Alarm Bells in the Vatican

Here’s my (whimsical) guess:  somewhere in the Vatican there is a little alarm bell, installed shortly after Jorge Bergoglio became Pope, that sounds every time the Pope puts his theological foot in his mouth.  The sounding of the bell is the signal for the army of Pope-splainers to go into action and explain to the media and the gob-smacked world that the Holy Father of course didn’t mean what he just said, but in fact meant the exact opposite.

       The alarm has sounded rather a lot.  Take, for example, his comment made in Brazil in 2013, when he responded to a question from journalists about homosexuals by saying, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”  The answer to the rhetorical question of course is:  “You’re the Pope.”

       Recently the alarm has sounded yet again.  The Pope was at an inter-religious meeting of young people in Singapore, in the course of which he commented on the status of non-Christian religions.  As translated by his Catholic colleague, he said, “Every religion is a way to arrive at God.  A sort of comparison would be there are different languages to arrive at God.  But God is God for all.  And if God is God for all, then we’re all sons and daughters of God. ‘But my God is more important than your God!’ Is that true?  There’s only one God and each of us is a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, some are Christian, but they are different paths.”

       The Pope-splaining began early, showing how well the Vatican alarm works. Thus  The Pillar, a website which defines itself as “a Catholic media project focused on smart, faithful, and serious journalism, from committed and informed Catholics who love the Church” said that “despite what the pope said on video, an officially published English translation of the text replaced the pope’s word with a more nuanced comment, attributing to Francis the remark that non-Christian religions ‘are seen as paths trying to reach God’” (italics mine).  

       A commenter on the piece in The Pillar further explained “I simply saw him as an elderly man in poor health and probably exhausted from his travels, trying to express CCC 843. People need to chill.”

 The reference to CCC 843 is to the Catechism of the Catholic Church section 843 which says, “The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as ‘a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life’”. 

I agree with the CCC 843, but that is not what the Pope said.  “Shadows and images” are not “different languages” (the example cited by the Pope).  There is nothing for it:  exhausted or well-rested, the Pope plainly said that all religions were equally paths to the one God, and that no religion was “more important” than another one.  This is as clear a statement of religious relativism as you could wish for.  Replacing “arriving at God” with “trying to arrive at (or reach) God” changes nothing.  The comparison of different religions with different languages and the statement that one religion is not more important than another makes this clear.  It used to be asked (rhetorically) “Is the Pope Catholic?”  Now the real question is “Is the Pope Christian?” 

Singapore was not only a tragedy, but also a lost opportunity.  Think of it:  a person who is arguably the most notable and visible Christian on the planet had the opportunity to speak to young people representing many different religions.  What would St. Paul have done with this opportunity?  Or St. Peter, Bergoglio’s supposed predecessor? 

Come to that, what did St. Paul do with his opportunity when he preached to those of a different religion on Mars Hill?  Not surprisingly, he preached Christ to them, showing them how all of their pagan piety and pagan insights were gifts from God, pointing them away from the pagan gods and towards Christ.  Until Paul got booed off the stage for talking about Jesus and His resurrection (Acts 17:31-32), he was striving to bring his audience away from their worship of idols to a place of repentance and faith in Christ (Acts 17:29-30).  This is just what any Christian would have done in Singapore and precisely what the Pope failed to do.

The point of all this is not to crow over the abundant and repeated failures of Mr. Bergoglio and the consequent angst of good people in the Catholic Church.  It is to recognize opportunities to evangelize when they come our way.  We now no longer have to send missionaries across land and sea to find pagans to convert.  They live next door. 

So how do we approach them?  Do we begin by saying that everything they believe is wrong and that all their ancestors who practiced that faith are now burning in hell?  No.  As the Catholic Catechism said and as St. Paul said and as the Orthodox missionaries to Alaska said, we begin by identifying what was true and good in their religion and by saying that those things were gifts to them from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that those good things point to Christ. 

Those good things were indeed shadows and images—shadows meant to pass away with the coming of the true light.  Their pagan faith—for let us be clear:  pre-Christian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are survivals of paganism in the modern age—was but a praeparatio evangelica for the Christian faith.  Their insights into truth were God’s gifts given to the nations of the world just as the Law was His gift given to Israel. They were never meant to be an alternative to Christ and His Church, but a sign pointing towards it.

       It is true that there is but one God for all, and that He has never left Himself without a witness to any of the children of men (Acts 14:17).  It is also true that what the pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God (1 Corinthians 10:20), so that if a pagan is spared on the Last Day, he is spared despite his pagan ways, not because of them.   

The paganism of (say) Marcus Aurelius was not another equally valid or important way to God along with Christianity.  It was not just a different language than the language of Canaan and of the Church (see Isaiah 19:18), a different language saying the same thing.  In Christ and His Church we find not just a different language saying the same thing as Marcus’ paganism, but the fullness of truth in the language of heaven.  We find the true light, not just a shadow.  We find our way home.  That is why the Church called on Marcus Aurelius to repent and believe the Gospel and be baptized.  In Singapore the Pope had a golden opportunity to call all the lost children of the world home.  It is their loss that he chose a different path.