COMMENTARY: If the Cuban dictator had read the first 21 pages of the Introduction to Christianity, he might have found Pope Benedict XVI his brother and a meaningful dialogue might ensue.

One cannot imagine two more disparate figures meeting and being cordial to each other than Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro: the former a pious and highly educated leader of the Catholic Church; the latter being a Marxist-Lenin socialist whose administration oversaw human rights abuses. However, as different as they are, human beings are human beings and have that as a common denominator.

The meeting took place in March 2012 in Havana. Pope Benedict XVI offers a brief account of their meeting in his book Benedict XVI: Last Testament. The Pontiff was in his last full year as head of the Catholic Church, while Castro was 85 and ill. The Pope’s impression of Castro was that he had not “yet emerged from the structures of thought through which he became powerful.” The word “again,” however, contained a glimmer of hope, because Cuba’s longtime leader understood “the convulsions of world history” and was happy that “the religious question was being asked again.”

The Cuban dictator asked Benedict XVI to send him literature. Was Castro simply a diplomat or was he genuinely interested in Christianity?

We will of course never know, but his request remains intriguing. In any case, Benedict XVI sent him a copy of his 1970 book, Introduction to Christianity, a very appropriate work for this occasion. The Holy Father did not consider Castro the type of person likely to undergo a “major conversion,” but he felt that, being fully aware that so much had gone wrong, he was willing to see things from a different perspective. different way.

Pope Benedict XVI was not naive. He understood how extremely difficult it is for a Christian and a hardened atheist to engage in productive dialogue. He begins Introduction to Christianity by quoting another thinker who shared this view, Søren Kierkegaard. The prominent Danish existentialist liked to use parables to convey his philosophy.

One of his parables features a clown already dressed and made up for his performance. A fire broke out in the circus and the director sent the clown to go to the village for help, as there was a real risk that the fire would spread quickly and engulf the village itself. The villagers, however, mistook the clown for a circus publicity agent. The more the clown begged the villagers, the more they laughed. Given his clown costume, he had no credibility. They thought he was playing his role wonderfully, until it was too late to call for help and the village was burned to the ground.

“I think this is how the world will end,” Kierkegaard said, “under the general applause of those minds who believe it to be a joke.”

For Pope Benedict XVI as for Kierkegaard, Christianity is no joke. But how to communicate it? How can it protect itself against gross errors of interpretation?

In the parable of the clown, the clown cannot communicate with the villagers. The result is a disaster. The villagers fail to recognize what they have in common with the clown. A Jewish parable makes the same point.

Martin Buber tells the story of a non-believer who visited a very learned rabbi. His intention was to convince the rabbi, through argument, of the reasonableness of atheism. When he arrived at the rabbi’s house, he found his potential adversary walking up and down with a book in his hand, deep in thought.

Suddenly he stopped, looked at his new arrival and said, “But maybe it’s true after all.” The unbeliever opposed the rabbi with all his might, but the “perhaps” answered him and broke his resistance. There is a “maybe” in each of us.

Benedict XVI commented on this parable according to which “the believer and the unbeliever share, each in their own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and the truth of their being”.

Neither can entirely escape doubt or belief. The believer has his doubts and the doubter cannot get rid of the temptation to believe. If Castro had read the first 21 pages of the Introduction to Christianity, he might have found Pope Benedict XVI his brother and a meaningful dialogue might ensue.

Benedict was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he wrote this book. As he repeats: “Just as the believer knows he is constantly threatened by unbelief, that he must live as a continual temptation, so, for the unbeliever, faith remains a temptation and a threat to his world apparently permanently closed. »

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux grew up in a deeply religious atmosphere. However, this saint, almost cocooned in religious security, had disturbing temptations of disbelief: “I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism,” she admits.

On the other hand, the famous novelist William Somerset Maugham lived as a confirmed agnostic until he faced death, when he was assailed by a powerful temptation to believe in a God who would judge him. He summoned a friend to reassure him that God did not exist.

We are all human beings, cut from the same cloth, so to speak. But we drift away from each other and lose sight of our essential ambiguity. We are neither beings of pure faith nor beings of pure doubt. We are a mixture of each, in varying proportions.

If Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro can have a civil conversation with each other, there will be a spark of hope for two human beings, regardless of their cultural and personal differences, to engage in meaningful dialogue with each other. the other.