Dueling Ideologies

I read somewhere, though I cannot recall where and I am not sure I trust the source, that the Pope had recently taken a step back from ecumenical conversations and restated the position that the Catholic church was really the only correct approach to the Christian faith. Earlier today I heard President Bush talking about the challenge facing our world today. As he saw, the key issue were two different ideologies, represented in his eyes by the U.S. and Al Qaeda.

Both of these perspectives got me to thinking again on the challenging with dueling ideologies. People have been highlighting once again the part of the historic Latin mass which prays for the Jews and their conversion. Certainly based on the tone of the language used it is easy to see how it might be considered anti-semitic, but at the same time, for many Catholics and Evangelicals, without Christ, the Jews are doomed to Hell like anyone else.

I raise these examples not to try and critique them or agree with them, but because I think they raise a major problem facing all of us at present. How do we deal with ideologies that are completely at odds? How do we tolerate the idea that something is both true to some people and false to others? There are some things that seem like we can find a compromise on. For example the endless debate between big government national government and leaving things to the states or private sector has room for compromise. What compromise can there be between some of the ideologies present today. How do we deal with ideas such as Catholicism, Islam, and global warming, that all seem to assert things that are true 100% of the time, that there is no way but Christ, or Allah, or that global warming is fact and not some theory.

I think what we really need to be looking for is new ways to deal with these issues. In the past these have been settled by the sword, or the gun, or just by shouting down the other side. But today we need to find new ways that such radically different ideas can live side by side. We need to find ways to hold in tension that X is both true and false. We need to find some non-combative metaphors for discourse.