[From The Church Next Door:
Local Christians Face America’s New Religious Diversity, draft manuscript
by Dr. Paul D. Numrich. Please do not
quote or cite without author’s permission.]
[figure approx. here: reproduce
logo Bridges to Understanding program]
Father
Andrew Luczak had some key formative experiences growing up in Chicago
in the 1940s and 1950s. He remembers his
mother befriending all the families in their ethnically diverse neighborhood
along north Ashland Avenue,
with names like Schmidt, Foley, Spagnoli, Bolivar, Pappas, and
Mikolajczek. When he had a skin problem,
his parents took him to a renowned African-American dermatologist who played no
favorites with his patients—all had to wait their turn, no matter their race or
status. Later, as a young man, Fr.
Luczak met a Presbyterian minister and his wife who regularly hosted ethnic
theme parties in their Hyde Park neighborhood home. Their openness to people of all cultures,
races, and religions greatly impressed him.
Fr.
Luczak’s college and seminary training introduced him to the diversity within
the Catholic Church with its many clerical orders and liturgical rites. He recalls becoming a “committed ecumenist”
during a course entitled “Principles of Catholic Ecumenism,” taught in 1964 at Loyola
University by Fr. David Bowman,
S.J., a pioneer in interfaith dialogue.
In that course, Fr. Luczak explained, “we were told to visit other
churches, temples, and synagogues, to invite inter-religious guests to our
class, and to attend services. Fr.
Bowman urged us to be mindful of the regulations on communicatio in sacris,
that is, participation that ends in what amounts to ‘practice’ or
intercommunion.” The Second Vatican Council,
the historic gathering of Catholic Church leaders in Rome
in 1963-1965, also had a powerful effect on Fr. Luczak’s personal and
vocational development, as did the American civil rights movement during that
same period. Both taught him the
importance of equality, justice, and human dignity in inter-group
relations. Vatican II also showed him
the Church’s appreciation for truths and values that can be found in
non-Christian religions.
Excerpt from “Declaration
on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra Aetate),
Second Vatican Council, 1965:
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. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever
must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom
men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all
things to Himself [Cf. 2 Cor. 5:18-19].
The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through
dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out
with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they
recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well
as the socio-cultural values found among these men.
[www.vatican.va]
When
Fr. Luczak was appointed St. Lambert’s
pastor in 1993, the members asked him what he would like for a welcoming
celebration. He requested a simple
potluck dinner to which all the ethnic groups of the parish would contribute
their favorite dishes. For Fr. Luczak,
this was a perfect symbol of his basic philosophy of celebrating diversity
within a context of Catholic spiritual formation. And his new church home was the perfect place
to implement that philosophy.
Skokie,
the near north suburb where St. Lambert
is located, experienced dramatic demographic changes in the years leading up to
and during Fr. Luczak’s tenure at the church.
Ethnically, Skokie’s population went from 99
percent white in 1970 to 69 percent white in 2000, the largest new minority
groups being Asians (21 percent) and Hispanics (6 percent). Baha’is, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims
diversified the religious mix of the area, which already had a large number of
Jewish residents. The local clergy
association, a particularly active group of ministers and rabbis established in
the 1970s, began to reach out to these new religious groups, for instance by
organizing an annual interfaith Thanksgiving service that is broadcast on the
local public access cable TV channel.
They have also discussed opening their membership to clergy and lay
leaders from other religions, a move they know will significantly alter the
association’s self-identity.
The ethnic diversity of St.
Lambert’s parish reflects that of the town, including
Assyrians, Cubans, Filipinos, Mexicans, Poles, Romanians, Russians, and Sri
Lankans. The church’s motto, A Christian
Community Welcoming All People, proclaims its inclusiveness. As a parish school board official told us, he
chose to live in Skokie because of its diversity, and he
loves St. Lambert for its response
to that diversity. The church “is a
place where diversity is not just tolerated, it’s celebrated,” he
said proudly. The various ethnic groups
are integrated into the overall life of the congregation and their ethnic
Catholic celebrations and practices regularly featured. A Cuban-American couple who joined the church
long before Fr. Luczak arrived told us about his role in this:
Husband: We
basically became more involved in the church after Fr. Luczak. Fr. Luczak has done wonderful things in terms
of getting more people involved.
Interviewer: How
does he do that?
Wife: He appeals
to the different cultural groups.
Husband: He
appeals to every cultural group and gets everyone involved.
Wife: He tries to,
like, the special needs and the special interests that he notices that the
different groups have, . . . he tries to figure out, okay, how can we celebrate
that to get that particular group more involved.
