A hospitable place.

Commonweal devotes the first issue of each new year to a discussion of ecumenical or interreligious questions. This year we feature the contributions of two distinguished Jewish scholars, Michael Marrus and Eugene Borowitz.

Both men have long been interested in and frequent contributors to the Catholic-Jewish dialogue. Marrus's field of expertise is the Holocaust, and his essay ("The Missing," page 11) describes the complications and misunderstandings on both sides in negotiations between the Vatican and various Jewish leaders over the return of Jewish children hidden from the Nazis by Catholics during World War II. Borowitz's essay ("A Nearness in Difference," page 17) is an appreciative reflection on the transformation of Jewish-Catholic theological dialogue in the forty years since Vatican II's declaration Nostra aetate. As Borowitz reminds us, it was not until after World War II that theologians began to "embrace the idea of deepening their understanding of their own faith through contact with other faiths." For Jews, Borowitz writes, the imperative to interreligious dialogue is found in the Bible. God's first covenant with Noah was made with "all the nations," and in theological exchange with Christians and others, Jews "seek out the faithful children of the covenant God made with the people of all nations and work with them to make God's name one on earth as God is one in heaven."

Ecumenical and interreligious dialogue is often rightly criticized for avoiding questions of religious truth and settling for little more than platitudes. Yet as Borowitz notes, the demonstration of "simple human respect and high human regard" between members of once-estranged faiths is an important religious value in itself. Moreover, as interfaith dialogue has matured, those involved have "focused on understanding each other in our differences," rather than on forging superficial consensus.

Especially interesting in this regard is a forthcoming book by Pope Benedict XVI, Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam (Basic Books). Benedict's concern over the secularization of Europe and his hopes for its re-evangelization are widely known. Without Roots developed from a 2004 exchange then-Cardinal Ratzinger had with Marcello Pera, a secular philosopher and president of the Italian Senate. Pera's analysis of Europe's moral malaise is essentially compatible with the pope's own assessment. Both men think Europe's alleged loss of identity and vitality requires "primarily cultural remedies," remedies that can shore up social institutions such as marriage and the family while combating the materialistic and utilitarian biases of science and secular morality. To that end, Pera proposes the cultivation of a "nondenominational Christian religion" or "Christian civil religion." At first blush, one would hardly expect Benedict to warm to what sounds like a doctrinally anemic version of the faith. Yet he welcomes Pera's advocacy of a "consensus that, irrespective of membership in a specific faith community, accords a public, sustaining value to the fundamental concepts of Christianity."

Benedict is too grudging in acknowledging the peace, prosperity, and democracy Europe has achieved over the last sixty years, much of it the work of Christian Social Democratic parties. Still, his discussion of the continent's religious and secular history is provocative, and his high regard for the American tradition of separation of church and state may also come as a surprise. His feel for the dynamism of religious communities in the United States and his critique of the weaknesses of mainline Protestantism has a familiar neoconservative ring to it, but it is good to hear the pope affirm the need for compromise in the political sphere. "The church," he writes, "does not wish to impose on others that which they do not understand."

Benedict is convinced that human dignity cannot be protected nor democracy sustained without a spiritual foundation. To that end, he champions the "importance of creative minorities" within the church, groups that by their way of life and "persuasive ability" draw others to Christianity. Only the presence of such dedicated minorities, presumably groups like the Rome-based Sant'Egidio community, can keep Christian civil religion from being compromised by the larger secular culture. Perhaps most interesting, Benedict wants to make room for different "forms of belonging" to the church, forms that explicitly embrace seekers as well as believers, and allow them to move toward one another. "Believers must never stop seeking," he writes, "while seekers are touched by the truth and thus cannot be classified as people with ... no Christian-inspired moral principles."

"Perhaps the church has forgotten that the tree of the Kingdom of God reaches beyond the branches of the visible church, but that this is precisely why it must be a hospitable place in whose branches many guests find a place," he writes.

That sounds like a place where many people could gather, and as Eugene Borowitz would say, discover a nearness in difference that paradoxically reflects the oneness of God.