When Mission Includes Dialogue and Dialogue Becomes Mission

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Conference Room

John Borelli, special assistant for interreligious initiatives to Georgetown President John J. DeGoia, addressed the Catholic Church's embrace of dialogue in the decades after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and some of the internal and external tensions it has occasioned. The council used the term "mission" to describe its activity, and the relationship between mission and dialogue remains a complex issue with several unresolved theological questions. If the object of mission is conversion, then any other motives for dialogue seem undermined. There is growing concern in Catholic-Jewish relations over understanding the relationship between covenant and mission. Catholic-Muslim relations stagnated in the wake of statements by Benedict XVI. Priorities, different understandings of salvation, and lack of attention to past animosities have contributed to the lack of resolution between the concepts and strategies of mission and dialogue within the Catholic Church.

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When Mission Includes Dialogue and Dialogue Becomes Mission

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About John Borelli

John Borelli, a historian of religions and theologian, is special assistant to the president for Catholic identity and dialogue at Georgetown University, where he is also a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Borelli has actively promoted interreligious dialogue and understanding in various teaching and staff positions since receiving a doctorate in history of religions and theology in 1976 from Fordham University. While at Georgetown University for more than two decades, he worked closely with Rev. Thomas Stransky and others who served as Vatican staff and theological consultors during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965) and beyond, researching and writing about the development and implementation of the council’s Nostra Aetate (“Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”). Borelli served over 16 years at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop in ecumenical and interreligious affairs.

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