Initial Proclamation

in a Multi-Religious Context through the Dialogue of Life

Christ did not send me to baptize but announce the Good news”, the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Co1,17) ; but he adds “without resorting to the wisdom of the speech, not to reduce to nothing the cross of Christ”. The Apostles and Paul lived in a cultural world where the existence of God - or gods -, was more or less evident. Only salvation by one Crucified, proclaimed Christ and Lord, living and acting, was questionable … and goes on continuously to raise questions to any reasonable man.

I am neither a theologist, nor a theorist, but above all, a practical man of “terrain”, a person in charge of the National Catechumenate for more than twenty years. I am trying to ensure Church present in the far removed lands. It is thus of experience more than of theory that I would treat and share with you - one testimony which tries to be reflected in the light of the Scriptures and of the texts the Second Vatican Council .

Context multi religious (cultural) of Kampuchea.

In Kampuchea, people live in a complex religious universe, marked with worship of vital energies of Brahmanism, and especially by Theravada Buddhism, the State religion deeply rooted into the Khmer heart, downtown as well as in the countryside. But the wave of the Occidental culture, marked with practical materialism, however makes this traditional religious universe move quickly.

1. Like all the peasants of the world, the Kampuchean try to reconcile themselves with nature forces : they honour a multitude of deities, owners of the ground (" Masters of water and earth"), the founders of villages, the geniuses (“protective deities of the forests, the mountains"), the Masters of their own beings, " the 10.000 powerful things" (unusual and rare objects,), etc. They try to get safe from the evildoing spirits (souls of people died of evil death, who committed suicide, women died in parturition, victims of accidents), from the vampires, the phantoms, etc. All are afraid of all that, or want to be in good terms with it. The existence of this invisible world is a cultural self-explanatory data, simply accepted, almost by all. Isn’t the Bible itself full with the belief in the spirits too? … We still live in a largely “socialized” and marvellous world.

2. The Brahmanism left few deep religious traces among Khmers, if not in the royal ideology, rules of architecture, and in the cultural-religious layers, made of mythological accounts, from which the Christians broadly drew their vocabulary: concept of divinity, royal designation for deity, sacrifices, marvellous stories close to the Gospel, etc.

3. But it is especially the Buddhism Theravada (or “Buddhism of the Old”), of the strict observance - as it is to be found in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and Laos -, which socialized all the other religious expressions, and which by its tight grid of pagodas rate nation and village life. Buddhism is a religion of wisdom, which does not know the concept of one Transcendent God, even if the “Law”, the Paranirvana, the “Beyond World”, might be some evocation of it. Buddha recommends much discretion to speak about spiritual realities: as human beings, we know only this world (lauk), we speak the language of this world (laukya-phéasa), whereas when we want to speak about Ultimate Truth, we must speak the language of the “Beyond World” (lauk-utara-phéasa). You sure know the apologue of the tortoise by which Buddha wants to explain why human beings are unable to get to knowing Ultimate Reality: one day, one tortoise tries to explain living on earth to a fish. Waste of time and effort, the fish doesn’t understand very much, because it does not have any experience of it! In the same way, we human beings don’t have any experience of the divine world! So: prudence in our peremptory assertions on God, Heaven, Salvation…

It is a cultural data that nature was born by itself. Thus: impossible to take beauty of the world as a starting point of a divine revelation. For a Buddhist, the concept of “person”, as one “I subject” open to multiple relations, doesn’t not exist strictly speaking.

Only exists the concept of "individual", that is: one “being, egoist, who tends to put himself as the centre of the world”, the "contemptible Ego". The human being is nothing but “appearance" (roup), a knot of vital energies (vinienkhan) which are put together in order to form the being of suffering, impermanent and without real “I” subject which I am. These energies will be charged with positive or negative force, according to good or bad actions: that’s what is called “Karma", the sequence of the causes and the effects, the fruit of our Past which governs our future existence.

Life is thus nothing else than a stage of painful purification: reincarnation is the punishment deserved by a bad karma; death is only dislocation of the vital energies and transmigration to a new life of suffering according to one’s karma.

For the cremation, the monk or the achar (master of ceremony), reminds that one should not be afflicted by death: the late one was but one transitory appearance without “I” subject, his vital energies have again been linked with others to form another being… Buddha knew 506 successive lives before his karmic load - force which generates transmigration -, does extinct.

