Priest Writes to Pope Francis Addressing his Pluralism

 

An Open Letter to

His Holiness, Pope Francis

 

 

 The inside of the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome

with the words of Our Lord to St Peter,

 

Tu es petrus,
et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam;
et portae inferi non prevalebunt adversus eam;
et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum.

 

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church;
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

 

Mt 16:18-19

Most Holy Father,

 

Recently, you addressed the young people of Singapore. You encouraged them to engage critically with the world around them. You urged them to take risks. You warned them of the danger of becoming enslaved to social media and discouraged them from becoming closed in on themselves as a result of living their lives too much through social media. And you highlighted the need to be brave in standing up to bullies. The young people of the world need to hear these messages, so we thank you for your words.

          But you also spoke about interfaith dialogue, and in this context you said,

 

‘se voi incominciate a litigare: “La mia religione è più importante della tua…”, “La mia è quella vera, la tua non è vera…”. Dove porta tutto questo? Dove? Qualcuno risponda, dove? [qualcuno risponde: “La distruzione”]. È così. Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio.’

 

‘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 answer. [And a young person answered, “Destruction”.] That is correct. All religions are paths to arrive at God.’

 

Indeed, you spoke in the context of discouraging enmity between people of different faiths, of trying to advance the cause of at least a peaceful co-existence between the world’s religions. In this light, some might take your words to mean that all religions are, after all, merely trying to be paths to God, or that the members of all religions are, simply in different ways, seeking a path to God. But I will not do you the dishonour of suggesting that you really meant something different from what you said. I think that as a man of integrity you say what you mean, and mean what you say. Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio. ‘All religions are paths to arrive at God.’

          But these words have shocked many Catholics and have caused scandal amongst many of the faithful because they do not coincide with what has been divinely revealed by Almighty God through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and through the teachings of the Catholic Church down the ages.

          Are we to understand from your words that when Moses came down from the mountain, having been given the Ten Commandments by God, and found God’s Chosen People worshipping a calf made of molten metal (Ex 32:1-4), that their acts of adoration were for them a path to God?

          Are we to understand from your words that those who offered their children up in blood sacrifices to Moloch (Lev 20:2-5), and those who ‘sacrificed their sons and their daughters to devils’ (Ps 105:37), were walking along a path to God? 

Are we to understand from your words that when Elijah gathered all the prophets of Baal at the mount of Carmel (3 Kgs 18:20-40) that the cries of the prophets were, for them, a path to God?

Might we assume that when Solomon worshipped Astarte (3 Kgs 11:5) he was seeking the true path to God? Or that Sara need not have baulked at the workings of Asmodeus who destroyed seven of her husbands? (Tobias 3:8). Might the seven Maccabean brothers have spared themselves, and their mother, the torment of suffering death (2 Macc 7)? And was Almighty God Himself wrong to call His Chosen People back, again and again, from committing the infidelity of following false religions (for example, Jer 3:6-9; Ezek 16:38; Hosea 1:2)?

I ask you, Holy Father, what are we to make of the words of our Divine Saviour Himself when He said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life,’ and added, ‘No man comes to the Father but by me’ (Jn 14:6)?

When you were born, your parents gave you the name Jorge, in English, George. St George is famous for slaying the dragon of the tyrants of Rome who would have him worship their false idols. Might St George, after all, have followed the path of the Roman idols to God instead and saved his life?  

You chose to join the Society of Jesus, inspired in part at least, one assumes, by the heroic missionary zeal of its founder, St Ignatius of Loyola. Was this great Spanish saint not right in leading so many – and often at so great a cost – to the Catholic Faith? What of the many Jesuit martyrs who gave their lives to Almighty God rather than follow the dictates of other religions? Indeed, were all the holy martyrs of our religion mistaken when they willingly went to their deaths rather than follow other religions and other demands?

          When you were elected as Supreme Pontiff, and took your place as the Vicar of Christ upon earth, you chose the name Francis after the great saint of Assisi. Was St Francis misguided when he travelled to Egypt in the year 1219 to try to convert the Sultan, al-Kamil?

          And what of the teachings of numerous popes, saints, doctors of the Church, Ecumenical Councils, and so forth, who have all upheld the teaching that all religions do not lead to God?

