WelCom April 2023
Nick Wilson
The New Zealand Catholic Bishops Committee for Interfaith Relations (NZCBCIR) met in Palmerston North on 4 and 5 March.
Every diocese in Aotearoa New Zealand has a representative on this committee. Each representative is member of their local Interfaith Council, which all have representatives from different religious traditions. Bishop Michael Dooley of Dunedin liaises on behalf of NZCBCIR with the New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Each council’s work comes from the Vatican II Council ‘Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions’, also known as Nostra Aetate. Interfaith work is dialogical – using conversation to explore faith dimensions and acknowledge those things we have in common across faith traditions. For example, care for the environment is one of the many topics we discuss, as something that affects all of us.
The committee meets twice a year and there are regional interfaith groups happening that you are invited to be involved in.
Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium states: ‘Interreligious dialogue is a necessary condition for peace in the world, and so it is a duty for Christians as well as other religious communities… In this way we learn to accept others and their different ways of living, thinking and speaking. We can then join one another in taking up the duty of serving justice and peace’ (n.250).
For more information on the NZCBCIR or to find out about your local interfaith committee and how you can get involved, please contact interfaith@nzcbc.org.nz
