The evil of tolerance
Introduction
A light seen
Isaiah prophesied that the people of Zebulun and
Naphtali who walked in gloom and darkness would one day see a great light.
Matthew says that prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus left Nazareth to live in
Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali (Is 8:23—9:3; Mt 4: 12-17). There is a theme of light and darkness going
on in the Mass readings today. And it is continued in the responsorial psalm as
well: ”The Lord is my light and my salvation.”
The Assisi Summit 1/24/02
Last Thursday, January 24th, 2002, the
people in Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis, saw a great light. But media, which was so busy with
congressional hearings filled with double talk from CEO’s of the bankrupt Enron
giant, and busy with all the fuss about what to do with one man (the American
Taliban, John Walker Lindh) … the media was so busy that it did not see the
great light which the people assembled in Assisi saw. “Verily, verily I say
unto you,” if the burning issue of the moment is the problem of terrorism and
peace, then the media should have
tuned into Assisi. Instead it turned our attention to non-news, and that’s not
new at all.
Pope John Paul II had invited representatives from
the world’s great religions to summit with him for peace, in Assisi, the
hometown of St. Francis, famous for his witness to peace among human beings and harmony with all
nature. Twice before, the Pope had called for such a summit in Assisi. The first was in 1986 when atomic warfare
threatened the world. The second was in
1993 when war in the Balkans was seriously threatening the world. This third peace summit was in response to
the horrific disaster of 9/11.
This time too they came from the four corners of the earth. Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Mormons, Mennonites and Orthodox Christians, joined representatives of 11 other religions, including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists and followers of African tribal religions. It is interesting to note that there was a 29-member Islamic delegation and a 10-member Jewish delegation.
The journey for peace started out at the Vatican train station. There the representatives of the world’s great religions all piled into the pope’s train that had a spit-polish shine to it and was decorated with papal coat of arms. It was a seven-car train which Italy’s state railroad gave to the Vatican. By train all journeyed to Assisi, a trip of three or four hours.
There the great event took place in an immense white tent held up by steel scaffolding, and accommodating 3000 people. It was erected in front of the world famous Basilica San Francesco. The tented arena was decorated with a single olive tree, symbol of peace. The scene was remarkably colorful: Christian monks in brown woolen habits, saffron-robed Buddhists, black-cloaked Muslims, Sikhs wearing turbans, white-bearded Orthodox patriarchs. On a slightly elevated platform sat all the representatives with the Pope in the center. After John Paul II extended a welcome to them all, the various representatives stepped forward, and in their own languages spoke testimonies to peace. Then that huge assembly of so many different religions was dismissed to various locations where each religion could comfortably pray in it own tradition and according to its own light.
Christians assembled with the Pope in the Lower Basilica of St. Francis for prayer. The others went to appropriate spots in the Franciscan friars’ immense monastery for prayer. After that followed a vegetarian agape for all. The peace summit finished with the various religions making a commitment to peace in various languages: French, German, Punjab, Russian, Serbian, Arabic, Greek, Korean, Parsi, Japanese, Hebrew, and English. The Holy Father concluded the shared commitment to peace saying firmly and loudly,
“Violence
never again!
War
never again!
Terrorism
never again!
In
God’s name,
may
all religions bring upon the earth
justice
and peace,
forgiveness,
life and love.”
In Assisi religion assembled to indict itself again for having written some very ugly and bloody pages of human history. In Assisi religion assembled again to declare to itself and to the world that religion betrays its very being when it becomes the root of violence and terrorism. In Assisi religion assembled to remind itself and the world, now engaged in a great “war for peace,” that religion is the chief antidote against violence and terrorism, and that it has within itself deep wellsprings for making peace. In Assisi religion assembled for a witness to peace, because the secularized world, though frequently far removed from religion, often demands and feels a great need for such witness from religion. In Assisi religion assembled to clearly declare in the urgency of the present moment that never, never, never may you kill in the name of God. Samuel Rene-Sirat, a Grand Rabbi from France, declared to the assembly, "Killing in the name of God is blasphemy. To kill in the name of God is to kill twice."
Intolerance
After the first Assisi peace summit of 1986 Time
Magazine for Nov. 10 called it “the greatest.”
The staunch intolerant Protestant fundamentalist, Carl Mcintire, also
called it “the greatest” … “the greatest single abomination in church history.” The Pope, you see,
had "hobnobbed with pagans."
Even this latest summit met with some intolerance. Outside Assisi Federico Bricolo and Massimo
Polledri, members of an Italian government coalition party, said in a
statement, ``To pray with heretics, schismatics, rabbis, mullahs, witch doctors
(referring to the African spiritism) and various idolaters creates confusion
among Catholic believers.”
The Muslim Union of Italy, representing 5,000 Muslims out of 800,0000 living in Italy, criticized the peace day, saying, “There is no real basis for dialogue.” (You can build mosques in Catholic Italy but you cannot build churches in Islam).
Tolerance
Obviously the attitude of those who accepted the
invitation of John Paul was one of tolerance. Otherwise they would have
never come. And I’m sure the reaction of most of us who watched that noble
assembly was one of tolerance. Thank
God for tolerance! But after September
11th when many people found themselves in common prayer with
different religions, some people (the brave ones) began to ask, “Is tolerance
really enough?” They feel that standing
in the midst of other religions “clothed only with tolerance” … they feel that
something is missing.
