Inter-Faith Meeting
Conference renewed our faith in one another
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
12 Dec 2004
123 religious leaders from 13 countries and every major faith met recently in Yogyakarta, the ancient cultural centre of Indonesia.
It was a joint initiative of the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia and Australia. President Yudhoyono of Indonesia and our Foreign Minister Alexander Downer explicitly recognised the contribution the great religions make to society. They emphasised there was no attempt to deny the differences so manifest in the variety of costumes and colours at this gathering.
Many followed the President in acknowledging that there was no need for anyone to give up or defend his convictions. People can agree to disagree without hostile stereotyping, without blaming many for the actions of a few. A person can be moderate and deeply committed at the same time.
In an unusual speech for an Australian politician Foreign Minister Downer described the meeting as a most timely conversation.
All people of faith, he said, see mankind as divinely ordered, should have an enriched understanding of what it is to be human, and a developed sense of the sanctity of life. They should be moved to act when human rights are violated, be peacemakers and sway others to mercy and compassion.
People of faith believe and honour bonds that bind the dead, the living and those yet to be born and have a spiritual understanding both of time’s passing and their own mortality.
Downer stressed that terrorism was the common enemy to all people of moderation. He saw this meeting as one step in a long struggle in every society to deny terrorists oxygen, to show that sympathy for them is misplaced, to vanquish them in the battle of ideas and thwart their recruitment attempts.
In different countries there are often different small religious or ethnic minorities, fearful for sound or exaggerated reasons. We should all work to defend their civic and religious rights, especially here in Australia.
As well as the plenary sessions delegates broke up into small mixed groups for case studies and general discussion. These were valuable.
We heard of the serious efforts by the Philippine government to quell the military insurrection in Mindanao and to encourage different groups to work locally at the even more difficult task of reducing suspicion and hatred and healing wounds.
The Catholic Cardinal from Jakarta also warned us against generalising. Around Christmas 2000 many Christian churches were being bombed in Indonesia by elements, the government has now controlled.
He told how many Muslim youths joined the Catholic youth and the police to form a human chain around his Cathedral to protect it successfully.
He also told of the Moslem youth in East Java who was attempting to deflect into a ditch a bomb thrown at a Catholic Church. He was too late and blown to pieces.
We Westerners should remember these incidents.
