Interreligious dialogue impossible, pope says, but intercultural dialogue good

Marcello Pera is the former president of the Italian Senate and also a professor of philosophy at the University of Pisa. Intellectually, Pera is a disciple of Karl Popper. He’s perhaps the leading example of a peculiar phenomenon on the cultural right in today’s Europe – self-professed atheists and secularists who nevertheless support a revival of the Christian roots of the Old Continent. In 2004, he co-authored a book on Europe with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger called Without Roots. Pera’s new book, which comes out tomorrow and is called Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians, travels much the same ground.

What makes the book remarkable is that, apparently for the first time, it carries a brief introduction written by a sitting pope. Benedict’s letter to Pera has made a stir in the global media, in part because the pope repeats his well-known conviction that dialogue among religions in the strict sense is logically impossible, because it implies a suspension of one’s own faith commitments, but that dialogue among cultures shaped by those religions is not only possible but urgently necessary.

The following is the full text of Pope Benedict XVI’s letter about Pera’s book, in an NCR translation from the Italian original. Read Article