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Report on DIM•MID to the 2024 Congress of Benedictine Abbots
At the last Congress of Abbots in 2016, my report was an introduction to a bi-lingual workshop on interreligious dialogue. I am grateful to the organizers of this year’s congress for inviting me to present my final report as Secretary General at a plenary session of the congress. A new Secretary General, who is present among us, will succeed me on October 1, and I will conclude my report by inviting him to speak to you.
In 2007, I was appointed to succeed Father Pierre-François de Béthune, a monk of Clerlande in Belgium, who became the first Secretary General in 1994. That was the year DIM•MID became a separate secretariat within the Benedictine Confederation. Before that, it had existed since its founding in 1978 as a sub-commission of A.I.M. During his thirteen years in office, Father Pierre established regional and linguistic commissions of DIM•MID, organized very successful and ongoing spiritual exchange programs with Japanese Zen Buddhist monks and nuns, published a bulletin to report on DIM•MID’s activities and various interreligious topics, and established a sizeable endowment to support the activities of DIM•MID. Benedictine monasticism owes an immense debt of gratitude to Father Pierre for fostering and continuing to promote the engagement of monks and nuns in interreligious dialogue.
In this report, I will comment on just two activities DIM•MID has been involved in over the past eight years. The first is publishing an online, international, multi-language journal. It is called Dilatato Corde, and its first issue came out in 2011. The title, as you may recognize, is taken from the Prologue of the Rule of Benedict and suggests that interreligious dialogue can also contribute to expanding the hearts of monks and nuns.
Dilatato Corde publishes both textual and visual works of spiritual practitioners and scholars from different religious traditions who wish to report, reflect on, and examine the dialogue of spiritual or religious experience. Especially notable is the second issue of the year 2023, which commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the death of one of the great pioneers of monastic interreligious dialogue, the French monk Henri Le Saux, also known as Swami Abhishiktananda.
I maintain an email list of all those who want to be informed when new contributions appear in Dilatato Corde. To be added to that list, simply email me at wskudlarek@csbsju.edu
The second major activity of these past eight years has been the expansion of dialogue with Muslims. In its first years, Monastic Interreligious Dialogue was especially focused on dialogue with Buddhists and Hindus, two ancient spiritual traditions in which monasticism plays an important role. Although Islam does not have a monastic institution, the Muslim practice of communal prayer at certain hours of the day parallels our emphasis on the Work of God, to which Benedict says nothing is to be preferred.
Since 2011, DIM•MID has been involved in dialogue with Shi‘a Muslims, and since 2017 that dialogue has been especially focused on Africa, a continent with approximately 500-550 million Muslims, who account for about 45-50% of the continent's total population. According to the OSB Atlas, Africa is also home to approximately 125 Benedictine houses, priories, and abbeys, several of them among the largest in the world. The development of good relations between monastic communities and their Muslim neighbors is not only important for the well-being of both communities but a prophetic sign to the world at large that people of different religious convictions can live in peace and share their spiritual gifts.
The first Monastic-Muslim meeting in Africa was held in Kenya in 2017. Last year, also in Kenya, there was a meeting of monastic and Muslim women, who, on their own initiative, came together again this summer for a follow-up meeting. This one-minute clip (15:45 – 17:00) will give you a good idea of what last year’s meeting was like.
The next Monastic-Muslim meeting sponsored by DIM•MID will take place at Inkamana Abbey in South Africa during the first week of December and will focus on Christian and Muslim ways of understanding the four last things—death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The topic is especially significant since three monks who were involved in this dialogue since its beginning have recently died: Abbot Timothy Wright of Ampleforth in 2018; Abbot Godefroy Raguenet de Saint Albin of the Trappist monastery of Acey in France last August, and Abbot Notker Wolf this past April.
When DIM•MID was established thirty years ago, monastic involvement in interreligious dialogue was strong in Europe and North America. Today we are witnessing a shift to Africa and Asia. In addition to the commission that continues to be active in India/Sri Lanka, a commission of DIM•MID was established in Korea in 2020 and is developing mutually enriching relations with Buddhist monastic communities. Last year a regional commission of DIM•MID was established in West Africa, and next summer the monastery of Bouaké in Côte d’Ivoire will offer a one-month course for West African monks and nuns on dialogue with Muslims.
