Pope affirms value of inter-religious dialogue

Pope John Paul II encouraged inter-religious dialogue as a "sure basis for peace," as he met on May 15 in a private audience with the members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who were gathered in Rome for their plenary meeting.

The Holy Father told the members that-- as they mark the 40th anniversary of the Pontifical Council's establishment-- that their work was a product of "the atmosphere of unity and hope that marked Vatican II so clearly." He predicted that the “coming years will see the Church even more committed to respond to the great challenges of inter-religious dialogue.”

You know, Vatican II was the Catholic Church's "Woodstock," and just as some secular hippies have never managed to get past those "heady days" (Gary Trudeau, Beelzebubba, and other refugees from the sixties) it seems that some clerical hippies are still pining for the good old days.

Neither group can emotionally face the need to admit that everything that was important to them in their glory days has since been discredited and knocked in the dirt.

It's pathetic to see them in their grey ponytails and Birkenstocks, their development arrested at a point just after 1968 and just before adulthood, like insects preserved in amber.

The clerics can be harder to identify, but when you catch one praising the "atmosphere of unity and hope" of VatStock II, you know you've got one.

And We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that We promised to do as far as lay in Our power. In the Kingdom of Christ, that is, it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord. We were led in the meantime to indulge the hope of a brighter future at the sight of a more widespread and keener interest evinced in Christ and his Church, the one Source of Salvation, a sign that men who had formerly spurned the rule of our Redeemer and had exiled themselves from his kingdom were preparing, and even hastening, to return to the duty of obedience. (Pius XI, Quas Primas)

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