Bringing you the
"Good News" of Jesus Christ
and His Church While PROMOTING CATHOLIC
Apologetic Support groups loyal to the Holy Father and Church's
magisterium
I read the following from an address by Pope Francis:—
One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here, is your capacity for interfaith dialogue.
This is very important because if you start arguing,
“My religion is more important than yours.” or
“Mine is the true one, yours is not true.”
Where does this lead?
Somebody please answer this. [A young person answers, “Destruction.”] That is correct.
All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy; they are like different languages that express the divine, but God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. “But my God is more important than yours!?”
Is this true?
There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God.
Some Sikh
some Muslim
some Hindu
some Christian.
Do you understand my view?
Yet, interfaith dialogue among young people takes courage. The age of youth is the age of courage, but you can misuse this courage to do things that will not help you. Instead, you should have courage to move forward and to dialogue.
I wonder how should we view these words of the Holy Father?
Anthony Tao
{ How should we view and understand these words in this address by the Holy Father? }
Bob replied:
Dear Anthony,
This was a very unfortunate speech by Pope Francis, and much discussion has happened on Catholic media in the wake of it.
It is essentially wrong, even potentially heretical, on its face, and at the very least it is scandalous to say the least, because it will lead many souls to perdition by giving approval to rejection of the Catholic faith.
There is no way to sugarcoat it, and it is deeply problematic for Pope Francis, especially when he seemed to double down on it in subsequent opportunities for clarification.
Our response must be to pray for the Church to overcome this failing of the Pope, and to pray for the Pope Himself—he will have a greater responsibility for errors when he meets the Lord in judgement, for his very vocation is to dispel error and be a source of unity. So many times, he does the opposite, his teaching is confusion and his governance is division.
This occasion marks one of those sad moments.
Peace,
Bob Kirby
Mike replied:
Dear Anthony,
While the capacity for interfaith dialogue among the young people is very good, it should not be done at the expense of the Truth!!!
Philosophy tells us that Objective truth is a fact or reality that is independent of personal beliefs or opinions. It is something that is true, regardless of what anyone thinks or feels about it.
An example of an objective truth is 1 (base 10) + 1 (base 10) = 2 (base 10)
The second sentence you quoted from Francis said: This is very important because if you start arguing, . . .
Faith-sharing is not about arguing. Faith-sharing is about:
agreeing to agree in certain areas of the faith
agreeing to disagree in other areas of the faith, and
after a period of separation, where both side can think about the other sides argument, getting together again to talk in charity again . . . ultimately trying to understand what the faith-sharing partner means by certain words as to better understand his or her viewpoint.
An Objective, historical truth is that Jesus Christ, the God-Man, founded one Church, HIS Church on St. Peter in 33 A.D. and said the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church. (Matthew 16:13-19, 1 Timothy 3:15) No Protestant, non-Christian, nor any pope can deny this.
You can review the history of Catholic Christianity here:
As you can see salvation came from the Jews (Jesus) but was fulfilled in Catholic Christianity. Jesus found NONE of these churches/organizations:
Hinduism
Buddhism
Islam
Eastern Orthodox
Lutheran
Mennonites
Anglicans
Calvinists
Presbyterians
Congregationalist
Baptist
Dutch Reformed
Methodist
Unitarian
Episcopalians
Church of Christ
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons)
Seventh Day Adventists
The Salvation Army
Jehovah' s Witness
Christian Scientist
Pentecostal/Pentecostalism
Fundamentalism
They were all found by men, women, or false prophets or prophetesses. If you read down that page you can learn a little more about these man-made organizations who “picked and chose” what they like about Christianity and threw away the rest. The phrase “picked and chose” is also where we get the word “heresy” from.
Unlike “picking and choosing” the word “Catholic” means “according to the totality” (CCC 830) So the Catholic faith is the only Christian faith in its totality. For short you get all of what Jesus wants for you to believe.
830 The word catholic means universal, in the sense of according to the totality or in keeping with the whole. The Church is catholic in a double sense:
First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her.
"Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church."
In her subsists the fullness of Christ's body united with its head; this implies that she receives from him the fullness of the means of salvation. (Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio 3; Vatican II, Ad Gentes 6; Ephesians 1:22-23) which he has willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in Apostolic Succession.
The Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost (cf. Vatican II, Ad Gentes 4) and will always be so until the day of the Parousia.
Now the other faiths Pope Francis mentioned may have some partial truths or shadows of truth but not all the truth.—
That said, as my colleague implied, Christians believe there is one God, the Man Christ, Jesus, and there is one set of objective truths that can only be found in the Catholic Church!!! Period.