In an apologetic concern, I asked one day a group of Christians – it was Easter time -, whether somebody had already seen anyone “resurrected” (live again): all of them had seen some, or heard of it. What can the not-Christians think of our proclamation of Jesus, “risen” from the dead, established as Christ and Lord? Hence, as a consequence of this life understanding, comes that kind of fear “to make ill deeds” which would burden the cycle of transmigrations.

There is no concept of personal relation with an unspecified divinity, and consequently no forgiveness neither to receive nor to give.

• “Who does evil, receives evil; who does good, receives good”;

• “nobody can remove the evil of others”;

• “the good and the evil follow the human being like his own shade”,

are the basic axioms known by all.

How to speak of Jesus who “removes the sin of the world” (Jn 1, 29)?

For a Buddhist, love is but an imperfect attachment. Who loves, is linked, needs the other, proclaims his lack, and generates his own suffering.

The Buddhist ideal is thus “equanimity": to be without love or hatred.

The ideal man is the monk who is detached, purified of any attachment. To take support on the desires of “the man of happiness, love, tenderness and life” makes but sink into the erroneous illusion that a Buddhist must banish by the meditation on “the true nature of things”.

“God is love”, is thus a contra productive announce!

Negative a priori.

Anglo-Saxon groups of Christian inspiration, through their aggressive proselytism, not very respectful of the religious Khmer culture, have generated a feeling of mistrust, if not hatred, with regard to all the Christians, who come to Kampuchea to destroy “the Khmer religion”.

A very widespread clannish mentality of assisted - as well in the society as in the political life -, is another type of misleading obstacle for the missionary. One enters, apparently without any problem, the family, the clan, or the religion of one’s benefactor, patron or teacher; one changes vocabulary with disconcerting ease: or according to the Khmer saying: “One enters the river by meanders; one enters the country while following the habits”.

It is not shocking for a Khmer to change religion, because “religion” is above all a whole of practices which produce merits: a sociological rite of membership, more than one deep adhesion with one Being, and convictions, as a consequence of a conscious choice.

It always should be remembered that the word translated by "religion" mean "point of view, moral teaching", the goal of which is to lead to inner peace and the extinction of karma. The intellectual training of the Khmers, primarily based on repetition, hardly incites to reflection or to a personal choice, different from that of the group.

Discovering an “unknown God”

How, in this context, to testify to a Personal God, the Alive one, a Father who loves each one beyond any imagination, which respects the human being and opens him to freedom?

How to testify to Jesus who comes to share our life, our sufferings and our death, to put us, by his love, in relation to the Father, the Alive one, who walks with us?

Initially, it is necessary to first accept oneself like a foreigner, and to then make oneself accepted, to become increasingly conscious of the ditch, if not the abyss, which separates us from the Khmer Buddhists.

In the same time, to accept the other as different from me, while trying to live, as far as possible, in communion with the people we were sent to, sharing “its joys, and its sorrows, its hopes and its anguishes”. That supposes a physical proximity that the religious establishments, parishes and institutes do not often allow! That supposes a long and painful intellectual effort to know, as much as possible, language, religious habits, approached with respect, like as many expressions of a desire of protection, desire of the Absolute.

“To speak the language of the heart”, is, certainly, the base of the human intercourse, but to speak the language of the people makes it possible to communicate somewhat in-depth. Especially listen before speaking. Like Jesus, “Word made flesh”, passed more than thirty years in a life, to invest a few years with a serious study of the language is already a missionary step! This time spent to initiation is not wasted time, but falls under the logic of Incarnation.

One does not announce the Good News by the means of a translation - except impossibility of making differently -, but by a word able to speak to the heart, in the same language as the receiver. By experience, the difficulty of the missionary - mine after 46 years spent in relation to the Khmer people -, still is to remain too often apart from the feelings and major concerns of those he speaks to.

During that long time of discovery, it is convenient to remind of the teaching of the Vatican 2: “The Catholic Church does not reject anything true and saint in these religions. It considers with a sincere respect those ways of acting and of living, those rules and doctrines which, though they differ in many points from what itself holds and proposes, however often bring a ray of the truth which illuminates all men” (Nostra Aetate N°2). Wouldn’t our mission ministry in the universal Church be to seek in the other, “that ray of truth” which could enrich our Church, shaped in the western way by 15 centuries because of its nearly exclusive presence around the Mediterranean basin? What does God reveal of himself in these various religious behaviours? Copernican Revolution of the mission meaning, but base of any mission step!

