jettison our theology, but we should see that we are seeing the other through our own theology" and that this could "interfere with our ability to hear what our partner is saying" and distort or prevent understanding of the other's beliefs, he said.
That theology that he wants to set aside used to be called Absolute Truth. What sort of conversation do you have with someone when you are willing to set truth aside? How do you base a friendship on a lie?