Tolerance is the Protestant theologian, Karl Barth,
saying that though non-Christian faiths might be lights, they are “lesser
lights” (how ungenerous!). Tolerance is
the Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, saying that if non-Christians are
saved, it is because they are “Christians incognito,” “Christians who don’t know
they are Christians” (how haughty!).
Tolerance is the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, saying that if
non-Christians are saved, it is because they are “anonymous Christians” (again,
how haughty!). That’s tolerance, but is it enough? Tolerance is really a
negative idea and a very close cousin to intolerance. It needs but a feather to tip the scale south. Tolerance might not be darkness, but neither
is it light. Shouldn’t truly religious people be capable of something more
luminous than tolerance?
A new approach to religions
Yes, we should be capable of more. That’s what Dr. Joseph Hough, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, thinks. He has been calling for a new theological approach to other religions for us Christians. He was born into the Calvinist Tradition, which stresses the absolute sovereignty of God. He uses that absolute sovereignty of God in a positive and constructive way. God, he says, is absolutely free to do and to be what whatever God wants to do and to be. That means God is free even to come to human beings as a fellow human being. That’s what makes Christmas possible. But if I, Christian that I am, limit my God’s freedom to come to human beings only in the person of Jesus Christ, then my God is not really free. And what’s worse, that implicitly exposes me to the danger of intolerance and even of terrorism in the name of Jesus. But it works both ways: if you, Muslim that you are, limit your God’s freedom to come to human beings only in the person of Mohammed, then your God too is no longer free, and that exposes you to the temptation of intolerance and even terrorism in the name of Allah.[i]
For Dr. Hough, God has the power and freedom to come to human beings in any form that God chooses. God has the power and freedom to come to human beings in the form of Jesus Christ. Also in the form of Mohammed. The only power and freedom that God does not have is the power and freedom to come to human beings as terrorist. No, it was not God, the terrorist, who sent the hot lava coursing down into the village of Goma in the Congo this past week. Blame that on the volcano, not on God. And no, it was not God, the terrorist, who brought down the twin towers in the World Trade Center as punishment upon an infidel nation. Blame that on Islamic fanatics. The only power and freedom that God does not have is to come to us in the form of terrorist, for “God is love” (I Jn 4: 8 & 16).
Apart from that, everything else is possible for God. God has the power and the freedom to come to human beings in any form and manner God chooses. True, such an approach to other religions robs me of my “only”; my way is not the “only” way. It robs me of any claim to exclusiveness, and of the right to conduct either Crusades or 9/11’s in the name of that exclusiveness. It robs me of a religious excuse to work out my aggressions or whatever psychological problems I might have.
Such an approach to other religions goes beyond tolerance, by which we treat other believers basically as outsiders upon whom we bestow at most a “live and let live attitude.” Dr. Hough’s approach enables us to see other believers “not as foreigners or strangers” but as brothers and sisters, “in the household of God,” to whom the one and same God and father, who revealed himself to me in the face of Jesus Christ, has revealed himself to others in some other face (Eph 2:19). For us to be passionately Christian it is not necessary for us to believe that no one else has seen the face of God and has experienced redemption in another form.
“Peace – but
not the kiss of peace”
In Assisi religion had assembled to declare to itself and to the world that religion betrays its very self whenever it makes war, and is true to its very self whenever it makes peace. But for making peace religion needs more than just tolerance. Tolerance, in fact, is not really peace at all.
A character in T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral calls the truce between Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and King Henry II of England … calls that truce “peace but not the kiss of peace – a patched up affair.” Tolerance might be peace but it is not the kiss of peace – it’s a patched up affair. That goes for all tolerance, no matter where we harbor it. Tolerance in the family: spouses and sibling tolerating each other. That might be peace but it is “not the kiss of peace -- a patched up affair.” Tolerance in the church: the followers of Trent and the followers of Vatican II tolerating each other. That might be peace but it is “not the kiss of peace -- a patched up affair.” Tolerance here in Milwaukee: blacks and whites tolerating each other. That might be peace but it is “not the kiss of peace -- a patched up affair. ” At the end of the day, tolerance, like its close cousin intolerance, is evil.
Conclusion
“Peace too precious…”
When Rabbi Israel Singer
of the World Jewish Congress (an American) got up to witness to peace at
Assisi, he first greeted the Pope with a kind of military-style salute saying,
"Only you, John Paul II, could put this together. Only you can make this happen and only we
have to help you do this." He soon
departed from his prepared address and got to the point. He was the only one to explicitly mention
the September 11th attack by Islamic terrorists whom he
characterized as "madmen who claim to be acting in the name of
religion." Raising his voice he
alluded to the Palestinian conflict saying, "You should tell your people,
and we should tell ours, all of us, all of us, to question whether land or
places are more important than people's lives.
And until we learn to do that there will be no peace.'' Then with eloquent voice and words he
charged all the religion before him with peace. Peace is yours, he told them. Peace is ours. We, if
anyone, are the technicians of peace. "Peace," he said, "is too
precious a thing to be left to statesmen and politicians. Peace is too precious
a thing to be left to generals."
And peace, we also say, is too precious a thing even to be left to
tolerance. It calls for something more
generous and more loving that will turn peace into "the kiss of
peace," and will greet all believers (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) as
"brothers and sisters in the household of God."