Over the past fifteen years I have been involved in Buddhist-Christian, Jewish-Christian, and Muslim-Christian dialogues. Each has shaped and challenged me in different ways. A junior scholars grant from the Association of Theological Schools allowed me to travel to Kyoto, Japan, and learn about Buddhism from Masao Abe, one of the leading Zen Buddhist thinkers. Abe had studied Christian theology under Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr and had a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the issues involved in Buddhist-Christian discussions. I came to see a fundamental difference in Buddhist and Christian cosmologies expressed in the contrast between the Christian doctrine of creation and Buddhist perspectives on dependent co-arising, which hold that all things in the universe are interdependent, originating from each other without any transcendent creator. Despite the profound differences in worldviews, I discovered repeated similarities in the values taught by the two traditions.

Some years later I made a week-long retreat that combined Theravada Buddhist insight meditation with the spirituality of St. John of the Cross. The rhythm of sitting and walking, the silent following of the breath, and the opportunity to be still and observe were profoundly cleansing. While doing walking meditation in my room toward the end of the retreat, I had a moving experience of peace, a sense that the Holy Spirit would handle all difficulties in my life. The practice of Buddhist meditation has been a tremendous gift in my life. A few years ago I did a survey of Christians who practice a form of meditation coming from another tradition. The overwhelming majority of the respondents reported that meditation practice had helped them work through emotional challenges and had enriched their Christian prayer life.

In the Chicago area I participated in a number of Jewish-Christian clergy retreats, which were very different in tone from the Buddhist encounters. The horrors of centuries of Christian persecution of Jews and the memory of the Shoah shaped the background of these meetings. One of the painful issues involved Jewish-Christian marriages. One evening we were doing an exercise of role-playing. The facilitator asked a woman rabbi if she would attend the wedding of her own daughter if it were celebrated in a Catholic church. Though it was a fictional situation, the woman broke down and cried at the thought of it. Through her tears, she replied: “I would go because it was my daughter.” Especially since the Shoah, many Jews feel a responsibility to raise two Jewish children. Intermarriage and assimilation pose a potent challenge to Jewish identity in the United States today.

As a member of the Chicago metropolitan area Jewish Catholic scholars group, I traveled with the group to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. We met with the educational director of the museum and with Eugene Fischer, who represents the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Jewish-Catholic relations. Visiting the museum together as a group was a powerful experience. One of the rabbis present, Herman Schaalman, was born in Munich, Germany in 1916 and grew up in the atmosphere of radical Antisemitism. One day when he was seven years old, his Christian friends attacked him with unprecedented fury. When they had finished their fighting, he asked them why they had done that. They replied that they had just come from catechism class and had learned that he had killed Christ. Being only seven years old, Herman did not remember killing anyone and went home puzzled. His father tried to explain as best he could the age-old practice of Christians blaming all Jews of every generation for the death of Jesus. When I taught at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago, I would have Herman come to my first-year class on Fundamental Theology to speak about the importance of Jewish-Christian dialogue since the Shoah. When he would express his hopes for them as future religious leaders, the room would be so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

In recent years I have been increasingly involved in Muslim-Christian dialogue as well. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, these discussions have taken on added urgency. A number of our conversations have focused on violence in our two traditions. I acknowledged the atrocities committed by Catholics against Jews and Muslims, and I have explained Pope John Paul II’s call for a purification of memory for the crimes done by Catholics through the centuries, who often invoked the name of God as justification for violence. At the Midwest Regional Muslim-Catholic dialogue, Irfan Khan, a scholar from India, responded warmly to my presentation, asserting that Muslims themselves need to go through a similar purification of memory. He went further and called for a purification of message in the Muslim community as well, since he believed many Muslims misunderstand the teachings of the Qur’an. In a world marred by repeated violence, often done in the name of religion, interreligious encounters offer hope of a more peaceful future.