The French saying, Pas d'ennemi à gauche, can be paraphrased today: No dialogue with the right. For indeed, the “dialogue,” the most popular term of the sixties, is a companion-word of peaceful coexistence with communism and of apertura a sinistra, even of ecumenism whose noble objectives have been corrupted by the scramble of many, so-called ecumenists for the atheist's smile.

Primarily, then, “dialogue” is a political term, masking a strategy designed to appease and validate the ideological Left. Since this Left has its representatives within die Christian churches as well as in the political arena, it is hard to separate church matters from more generally political matters in discussing the dialogue. To a large extent, indeed, they overlap, as is shown by the identity of expressions that advocates of political or religious dialogue use in their parallel approach to the problem.

In his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, Pope Paul VI wrote that atheism “is the most serious problem of our time.” The reason is that an ideological atheism denies God and oppresses the Church, and that it is often identified with economic, social and political regimes, among which atheistic communism is the chief. Dialogue in such circumstances is admittedly very difficult, for any group which is persecuted seeks first and foremost its survival and the survival of values it thinks essential.

The Christian, however, cannot despair, for two reasons. First, he must seek out his enemy to do him good, to return benevolence for malevolence, to seek what binds and heals rather than what separates and destroys. The Christian knows that even when he must resist the injustices of his enemy there are bounds of morality beyond which he may not go; he knows he must never discontinue the sometimes discouraging attempt to seek peace and an atmosphere of trust and confidence.

People and organizations that strongly support the United Nations have, in recent weeks and months offered proposals and suggestions which cause concern. It has been suggested, for example, that the United Nations should involve itself in the Vietnam controversy with a peace-keeping force, that United States forces should be withdrawn as quickly as possible and be replaced by a United Nations force. Since the unilateral declaration of independence by Rhodesia, there have been suggestions in America and abroad that the United Nations should take action in that controversy. Suggestions of this sort bring to mind the old saw, “Oh, Lord, protect me from my friends, I can take care of my enemies myself.”