In conclusion, I would like to offer a special word of thanks to Abbot Gregory Polan for his strong support of DIM•MID and his participation in several of our dialogues. I would also like to thank the monastic communities who have generously hosted our interreligious meetings.
I would now like to invite the newly appointed Secretary General of DIM•MID to speak to you, Father Cyprian Consiglio, who recently completed two six-year terms as prior of the Camaldolese community in Big Sur, California.
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I am Cyprian Consiglio, a Camaldolese Benedictine from the central coast of California. I’m in my thirty-third year of monastic life now. The main thing that I would like to share with you is that I am proud to consider myself in the lineage of Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda. I met Fr. Bede in 1992 just as I was entering monastic life on his way back to India where he subsequently died a few months later. My encounter with him so touched me that from the first moment of my monastic life I began studying not only his writings but also delving into Asian philosophy and spirituality even as I was being formed in monastic history and Western mysticism. I also did my Master’s Thesis on the subject. As you may know Fr. Bede brought himself and Saccidananda Ashram into our Congregation, so I consider the monks and nuns there my close confreres. I have been there nearly a dozen times and of course traveled in other parts of India as well.
I spent ten years living away from my community in a kind of experimental life before I was called back for the service of prior. I had a hermitage in the forest, but I also worked extensively in interreligious dialogue, work that eventually took me to many parts of the world. Besides the dialogue with Buddhism and Hinduism (mainly through Soto Zen and the Yoga tradition), I have been greatly influenced by Taoism and have been able to encounter exponents of that tradition, especially in Singapore and Malaysia.
Back home in California I founded a Christian Sangha to minister to the many people who were exploring both Asian and Western spirituality, many of whom were Christians trying to reconcile the treasures that they, like me, had found in another tradition and come back home to the Church. I also did work with and for a Danish missionary group called Danmission that I had encountered in India. Besides bringing me to Denmark for a series of conferences and concerts, they also organized an amazing trip for me to Lebanon and Syria doing a series that they called “Dialogue through Music.” During that same period, I helped begin a movement in California called “The Tent of Abraham” to foster moments of encounter, dialogue, and friendship among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. With members of that same group, I made a pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine that was nothing short of life-changing for me and made me realize what a privileged place Christians have in the relationship with the other children of Abraham.
For many years, my first discipline was liturgy and music, and I was fortunate to work for and with some of the pioneers of the Second Vatican Council, particularly Fr. Lucien Deiss. That background has given me a solid foundation for work in interreligious dialogue, and, of course, music has been an amazing bridge between peoples and cultures. I have written and recorded many songs based on texts and/or music of these various traditions and cultures.
When Fr. William and Abbot Gregory asked me to take on this position it occurred to me that it would cover almost everything I love and feel called to do: writing, retreat work, as well as music.
I have been told that interest in this dialogue has diminished in the Church over the last few years. I’m sad to hear that, but I consider it a challenge, because, as the Holy Father has pointed out, dialogue seems to me to be not only the most beautiful face of the church but so vital to world peace. And of course, there is something specific that we monks bring to this work––a spiritual depth and an ascetical life built on prayer, meditation, and closeness to Scripture.
Two phrases of Raimon Panikkar serve me as a kind of theme regarding all of this. He insists that we are not looking for the unity of religions so much as we are looking for harmony between religions. And the other phrase that I believe comes from him is, “well-worn paths between huts.” We don’t necessarily need more seminars, lectures, and conferences: we need to beat paths of friendship between people and peoples. In my understanding, this is what the original mandate from the Vatican to us was. We Camaldolese also received a special mandate from John Paul II. On his visit to the Sacro Eremo in 1993 he urged us to continue the work we were already engaged in in this field. So, needless to say, I thank William for his many years of service, and him and Abbot Gregory for their confidence in me; and I am honored and humbled to try to be that face of Christian monasticism to the world so in need of this friendship, in the name of Jesus the Lord.
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