ABSTRACT
The Catholic tradition throughout history shows us how confessional commitments provide a solid foundation for finding God present in the wide world around us. The Church is, briefly put, catholic (global, worldwide) as well as Catholic (an institution centered in Rome); if it is not Catholic, it ceases also to be catholic. We know today that the Church has erred and sinned in many ways. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive Catholic dynamic: the universal in tension with the particular, a hierarchical tradition with settled doctrines, a commitment to rational and systematizing inquiry alongside openness to the imaginative and intuitive, the freedom of the individual within a strongly ordered community. This dynamic has for millennia provided a fertile ground wherein interreligious learning can occur, promoted by the specificity of the Catholic manner of being in the world and not despite it. This firm yet permeable structure is preferable to the ideal of an entirely open space. What is needed today is a theology and a commitment to a community with walls that are solid but not impassable, a dwelling with foundations and walls and windows and doors, a roof held up by walls that make dwelling and hospitality possible.
