Happy All Saints Day to all saints
and all saints in training! This day we celebrate both the canonized Saints
(with a capital “S”) and all the saints we have ever met or known. Perhaps you
have family members or friends or know fellow parishioners who you pretty well
expect are saints, even if they are not canonized, i.e. declared so by the
Church. Today we celebrate them all!
I have just returned from a
wonderful conference in Salt Lake City, Utah called the Parliament of the
World’s Religions. The first of these gatherings promoting interfaith dialogue
and cooperation was held in Chicago during the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It
was revived in 1993 as the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Since then it
has been held every five years, in Cape Town, South Africa; Barcelona, Spain;
Melbourne, Australia and now in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had the great pleasure
of attending the one in Melbourne as well.
This is a BIG conference: 9,500
participants, from 70 different countries, representing 50 world religions. It
is quite amazing to rub shoulders and converse with Jains, Bahais, Moslems,
Hindus, Jews, Shieks, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Taoists, Indigenous folk (in
this case, Ute Indians), and a collection of Wiccans, Mother Goddess
worshippers, Gaia adherents, and modern Pagans. It makes for a lively group!
Though we have different
religions, we can learn to respect and dialogue with each other. We also can
work together on common problems. The areas of common concern identified for
this particular Parliament were five: respect for and protection of indigenous
peoples around the world, addressing growing income equality, war/violence and
hate speech, emerging young inter-faith leaders, women’s concerns and human
rights, and the big one was addressing climate change.
There were hundreds of workshops
and speeches. It was possible to get to only a small fraction of the offerings,
which began at 7 a.m. and went until evening. And sometimes there were evening
events. It was a rather demanding schedule. I attended workshops on various
topics, including one by a woman theologian from Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary
on “Rethinking Salvation: images and metaphors of salvation for a pluralistic
world” that was very stimulating and “Spiritual Formation in the age of the
Singularity,” about the impact of technological change on spirituality, which
was quite interesting. A very helpful workshop was “A Common Word Between Us
and You,” which was a response of Muslim scholars to Pope Benedict XVI’s
comment in 2007 that Islam is a violent religion. Out of that has come a
fruitful Moslem-Catholic dialogue that continues today. One workshop I planned
to attend but missed because it was re-scheduled was “Transforming Patriarchy
in Religions: The Promise of Gender Reconciliation.” There was a great deal of
energy at the Parliament over women’s issues. More than 50% of the participants
were women.
And we also had performances,
such as a wonderful inter-faith concert held in the Mormon Tabernacle with over
a dozen different groups performing from all the continents (except Antarctica)
and a combined inter-faith children’s choir that was spectacular. And there
were many more workshops and such I participated in, more than I could list.
For me the most important part of
the Parliament was meeting with other Roman Catholics involved in inter-faith
work. It is not the most popular ministry in the Church right now, and it was
good to give and receive mutual support. One very positive sign is how often,
and how positively Pope Francis was quoted by ALL religious groups, especially
about environmental concerns.
I have not digested this whole
experience yet. As I sort out this experience I will share more with you in
this column. Meanwhile it is good to be back at St. Austin parish community.
God bless!
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