Updated on Friday, October 29, 2010, 10:20
Vatican City: The Vatican's top body for promoting religious dialogue used the occasion of the Hindu festival of Diwali next month to call for greater harmony and trust between Hindus and Christians.
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, has written a message to Hindus for Diwali which this year falls Nov 5.
The text, which also bears the signature of Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, secretary of the pontifical council, calls for reflection "on how best we can strengthen our friendship and co-operation by mutually ensuring and enhancing respect and trust".
"Mutual respect", the message reads, is "one of the fundamentals for peaceful and harmonious co-existence as well as progress in society. Trust, on the other hand, nourishes every genuinely human relationship, both personal and communitarian."
"The greater our engagement in inter-religious dialogue, the fuller our respect and trust become, leading us to an increase in co-operation and common action. ...As people who hold in common the wellbeing of individuals and communities, may we give greater visibility with every means in our power to a culture that promotes respect, trust and co-operation," the Vatican message concludes.
IANS
When the Vatican says that "mutual respect" is "one of the fundamentals for peaceful and harmonious co-existence", is it difficult for them to understand that when you say your religion is the only true religion there can actually be no respect from that position for other religions? The Vatican must adopt the Hindu position that all religions are true in their own ways. Only then can mutual respect be genuine. Otherwise it would all be posturing for respectability.
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