It is convenient to also remind of the directives of the Congregation of Propaganda to the first apostolic vicars of 1659:

• “Don’t put any zeal; don’t advance any argument to convince these people to change their rites, their habits, their manners, unless they are obviously contrary with the religion and with morals.

• What could be absurder than to transport to the Chinese, France, Spain or Italy or any nation of Europe?

• Do not introduce our countries on their premises, but the faith which rejects neither wounds neither the rites, nor the uses of any people, provided they are not hateful, but on the contrary wants that they are kept and protected …

• Thus put never in parallel the uses of these people and those of Europe: on the very contrary, hurry to accustom to it.

• Admire what deserves praise. For what does not deserve it…, you will have the prudence not to make any judgment, or, in any case, not to condemn without sense or with excess” (H. Chapoulie, The apostolic See and Missions, Paris 1955).

Three typologies of missionary proclamation

The Good news which can make happy the Khmers very much marked with Buddhism - which teaches that life is only suffering, impermanency, without “I” subject-, wouldn’t be to announce by multiple ways to them, that “their life has much value”, because they are “persons”, deserving free love from of a human being, from a community?

They perhaps will discover one day, that they are loved by a Father who made them his children, daughters and sons! This “Good news” fits in what Buddhism contains in hollow in its doctrines and practice.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we have three examples of mission “proclamation” of the Apostle of the Pagans:

• with the peasants of Lycaonie (14,8-18),

• with the Greek philosophers of Athens (17,16-34),

• with the right thinking Jews of Antioch of Pisidie (13, 14-43).

I readily find there three typologies from what I very humbly tried to live in Kampuchea: proclamation to the peasants, to the students, to the convinced Buddhists and administration.

In the Kampuchean countryside, the missionary tries to humbly put himself at the service of the people abandoned by the Big and Powerful, while trying, according to its means, to free meet its urgent needs: health, food, housing, teaching children. Didn’t Jesus nourish and look after the poor, while announcing the Word along with his meetings? I always regarded my human engagement to the poor as concretization of mission pastoral work, not in order to attract them into the Church as means of a trap, but simply because they are the children of the same Father!

By helping the peasants in their immediate needs: digging of irrigation canals, of ponds, creation of nursery schools, installations of biogas, latrines or others, we give them concrete evidence that their “life has value”, that they are worthy to be loved for themselves. By the nursery schools, it is all the education of the moms who little by little sets up. It isn’t necessary to say neither to the moms nor to the children that their life has value, that they are “persons”: they just experience it.

One of the traps of the missionary, moved by a sympathizing, not reasoned love in front of the misery at the countryside, is undoubtedly to want to help too much. One active participation of each one, according to his means, puts women and men upright, gives them back their dignity as “creators”. Several times we have tried to make them live the Christian values, without saying it: free participation in work, love of the poorer than themselves, mutual aid, dialogue, reflection on man-women relationship, on marital love, children education, etc Certainly: the people we helped or think with, will sure not become Christians for as much -, at least in the near future ! -, but they perhaps will discover one day, The Love of “Who is at the origin of this attention to them”! As regards the missionary, we sure are convinced that by helping the poor, it is the living Christ that we help! (Mt 25).

We are also convinced that we all, Christian or not Christians, are children of the same Father who brings us all to Him. Christ is already alive and acting in the life of people we address to, they already got a sure experience of this presence we have to discover ourselves and reveal.

More than one theory, isn’t faith already registered in a new art of living? Let’s not hurry in removing the belief in the spirits, which is one cultural data which re-appears even among long time Christians. The development of the intellectual knowledge will modify this universal belief. Let us wait until the peasants have made a step towards Jesus the Lord. For the apostle Paul, it doesn’t matter whether the spirits may exist or not. More essential is to believe that Jesus the Lord dominated them.

The Liturgical Translation of Eph 1,21 is thus formulated :

“While raising him from among the dead, God placed Christ… above all the powerful things: the invisible forces, the guards of the forests, the founders of villages, the protective deities of mountain forests… ".

