The Pope and Other Religions

Pope Francis has the habit, by now well established, of saying things that leave listeners confused and hoping he meant something other than what he actually said.

At the end of his recent trip to Singapore, the pope left his prepared remarks for an interreligious group of young people and offered some general reflections about religion. Since his comments were extemporaneous, they naturally lacked the precision that a prepared text would normally possess, and so hopefully what he said is not quite what he meant.

According to news reports, Pope Francis suggested that, “[Religions] are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.” He went on to say, “If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,’ where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].” The Holy Father’s positive intent here was obvious.

Francis then added a call to enter into interreligious dialogue. He spoke about dialogue as if it were an end in itself. “Interreligious dialogue,” he said, “is something that creates a path.” The question then is: a path to where?

That all religions have equal weight is an extraordinarily flawed idea for the Successor of Peter to appear to support. It is true that all of the great religions express a human yearning—often with beauty and wisdom—for something more than this life. Humans have a need to worship. That desire seems to be hardwired into our DNA. But not all religions are equal in their content or consequences. Substantial differences exist among the religions the pope named. They have very different notions of who God is and what that implies for the nature of the human person and society. As St. Paul preached two thousand years ago, the search for God can take many imperfect forms, but they are each an imperfect search for the one, true, triune God of Sacred Scripture. Paul condemns false religions and preaches Jesus Christ as the reality and fulfillment of the unknown God whom the Greeks worship (Acts 17:22–31). 

Simply put: Not all religions seek the same God, and some religions are both wrong and potentially dangerous, materially and spiritually.

Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, once and forever, revealed to all humanity who God is. He redeemed us by his death and resurrection, and he gave us the commission to bring all humanity to him. As our faith teaches very clearly, it is only Jesus Christ who saves. Christ is not merely one among other great teachers or prophets. To borrow a thought from C. S. Lewis, if Jesus were just one among many, he’d also be a liar, because he emphatically claimed that, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). A loving God may accept the worship of any sincere and charitable heart—but salvation comes only through his only son, Jesus Christ.

Which is why Jesus did not say, “Stay on your path, and let’s talk about it.”

We are called Christians because we believe Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity. From the beginning of our faith, followers of Christ were unique among world religions because they accepted as true Christ’s extraordinary claim that he is God—in part because of his miracles, in part because of his preaching, but ultimately because of his death and bodily resurrection. Christians have also always believed that this reality makes Christianity categorically distinct from all other religions, and in turn requires a total commitment of our lives. (For the Church’s Christology, see: the New Testament, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s document Dominus Jesus, which all, among many others, teach clearly the divinity of Christ and his unique role in salvation history.)

To suggest, even loosely, that Catholics walk a more or less similar path to God as other religions drains martyrdom of its meaning. Why give up your life for Christ when other paths may get us to the same God? Such a sacrifice would be senseless. But the witness of the martyrs is as important today as ever. We live in an age when the dominant religion is increasingly the worship of the self. We need the martyrs—and each of us as a confessor of Jesus Christ—to remind an unbelieving world that the path to a genuinely rich life is to give oneself fully to another, to the other.

The bishop of Rome is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide. This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically. Loose comments can only confuse. Yet, too often, confusion infects and undermines the good will of this pontificate.

Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God. To suggest, imply, or allow others to infer otherwise is a failure to love because genuine love always wills the good of the other, and the good of all people is to know and love Jesus Christ, and through him the Father who created us.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia.

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Photo by Long Thiên via Creative Commons. Image cropped.