Interviewer: And
that’s been nice for them?
Husband: Very
nice.
One example of St. Lambert celebrating diversity is
an annual speakers series called Dialogues in Sacred Culture, subtitled
Exploring the Many Cultures that Express and Enrich Our Faith. As described in church promotional materials,
“Dialogues in Sacred Culture is dedicated to an inclusive appreciation of the
Catholic heritage . . . all cultures celebrating as One Family . . . many
colors, one mosaic . . . many voices praising God in harmony!” (ellipses in
original). Topics over the years have
included African-American, Asian-Indian, Filipino, Hispanic, and Slavic
expressions of Catholicism. But the
series also expands the circle of spiritual exploration further than the
diverse Catholic world by welcoming “a positive relationship with believers of
other religious traditions; for to be religious in today’s pluralistic society
is to be interreligious,” according to promotional materials. Speakers have addressed the following topics:
Orthodox Christian iconography, Celtic spirituality, Asian ancestor veneration,
the Confucian vision of community, contemporary Catholic-Jewish relations, and
medieval Catholic-Muslim relations. The
series “is dedicated to an inclusive appreciation of the Catholic heritage and
a respectful study of other religious traditions . . . [and also] aims to build
greater harmony within the Church and in the larger community.”
Other
programs and initiatives at St. Lambert
delve deeper into the truths and values found in non-Christian religions,
pursuant to the spirit of Vatican II.
For instance, in recent years St. Lambert
took leadership in the formal Buddhist-Catholic dialogue that has occurred in
the Chicago area since 1991. Initiated by participants from the Chicago
Archdiocese’s Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, DePaul
University (a Vincentian
university), the Buddhist Council of the Midwest, and a
local Thai Buddhist temple, the group met monthly in the early years to discuss
such topics as the human predicament, violence, and social action. Meetings slacked off a bit as participants
became involved in the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, as
well as in ongoing activities sponsored by the Parliament’s organizing body,
the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (see Introduction). But major national Buddhist-Catholic
encounters kept the idea alive locally, especially the 1996 Gethsemani
Encounter at the Trappist monastery in Kentucky
made famous by Thomas Merton, which Fr. Luczak attended. He and the president of the Buddhist Council
of the Midwest revived the local Buddhist-Catholic
dialogue group in 2000. Discussion
topics have included Buddhist and Catholic iconography, similarities and
differences in meditation traditions, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United
States.
The
centerpiece of St. Lambert’s
inter-religious programming is the Bridges to Understanding lecture/discussion
series, which lends its name to the title of this chapter. In Fr. Luczak’s first year at St.
Lambert (1993), Catholic Theological Union seminary in
Chicago chose the parish to host a
ministry practicum on world religions.
Fr. Luczak’s early newsletter descriptions of the program, then called
Interfaith Dialogue, explained that it stemmed from an “interreligious consciousness”
and created a “threshold” for religious interaction at St.
Lambert Church. An inter-religious consciousness, wrote Fr.
Luczak, recognizes the fact of religious diversity and how it “impacts our
Catholic identity and everyday lives.”
“Catholics should
know their Faith and live their tradition,” he observed. “But no Catholic today can do only
that. Our neighbors are Protestant,
Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Moslem. . . .
To live in harmony is to have understanding that comes from dialogue. Dialogue with other religious traditions is
not a defensive apologetic nor an aggressive campaign to ‘convert’ others. When people meet, it should be with
respect. That respect can achieve not
only an atmosphere of tolerance but mutual enrichment.”
The
first year featured fieldtrips to local religious centers, such as The Hindu
Temple of Greater Chicago, the Muslim
Community Center, and Bultasa, a
Korean Buddhist temple.
The seminarian who led the series reflected on
the worship experience at the Hindu temple.
“That evening we were witnessing a blessed ritual of one of the most
ancient religions in the world,” he wrote, “and a window was open to us in our
first attempts, as part of the Interfaith Dialogue Group, to understand and
respect other faith traditions. We did
not come with offerings of flowers or fruits, but with an offering of open
hearts to receive the answers for our questions. And so we left the temple feeling that in some
way we had been introduced into one more of the deep mysteries of God, who is
the source and revealer of all Truth.”
Excerpt from Redemptoris
Missio, Pope John Paul II, 1991 (quoted in an article on the Interfaith
Dialogue series, St. Lambert
newsletter, Fall 1994):
Other
religions constitute a positive challenge for the Church: they stimulate her
both to discover and acknowledge the signs of Christ’s presence and of the
working of the Spirit as well as to examine more deeply her own identity and to
bear witness to the fullness of revelation which she has received for the good
of all.