A sign of conversion to Jesus the Lord is the absence of fear of the spirits as well as the liberating joy it generates. That is still much truer regards the mountain tribes of Kampuchea, the animism of which is the only religion. When possible, the testimony of the Christian communities at the countryside is the concrete sign of this love, determining for a spiritual step. In every Christian community, downtown as well as in the countryside, is made up “a committee of mutual aid”, charged to express the love of Christ to the poorest, not only the Christians, but all those who are in need. This help is unselfish in theory. It is a fact that the majority of the countryside people became Christian because they were helped by the Church. One can quote innumerable testimonies :

• “I was sick, the Christian community has helped me. Then, to thank the Christians, I went to attend their ceremonies. I found that what they lived was interesting, I asked to know this religion, and became a Christian”.

• “Formerly, I thought of obtaining something from the Church; now, on the contrary, it is me who helps the poorest”.

• “At the beginning, I wanted that my son can continue his studies. Then I went to the Church. Now, after four years, I have realized that the Church helped everyone, not only those which are Christian or want to become it. And then, especially, I have understood that the Church gave us a message: your life has value! It wanted that we are men upright, and not beggars”, said somebody in present charge of a small community.

A long time of purification of the reasons is thus necessary to allow the patient advance of the “observer”.

Despite every precaution, some people have remained stuck in their first idea, and leave the Church when they realize they will not be privileged in the assistance. Others give up practicing when away from the hot framework of the religious establishment or village.

In addition to the peasants of Lycaonie, the Apostle Paul addressed to the Greek philosophers, to the intellectuals, one could say. Don’t let us be in a hurry to say that it was a complete failure: Denys, Mrs Damaris “and more others” witness the contrary! It is a little my own experience while giving some “religious information” to the students of the Don Bosco Schools in Phnom Penh during some years. With a person in charge - a Christian Khmer of Buddhist culture and deeply convert -, we tried to answer the questions of those young people about their life, future, their own Buddhist religion, the Christian religion. In theory, only the volunteers came for six months. We unceasingly made comings and goings between that what they lived and that what we lived, trying to find images and examples they could understand. We often had to teach them their own Buddhist religion they practised by osmosis, more than by a reasoned choice. Through the marvellous stories of the life of the Buddha, we have made them think about the symbolic language in their own culture and in many passages of the Bible too.

They undoubtedly perceived (not all, on the contrary, in particular not those not voluntary), that we do not want to indoctrinate, nor force their freedom, but share with them a spiritual experience and further deepen into our common values.

Some ask to become Christians, but in 1996, the Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh has judiciously asked to postpone baptism of any young person in formation in religious houses, until it has found a work. His will was to respect the freedom of the young people, and to prevent us from being tempted to benefit from neither their situation of dependence nor our situation of economic and financial superiority, to incorporate them in our “religious clan”.

We must remember that: “One enters the river by his meanders… ”.

Other Christian groups do not have these scruples, and make many followers, but are those converted in Jesus whose “Word makes free”? The indoctrination belongs to a practice completely strange with the spirit of Jesus! Mission is a long patience: “who sows, often is not who collects”! One does not become a Christian within six months! God did not reveal himself in one day: He has been educating the human beings during million years. Moreover Mission is above all His work, as we so often ask it in “Our Father”, without much attention: “Make yourself be known as our Father. Come and reign on us. Accomplish your design of love on humanity”.

“Nobody can come to me if the Father who has sent me, does not attract him” (Jn 3).

For the adults, wishing to become Christians, we follow the same step.

During nearly ten meetings, we speak about their life in order to let them deepen the spiritual experience they lived or they’re living, on the occasion of one joy or sorrow, paternity, disease or evil, death, etc. We think about how their own religion can help them, about love, children… Persuaded that Jesus has preceded us in them, we start from their spiritual experience, and offer them a global presentation of the Christians, while we witness these same events lived by Christians.

If Paul spoke to the peasants of Lycaonie, and the philosophers of Athens, he first of all proclaimed his new faith to the Jews, who believed in God and firmly stood by their convictions in the Law of Moses, as the only way of salvation.

It is somehow this kind of experience I could live while speaking with Buddhist monks, or convinced Buddhists. To proclaim in time and hitch is good of course! But we must be concerned to be received too! This is true for Kampuchea, but also for the youth of Europe, living in a different culture than the Old Ones, and the Roman Catholic Church! It often was a dialogue of the deaf.

