A foreign missions priest who has served in India since 2012 spoke with UCA News in an Oct. 20 interview about the Vatican’s most recent message to Hindus celebrating Diwali, saying that the Vatican’s present approach to communication to Hindus is well-intentioned but hardly received.
As it stands, “there is almost no one to receive” the message, in part due to challenges posed by Hinduism’s structure of authority, explained Father Yann Vagneux, who is based in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
For one, Hinduism does not have a top leader who could share the messages, he said.
“In traditional Hinduism, I would say a dozen spiritual masters hold supreme authority over those particular traditions,” Fr. Vagneux said. The number of leaders may change depending on how you count. In any case, none of them are touched by these messages.”
The “big question,” Fr. Vagneux said, is “to whom should these messages be addressed? This is what I call ‘spiritual diplomacy,’ and we are still at a very embryonic stage.”
The Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue issued an Oct. 11 message of greetings and well wishes to Hindus on the occasion of Diwali, a multi-day celebration of the victory of light over darkness and of life over death.
Fr. Vagneux said the author of the message “clearly lacks a deep understanding of Hindu scriptures and its living tradition. This presents a challenge for interreligious dialogue today.”
“I believe that the future will require a genuine understanding of each other’s religions and spiritual practices, not just academically, but through lived experience,” he added.
The Vatican has issued messages to Hindus for about 20 years.
“Over the years, reading these messages reveals that the Catholic Church is very self-referential,” Fr. Vagneux said.
The most recent message highlights papal remarks on dialogue and the Vatican II Declaration Nostra Aetate, which reflects on the Church’s relation to non-Christian religions, he noted. Much of this is unclear for Hindus, few of whom have heard of Nostra Aetate, according to Fr. Vagneux.
“The Church speaks for itself, offering advice, but for example, there are no quotations from Hindu sacred texts on the theme of Diwali that would immediately touch the hearts of our interlocutors….” Fr. Vagneux said. “How could a Hindu who received this message understand it? How could it interest him? Unless he has had prolonged contact with Christianity, which almost does not exist.”
“That’s why I think it’s a message in a bottle, and unfortunately, no one will read the message in the bottle,” he said. “This is a criticism that must be addressed. It is very beautiful and very noble to write a message to wish Deepavali, but there is almost no one to receive it.”
Fr. Vagneux said key elements of interreligious dialogue is understanding the worldview of the other person and training, not through one-semester courses, but multi-year preparation and exploration of languages, sacred texts and rites.
As an example, he noted that some Christians are thoroughly educated in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and therefore can engage in spiritual dialogue with the Dalai Lama. He argued that in a cultural and religious sense, Hinduism remains an unexplored land, or a “terra incognita,” for Christian missionaries.
Fr. Vagneux also observed that in Nostra Aetate, which was issued in 1965, the Church did not refer to other religions as having “nothing good about them” but rather acknowledged what is true in them.
Nostra Aetate states in the second paragraph: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”
Fr. Vagneux said that while the document is short, it depicts well the parable of the mustard seed “which is meant to grow into a tree that provides shelter for all the birds of the air.”
“Such is the power of Nostra Aetate, whose richness we have yet to fully explore and experience,” he said. “I believe we are still at the beginning. The Church has only just reached a new point.”
The post ‘Message in a bottle’: Missionary priest in India says communication from Vatican to Hindus needs improvement appeared first on CatholicVote org.