A 1995 speaker
series addressed the topic, “Bridges to Understanding,” which then stuck as the
title for the ongoing program. The
simple goal, Fr. Luczak told us, is to discover points of harmony and
enrichment in the encounter with other religions. The program logo, featured at the beginning
of this chapter, shows a covered bridge surrounded by the symbols of six
religious traditions: a cross for Christianity, in the twelve-o’clock position,
then, moving clockwise, an eight-spoked wheel for Buddhism, a sacred hoop for
Native American traditions, a Star of David for Judaism, a yin yang symbol for
Chinese religions, and an Om symbol for Hinduism. Church promotional materials describe the
program as follows: “Bridges link separated shores. Bridges to Understanding are human
connections—persons, ideas, shared experiences that open the way to harmony and
mutual enlightenment. ‘Bridges to
Understanding’ is an interreligious series that recognizes in the meeting of
traditions the most hopeful sign that we can learn from each other, strengthen
our own religious identities, respect diversity, and live in peace.”
Topics
over the years have included the following: “Buddhist Insight Meditation: A
Means of Developing Christian Spirituality,” “Native American Peoples and the
Global Community: Ancient Spiritual Insights Contributing to the Future,”
“Master Stories of Judaism and Christianity,” “Two Sides of Tao: Taoism and
Christian Meditation,” and “Sadhana [Hindu spiritual practice]: A
Way to God.”
These sessions are led by Catholics or non-Catholics, clergy or
non-clergy, as the case may be. A
session on the topic, “Sufism: Friendship with God,” led by the director of the
Catholic-Muslim Studies program at Catholic Theological Union seminary, was
described thusly in promotional materials: “The Muslim journey toward . . .
deep God-consciousness through unrelenting self-awareness is the way of the
‘Sufi.’ This session will attempt to
convey only the slightest whiff from the Sufi garden of spiritual insights and
mysteries by discussing some of the more basic features of Sufi teaching, and
by sampling some of the poetic wisdom of great medieval Sufi masters.”
Fr.
Luczak hopes church members will come to understand that such encounters with
other religions can open up and enlarge their own identity as Catholics. He was once asked by a skeptical parishioner,
“What can I possibly learn from a Hindu?”
“A great deal,” he replied, proceeding to explain the Hindu notion of margs,
or “ways” to salvation, such as the way of knowledge, the way of service, and
the way of devotion, all of which are present in the Catholic tradition.
Theologically,
Fr. Luczak draws his primary direction from Nostra Aetate, but he also applies
St. Anselm’s famous notion of “faith seeking understanding” to his own
interfaith journey—his faith as a Catholic seeking understanding of the faith
expressed in other religious contexts.
Catholics should bring something of their own faith to such encounters
but they should also watch, learn, and perhaps discover something in their own
tradition they may have neglected. He
learned this in his first interfaith visit in college. At an Episcopal church, he saw worshipers
immersed in high church rituals that he himself was ready to discard at the
time. The beauty of the service and his
experience of the holy in it taught him an appreciation of another religion as
well as his own.
As to biblical
sources for his interfaith approach, Fr. Luczak noted the passage in John’s
Gospel about many dwelling places in the Father’s house. He also talked about Jesus’ perspective on
the “outsiders” of his day, as seen in parables like the Good Samaritan and in
his encounters with the Roman centurion and the woman at the well. Fr. Luczak singled out Peter’s vision in the
Book of Acts as “a marvelous, liberating passage,” revealing Peter’s reluctance
to be stretched toward welcoming Gentiles into the Kingdom
of God.
Over the years,
Fr. Luczak’s attempts to stretch St. Lambert’s
multicultural and inter-religious horizons were not always accepted or
understood. He recalls one program early
in his tenure at the church that drew pointed criticism—the Asian Lunar New
Year celebration. He took great care in
planning the first one in 1994, researching various aspects of Asian history
and culture, and consulting a Maryknoll missionary and his Chinese art teacher
in order to insure authenticity. He
installed a small, temporary shrine for ancestor veneration in the sanctuary for
use in a celebration modeled on a Catholic service used in Hong Kong. Sharp criticism came from an anonymous,
old-line parishioner in a letter to Fr. Luczak: “May you fall on your face on
what you are doing to the church.” Other
old-liners threatened to leave the church because of the Lunar New Year
celebration and the larger parish programming changes it signified. More moderate reactions prevailed,
however. Some parishioners were
perplexed, others indifferent, still others simply preferred more familiar
cultural expressions of their faith. Fr.
