Canadian Realities

Living Nostrae Aetate:

Introduction

    Within the year following the promulgation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, the council fathers produced a flood of documents addressing various aspects of the four goals of the council stated in article 1 of the liturgy constitution. One of these was Nostrae Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, promulgated in October. 1965. Forty years after the fact, Catholic secondary schools in Ontario are offering a course in World Religions that opens up, for Catholic students, a window onto the world envisioned by Nostrae Aetate.

In January 2003, in Peterborough, Ontario, a snow emergency inspired a series of events that made Nostrae Aetate a living reality. In the fall of the same year, three congregations—one Catholic, on Muslim and one Jewish—together celebrated an "Abraham Festival." In the pages that follow, the details of this story are unfolded in the very personal reflections of three participants. What is notable for those interested in liturgy is that the festival took on a bi-fold shape exploring both the lex credendi and the lex orandi of each community. They did not attempt to construct an interfaith prayer service; they invited each other to witness their own prayer life. In effect they said to one another, "This is what we believe, but you will understand much better if you see how we pray."

The authors of the reflections do not claim to officially represent the faith communities in which they live and from which they take their identities. They simply share with readers of the Bulletin their own feelings about what happened when they tried to enact, consciously or not, the principles set forth in Nostrae Aetate.