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Catholic bishops attending a synod at the Vatican on Thursday stressed the importance of dialogue with other religions and cultures but advised caution against "misunderstandings."
The synod on the theme of the "Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church," which opened October 5 and will continue through October 25, made the statement in an interim report.
The so-called "synod fathers" said they hoped Christians would be "present and active in all arenas of public life" so that the Gospel would act as "leavening" in modern cultures.
They lamented the decline of religious culture evidenced by "the disappearance, in the popular imagination, of traditional biblical expressions and figures."
In "traditional" cultures where Christianity is hoping to gain ground, such as in Africa, the Asia-Pacific and among indigenous groups in the Americas, the Church should feel free to embrace "positive elements" of existing religions, the report said.
However, it urged caution to avoid syncretism -- a concern frequently voiced by Pope Benedict XVI -- in which different religions are placed on an equal footing through incorporation of practices or when members of different faiths pray together.
The Vatican affirmed in July 2007 that the Catholic Church is "the one true Church of Christ."
In dialogue with Islam, similarly, the synod noted "important points in common" between the two religions: "resistance to secularisation and liberalism, defence of individual human life (and) affirmation of the social importance of religion."
The bishops add: "However, the sometimes difficult confrontations require cautious attitudes and appropriate words."
The report called for an "open but true interfaith dialogue, sheltered from accommodating formulations."
Relations with other Christian denominations, especially Protestantism, are complicated by the rise in fundamentalism and the "cancerous proliferation of sects," the bishops said.
Nevertheless the synod clearly recognised the debt owed by "all Christian confessions" to the Protestant tradition, which facilitated "access to the Scriptures" and developed "biblical expertise."
Before the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, and within Catholicism up to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, Catholic clergy preached from the Bible in Latin, generally excluding the faithful from independent study of the holy texts.