I like to quote one of my first mission experiences in Stoeung Treng in 1968. On Christmas Day, I paid a visit to the chief of the pagoda, at the time of a festival. He questioned me about who I am, then about my religion. I told him that I honour God, the Father, who had created the world by love, etc. It turned to his assistant on his right-hand side while saying to him: “This young French seems to be a nice guy, but what a naïve one! He believes all the stories relating to Indra! ” I was doing my best “to give an account of the reasons of my hope”, while using my brand new knowledge of the Kampuchean language, but in vain: he couldn’t “understand”, because we were in two different intellectual and religious worlds. This experience deeply marked me. It is the experience which I currently make with adult catechumens, convinced Buddhist. How to join the other in his deepest self with the slightest chance to be understood? It is undoubtedly urgent to revisit our theology, our ways of speaking of Man, God, Salvation, so that our words be incarnated, and correspond to an awaited and wished salvation. The simple fact that the Buddhist Khmers do not have any idea of God, requires us to follow the step of Mark in his Gospel.

We start by introducing Jesus like a true man, (we don’t hurry to make God of it!) who posed questions with its compatriots by his relation with the excluded ones from the Jewish religion, and therefore, from the society. It is starting from his practice, from his way of life, that he was appealed to say who he was and with whom he was in relation, his Father. He acts through his Father and for his Father. This discovery of the Father is a real source of joy for the poor, whom Buddhism does not offer - to tell the truth -, much hope to. Jesus is also presented like a Master of wisdom, a “Famous-Master” (“baram krou”), like the Buddha, who taught from concrete matters. In this sense, the books of Wisdom of the Old Testament - and especially Ben Sirach -, would have to be more abundantly used. Didn’t Origene give this book to reading to catechumens of his time?

The miracles of Jesus are as many human and spiritual realities concerning each one of us, symbolically transformed: the blind man, the paralytic one, the leprous one, Lazarus, it is me! Like the Buddha, Jesus, our brother in humanity, has overcome “the thirst for living” which constitutes “the sin of the origins” for a Buddhist (tanaha: desire to have, dominate, ignorance), origin of any evil. By his act of amazing love for his Father and his brothers, he broke once and for all, the relentless cycle of the reincarnations, and leads us towards the ultimate Truth, which for us has the face of one Loving Father. It is from now on no more necessary “to save merits" (sansâm Bonn), as a Buddhist must do: essential is to completely entrust to Christ living.

In a cultural context where the transmigration of the beings (improperly called " reincarnation") goes from oneself, we paid a special attention to the translation of the word " resurrection" , a word which is translated in an erroneous way in several languages into " to live again”, with the too restrictive meaning, possibly bringing into confusion. We chose: "Jesus received a glorious new life", an expression who sounds well in Khmer: "the Arisen from among the Dead" is quite alive, with another life than ours; he communicates it to us by his Spirit. This expression, moreover, for the Christians, makes it possible to taste all the harmonics of the “Resurrection” which appears in the first chapters of the Acts of Apostles.

There admittedly is always a hiatus, when we leave moral teaching to walk on towards a personal meeting with this Jesus living of his new life: glorious or with the Father. In this meaning, we also tried to modify the translation of the word " faith " - who means “belief”, contemptible for the Buddhists who prefer the obviousness to it, the experience -, in " to entrust all one’s life to ", a little like the Buddhists begin the recitation of the law by invoking the “triple refuge” ("I take the Buddha as my support, I take the Law as my support, I take monastic community as my support" : a formula modified in the ceremony of entry in Church into : “I take Christ, the Word, the Church as refuges”). We also favour the name of "Father", better than that of God to accentuate the relational side of the faith. The Church is first presented just like a family, where we try to walk together towards the Father. The translation of the word Church: "divine-together-communication", makes this presentation easier.

Sometimes we use the Buddhist “breathing techniques”, which help us to make the vacuum and let oneself invade by the Spirit. The “breath” and the “Spirit” are one and same term in the Bible: all human history is surrounded by the first breath of Elohim-YHVH in the nostrils of “the Earthy” and that of the “Arisen from among the Dead” on his disciples (Jn 20,22). This Buddhist technique - the contents of which are however seriously modified -, is accepted from the start by young Khmers, because it falls under their culture. Undoubtedly should we develop the meditation, a base of the Buddhist practice, not like an exercise of remote setting of the desires, but like the reception of the Spirit in oneself, whose breath entering by our nostrils is the symbol.