Luczak expressed his regrets over the situation in an interview with us. He felt that people did not understand what
he was trying to accomplish with the Lunar New Year celebration. After trying it a second year, he dropped the
idea.
Fr. Luczak
pastored St. Lambert Church
for more than a decade before being transferred to another parish in a nearby
suburb. He has served in two capacities
for the Chicago Archdiocese over the years, as adjunct staff in the area of
Buddhist-Catholic relations for the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious
Affairs and as an advisor on Asian affairs for the Office of Ethnic
Ministries. He also serves as a trustee
for the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. We asked Fr. Luczak at the time of our
research whether he thought St. Lambert’s
multicultural and inter-religious programming would continue after his
departure. He said his successor would
determine that. We suspect that the
parish’s emphasis on multicultural Catholicism is likely to endure, but that
would not necessarily ensure continuation of an inter-religious agenda. St. Lambert’s
motto, A Christian Community Welcoming All People, could endure without
building “bridges to understanding” with non-Christian religions.
The contact information for St. Lambert Roman Catholic
Church is 8148 N. Karlov, Skokie, IL 60076, phone 847-673-5090, Web site www.stlambert.org. The Web site of the Chicago Roman Catholic
Archdiocese’s Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs is
www.archdiocese-chgo.org/departments/ecumenical/eia_contact.shtm. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is the Vatican office charged with “the promotion of interreligious dialogue in
accordance with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council”
(www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/index.htm). The comparable office at the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops is the Secretariat for Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs (www.usccb.org/seia/index.htm).
The
documents of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), such as the “Declaration
on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra Aetate),
are archived on the Vatican Web site, www.vatican.va.
The
1996 Gethsemani Encounter at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky
is described in The Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life
by Buddhist and Christian Monastics, ed. Donald W. Mitchell and James A.
Wiseman (New York: Continuum, 1997). A
Gethsemani II conference was held in April of 2003, bringing together 40
Buddhist and Catholic monastics to discuss the topic of suffering; for a report
on that conference, see the Spring 2003 newsletter of the Society for
Buddhist-Christian Studies, available c/o Religious Studies Department,
Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 95521-8299. The Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies
was founded in 1987 and includes scholars and practitioners from a variety of
Buddhist and Christian traditions. The
Society’s journal is entitled Buddhist-Christian Studies. A 50th-anniversary edition of
Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, came out in
1998 (New York: Harcourt Brace
& Company).
For Discussion
- Local clergy associations, like the one mentioned in
this chapter, often include both Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis. How might opening membership to clergy
from religions alter such an association’s self-identity? Would this raise substantively different
questions for Christian clergy than their current participation with
rabbis?
- Do you agree with the statement from the Dialogues in
Sacred Culture series at St. Lambert
Church, “to be religious in
today’s pluralistic society is to be interreligious”?
- Fr. Andrew Luczak wrote, “Dialogue with other
religious traditions is not a defensive apologetic nor an aggressive
campaign to ‘convert’ others.”
Compare Fr. Luczak’s view with others in this book. In your opinion, should apologetics (the
rational defense of the Christian faith) and seeking to convert
non-Christians play some role in Christian participation in interfaith
dialogue?
- Responding to a parishioner’s question, “What can I
possibly learn from a Hindu?” Fr. Luczak replied, “A great deal.” What can Catholics (or Christians in
general) learn from other religions?
What can other religions learn from Catholics (or Christians in
general)?
- Consider carefully the wording of the two sidebar
excerpts in this chapter, from Vatican II’s “Declaration on the Relation
of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra Aetate) and Pope
John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio.
Summarize the view of the relationship between the truths claims of
Christianity and other religions expressed in these authoritative Catholic
statements.
- What was it about the Asian Lunar New Year
celebration that offended some members of St.
Lambert Church? Fr. Luczak told us that the Chinese,
Korean, and Vietnamese members felt very much “at home” with the
celebration, while other members, both whites and immigrants from areas in
Asia less influenced by Chinese culture, exhibited a range of responses,
from interest to indifference. What
does this say about the role of culture in religious practices?
- Discuss the relationship between the sentiments
expressed in St. Lambert’s
motto, A Christian Community Welcoming All People, and its interfaith
series, Bridges to Understanding.
Are the two notions inherently linked, or were they linked at St.
Lambert only through Fr. Luczak’s initiative?
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