From the editor’s desk

True Christian dialogue

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis recalled the steady, unrelenting approach of God. His approach at first was not wanted. Then Lewis began to read the gospels and attend church services. God was after him, he felt, to acknowledge his Son. One day he set out to drive to Whipsnade. On the way there he did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. But, he recalled, "when we reached the zoo I did." That road to Whipsnade was Lewis' road to Emmaus, the path on which he did not at first see Christ but a profound encounter led him to faith.

The story of the road to Emmaus - where two of the disciples set off on a seven-mile trek to a village outside Jerusalem, fall into conversation with a stranger, and realise eventually that he is the risen Christ - is one of the great accounts of faith in the gospels. Like C.S. Lewis, the disciples - grieving after the Crucifixion, sensing the failure of their hopes, bewildered by what has happened - are surprised by joy.

The accounts of Christ's appearances after the Resurrection, including that on the road to Emmaus, reveal much of what Christianity is. These are intimate encounters but they are shared encounters. Discipleship is a calling, but it is a shared calling, not a solitary relationship with God. It is a calling lived out in community, and the story of Emmaus, where the disciples finally recognise Christ as he breaks bread, is a reminder that Christianity is lived out in a eucharistic community. And that eucharistic community requires not only love and worship of God, but recognition of, and love of, one's neighbour.

Part of being in community, and encountering one's neighbour, as the story of Emmaus shows, involves conversation. Hopes, fears and troubles are part of that conversation. This week's edition of The Tablet includes a previously undisclosed conversation between the theologian Jacques Dupuis and Cardinal Franz König, both now dead, about the nature of dialogue, and the need for the talk about belief to reach out to those of other faiths.

How that conversation is conducted has caused much anguish and heart-searching in the Catholic Church in the last 10 years. Can dialogue be genuine if it is, in part, proclamation of Christianity? Mission has always been part of the Church's role, and a vital one that ensures the Church does not become introverted, turning in on itself with little regard for those beyond its doors. But that does not require Christianity to be fired like a bullet, aggressively asserting itself in a way that provokes anger and rejection. Rather, Christians are called to mission in the footsteps of the Good Shepherd.

Christianity is by its nature pastoral. The disciples on the road to Emmaus welcomed a stranger in their midst. When they came to the village and the stranger they had engaged in conversation seemed about to continue on his journey, they urged him to stay with them. Hospitality and dialogue are part and parcel of Christianity. But genuine, honest dialogue can only take place if there is clarity in the positions of the participants. In the post-9/11 world, dialogue between faiths has never been more needed. But relativism, as Pope Benedict so clearly understands, offers the world timidity when it is crying out for courage.