By this christianized meditation, by long times of silence, by retirements of silence, one can without doubt join the Buddhist experience as well as Paul’s who speaks about “moanings of the Spirit” in him. Prayer of repetitive type – like Taizé’s -, made with slowness and silences, is undoubtedly another way which attracts the Buddhists who feel the calm of it in their hearts. It is sometimes this calm which has attracted such or such one. In addition to the personal contact – which is essential to the transmission of the message -, the Church as a whole must be shown less foreign, and accessible to the Buddhist culture, in its liturgy as well as in its decoration, and more deeply in its theology. Vast building site in prospect!

The Buddhist who tries to become a Christian turns the object of virulent criticism, sometimes even of family exclusion, being a traitor with the religion of the Ancestors when entering the religion of Foreigners. Since some years, the Church of Kampuchea has been trying to take a “more Khmer face”, making a certain number of hostile prejudices fall down. Since 1967, we have been honouring All the Saints the same day as that of the great Kampuchean festival of the Dead, which a Khmer - worthy of the name - must honour. We burn incense sticks in front of the altar each Sunday: the absence of this rite being a major obstacle for a Buddhist, even if we had to christianize the meaning of it. Several churches of the provinces take the form of pagodas, the roofs are decorated with dragon tails - signs of fruitfulness -, the cross in the shape of a lotus, placed on the frontage, where Buddhists place the Law, and not on the roof, which would be a sign of domination; no “Crucified” on this cross, to answer the objection of Buddhists: “Why do you honour one dead God?”.

Indeed, our traditional imagery can induce in error. “Our Lord is no more dead ! He is Alive!” The interior of certain churches is decorated with traditional murals, which cause the praise by not-Christian peasants: “Jesus is one of ours; we are well at your place, because we feel at home”. The Khmers will sure not become Christians for as much, but they feel recognized in their own culture, which is recognized as one having value.

Isn’t this the beginning of a proclamation of the Good news? Little by little, the Church is belonging to the landscape. The administration seems interested by the caritative and intellectual side of the Church. Several times per annum are organized meetings between the representatives of various religions present at Kampuchea: Buddhism, Christianity, with its Protestant components, Islam, Bahai, etc In 2009, the topic of the meeting related to the contribution of the various religions in the construction of a society of justice. The Buddhists insisted on the “mercy-compassion” which was to impregnate human relationships; the Evangelists of all confessions gave all their biblical verses; the Kampuchean catholic priest came with an extract from the social doctrines of the Church, starting from the end of the 19th century to the Vatican II. He compared the socio-economic situation of the end of the 19th European century with that of the current Kampuchea: the capitalists then built factories in the cities, the peasants left their lands to come to work. They were exploited all the same as are Kampuchean workers, men and women nowadays, for lack of adapted legislation controlling the appetites of the capitalists. After “trials and errors”, the Church created social doctrines, gradually adapted to the evolutionary situation of the working world, up to the Vatican II, and the recent encyclical about social doctrine of the Pope Benedict XVI ,July 2009.

Many civil servants were allured by this talk of some pages: the Church as such had a corpus of social doctrines she did not intend to impose, but to propose in the world and to the men of good will. There too, the Gospel becomes one News which can bring happiness!

Conclusion

Jesus will become the Christ of the Khmers only if he can fill their deep spiritual waits: beyond the generalized materialism, one can note a desire of protection, a desire of interior and external peace (which among the young people passes before love), a desire of illumination, of wisdom, of quality in human relations, a desire of purification, and a fear of evil (this burden which prevents a good transmigration), etc.

All that would not be acquired by knowledge, by teaching, but by a spiritual experience of communion to His life. The Church has not come to destroy the spiritual research of the religions of the peoples, but to “accomplish” them (Mt 5, 17).

Had Jesus lived in Kampuchea, he undoubtedly would have been Buddhist, even a monk, and he would have brought his message of liberation of the interior of Buddhism. He leaves it to us on charge. No one will unscathed change religion: it is a whole system of representation of the world, of values, the base of a culture, which then is modified.

Like Abraham: the one who begins one step towards the Father, by him or her, it is all the Church which engages in a voyage of which no one exactly knows with the route. As formerly, the entry of the Greeks into the Judeo-Church deeply modified this Church and opened it with to The Universal. In the same way, the entry of the Buddhists into the Church of Jesus-Christ will deeply modify its face.

But we still must have the audacity to dare the innovation and freedom of the children of God, without choking “The Observer” by a scholastic theological formulation of the Middle Ages.

Fr. François PONCHAUD, MEP

Chamlak, 3rd June, 2011