60 years after Nostra Aetate, a setback or a new challenge?

“I didn’t expect such polarized responses.” At the beginning of October, Jean-François, 32, posted a message on a Facebook group of young Parisians, most of them practicing Catholics. A member of the Ensemble avec Marie association, which brings together Christians and Muslims, the young man invites you to participate in a meeting at the Grand Mosque of Paris, offering teachings by an imam and a seminarian, and times of prayer.

Some comments, frankly hostile, point out the possible confusion between the two religions, and the violence which would be inherent to Islam. “These proposals are causing more and more tension on the Catholic side,” testifies Jean-François. Questions are emerging around the political issues of Islam, immigration, and the identity of the Church. These subjects work for me too!”

A huge investment

While in France, the post-conciliar period saw initiatives to welcome and meet Muslims flourish, the momentum now seems to have died down. “At the time of Vatican II, Muslims in France were a minority and often precarious. The fundamentalism born in Saudi Arabia had not yet taken off. The first Muslim places of prayer were premises lent by parishes,” explains Father Christian Delorme, 75, a Lyon figure in Muslim-Christian relations.

The declaration Nostra Aetate (read box) did a lot for this momentum. While affirming that Christ alone is “the way, the truth and the life” (§ 5), the Church recognizes that each religion reflects “a ray of truth” and calls for dialogue with other religions.

Strong gestures from the popes followed: in October 1986, in Assisi, John Paul II associated representatives of the great religious traditions with a global prayer for peace; in 1999, he kissed a Koran offered by a Sunni delegation to the Vatican. In 2006, Benedict XVI prayed at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul (Türkiye), before hosting the first Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome two years later. Francis reiterated the gesture of the Blue Mosque in 2014 and wrote with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar (Egypt) a declaration for peace in 2019. In France, the episcopal conference created, in 1973, the National Service for Relations with Muslims.

“With Vatican II, the Church has invested enormously in this dialogue with the world,” explains Brother Jean-François Bour, currently responsible for this mission. For him, the terrorism crisis and the rise of fundamentalism have crystallized the concerns of Catholics: “If some wish to continue the exchange, others no longer want to hear about it and fall back on a very identity-based vision of Christianity.”

Above all, strengthen your faith

For Louis, a thirty-year-old who has lived in the Middle East for a long time, meetings like those proposed by Ensemble avec Marie carry the risk of political confusion: “The participating Muslims do not represent the reality of Islam in France,” he emphasizes. Of course, terrorists are in the minority, but let’s not believe that our faiths are reconcilable.”

Tiphaine, 24, chaplaincy facilitator, takes on a missionary dynamic: “Dialogue is essential, but it is in vain if we do not announce the love of Jesus. At least by our attitude.” Both also recognize that contact with Muslims encourages them to deepen their own faith. Albane, 28, experienced it at the Grand Mosque of Paris on October 11: “I was touched by the very concrete nature of Muslim prayer, but I also weighed the importance of this specific dimension to Christianity: knowing that I am saved by God, whatever the number of my sins.”

“The modalities of interreligious dialogue are evolving,” adds Brother Jean-François Bour. We must not be afraid to name our differences, to talk about what continues to divide us. Paradoxically, Catholics have never talked so much about Islam.”