Catholics in Interreligious Dialogue: Monasticism, Theology and Spirituality

Ed. Anthony O’Mahony and Peter Bowe, OSB.

Gracewing 2006. ISBN 0 85244 640 3

 Review: Sr Mary Agnes Wilkins, OSB

The book is a series of papers given at a conference held at Heythrop College of the University of London, concentrating on the monastic contribution to interreligious dialogue. The papers were given on the day itself, as well as some specially commissioned later. Contributors include Beter Bowe and Anthony O’Mahony, the editors, and Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, then President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who has written the Preface. The other contributors, all working in the field of interreligious dialogue are Pierre de Béthune, OSB, Eoin de Bhaldraithe, OCSO, John Flannery, SJ, Ian Latham LBD, Jean Owen Maynard, Judson Trapnell, (who has since died alas, though still a young man), Steven Saxby and Agnes Wilkins, OSB. There is a good variety of articles which cover monastic involvement in dialogue with Hinduism, Buddhism and, more lately, Islam. Pierre de Béthune gives a very useful overview of DIM/MID from its inception to the present day, while Peter Bowe considers where we are now, and where we might go in the future. Others have written on topics such as Charles de Foucauld and Islam, Thomas Merton and Islam, the Cistercian Martyrs of Tibhirine, Henri le Saux and Bede Griffiths in India, and the Jesuit encounter with Buddhists in Tibet. These are all excellent articles, interesting, inspiring and deep, which will hopefully inspire us as we discern our way forward into the future. Such a book will inform and be of interest to any people (not only from monasteries) coming new to the world of interreligious dialogue.