Guide for 'Interreligious Dialogue'

Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran announced plans for a new guide to assist in the work of 'Interreligious Dialogue', inspired by the Ten Commandments.

VATICAN CITY (Zenit) - The time is right for a guide to help Catholics engage in dialogue with other religions, says the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran announced plans for the new guide Wednesday at the opening of the dicastery's general assembly meeting. The meeting will end Saturday with an audience with Benedict XVI.

He said the council's 10th plenary assembly, whose theme is "Dialogue in Truth and Charity," will focus on the "elaboration of guidelines for interreligious dialogue."

"After many years of vacillations on its opportuneness, the moment has arrived to offer a guide-document for pastors and faithful," said the cardinal.

Cardinal Tauran said the guidelines will be inspired by the Ten Commandments, "universal grammar that all believers can use in their relationship with God and with their neighbor."

He noted it is urgent and necessary to prepare the faithful "to understand that all believers have a common patrimony: faith in one only God, the sacredness of life, the need for fraternity, and the experience of prayer, which is the language of religion."

"We will reflect on the numerous challenges relating to the truth about man, the world and God," explained the Vatican official. "In connection with interreligious dialogue, we will place particular emphasis on the truth about God, our creator, to whom all things must be referred, and who is the only one who gives definitive meaning to our life and to human history."

"Jesus has revealed the truth about God and about man and that is why it is the Good News for us," continued Cardinal Tauran. "We cannot put it under the bushel basket. Our Christian life should illuminate the entire house."

However, he added, it is necessary to "prepare them to share their spiritual convictions, while keeping in mind those of others."