Bishop Brendan Leahy says Catholics should not see interreligious dialogue and evangelisation as competing tasks, but as two sides of the same Christian mission.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, the Bishop of Limerick, said genuine dialogue always includes sharing the faith because authentic encounter requires honesty about who we are.
“If I am genuinely encountering somebody, I am sharing who I am and what I am and what I believe. That should be going on in any genuine dialogue,” he said. “I’m not out necessarily to proselytise or convert them. I am, however, open myself to being in a dynamic of conversion, to truth that engages both of us. So if I’m living my witness to my faith, I am sharing it.”
Bishop Leahy, appointed to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue in July, said the Church has long understood this link: “John Paul II used to call it respectful proclamation, respectful accompaniment. I give my experience of the truth that I’m living just because that’s who I am,” he said.
For Bishop Leahy, dialogue begins in daily life—at schools, workplaces, and in neighbourhoods where people of different faiths already meet. “There’s a certain dialogue just happening by the very fact of encounter… people are getting to know each other as friends, neighbours and work colleagues,” he said.
He added that many people struggle with sharing their faith because they still experience it as something external or abstract, rather than something lived. “The question is how at home am I with my faith as a lived experience, rather than simply something out there as a doctrine to which I adhere,” he said. “Where the problem is, is if I feel faith is a kind of package of elements somehow distinct from me.”
The Nicene Creed, he says, offers a model for uniting belief and daily practice. “Our faith has wonderful elements… but we have to make sure that that’s all the time being lived out in our lives,” he noted, adding that love “releases the language of our faith into daily practice.”