          Or are we supposed to believe that our generation is now more enlightened than our forebears? Are we to think that they were not wrong but that they had only a partial wisdom whereas we, with all the illumination of post-Enlightenment learning, and the full use of our faculty of reason, no longer see as through a glass in a dark manner (1 Cor 13:12) but can see what others have not previously been privileged to see? Are we grown to maturity whilst earlier Fathers, saints and popes of the Church suffered a stunted growth in understanding? But in this case, what becomes of Our Lord’s commission to His Apostles to go out to all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that he had commanded them (Mt 28:19-20)? Has this tremendous effort been largely in vain for the last two millennia? Or is it that we no longer need to be so insistent on belief in the Blessed Trinity?

          No, Holy Father. You asked your listeners in Singapore whether they understood your words, and whether they agreed or disagreed with you. But, surely, all faithful Catholics the world over must disagree? Indeed, are we not duty bound to disagree with such sentiments and submit instead to the divinely revealed truth of our holy religion? Is it not the pretence that all religions lead to God when we, as a Church, have never before believed such a thing, that will lead to destruction, as your young listener said? Are we not right to fear the destruction of souls who are led astray from what God Himself has revealed? And should we, as pastors in particular, not fear to scandalize these young ones? Would it not be better for us, rather, that a millstone be hanged around our necks and that we be drowned in the depth of the sea? Or did Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself not know what He was saying, or did not mean what He said? (Mt 18:6).

          The Catholic Church teaches, and has long taught, that others may be saved even though they belong to other religions but that other religions in themselves cannot be the means of salvation. There may be elements of Sikhism and Islam, and Judaism, and Buddhism, and so forth, which coincide with divinely revealed truths about God and the things of God, and so long as followers of those religions seek God with a sincere heart and live a life of virtue according to those elements, and according to the natural law (that is, according to the law sown into the very fabric of our nature by the Creator), then they may indeed yet be saved. But such followers of other religions are saved because they follow the goodness, and truth, and beauty of God, not because they worship according to other religions. In other words, others may be saved despite, rather than in virtue of, belonging to another religion. After all, did not our Redeemer Himself say that, ‘Unless a man be born of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’ (Jn 3:5)? Who are we to dispense with the words of the One who is the Word, the logos, of God? Rather, as one bishop has wisely said, ‘The doctrine of the Church recognizes implicit baptism of desire. This consists in doing the will of God. God knows all men and He knows that amongst Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and in the whole of humanity there are men of good will. They receive the grace of baptism without knowing it, but in an effective way. In this way they become part of the Church. The error consists in thinking that they are saved by their religion. They are saved in their religion but not by it.’

          It is not all religions that are paths to God, even though God may call individual souls to Himself from out of many different religions.

          No, Holy Father, the Catholic Church teaches clearly that Christ, and Christ alone, is the way to salvation. 

          Yet in your address to the young people of Singapore you go further. You liken different religions to different languages:

 

‘Sono – faccio un paragone – come diverse lingue, diversi idiomi, per arrivare lì… C’è un solo Dio, e noi, le nostre religioni sono lingue, cammini per arrivare a Dio.’

 

‘I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine… There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God.’

 

But is not language merely a vehicle for expressing thoughts and ideas? Would not this make religions merely different expressions of the same idea, as if followers of different religions all had the same idea of God but simply expressed that idea in different – perhaps culturally constrained – ways? Is this really the case? that all religions lead to the same idea? (And in any case, if your analogy of language were to hold true, would this not risk reducing God chiefly to an intellectual exercise, a philosophical concept, making God an idea rather than an objective, supernatural, and personal Being?)

Are we to believe that it is true that the disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the followers of the prophet of Islam, the worshippers in the synagogue, the followers of Sikhism, and Buddhism, and Jainism, and Hinduism, and the Bahá’í Faith, and Taoism, and Rastafarianism, and all the traditional African and Asian and Native American religions, along with those who bear the pentagram as the icon of their beliefs, all hold to the same idea? Is this what you would have the young people of the world believe?

Surely such an idea is not to be borne!

          I beg you, Holy Father, please clarify the teachings of the Catholic Faith as they have been divinely revealed in Sacred Scripture and in Sacred Tradition. Release the minds of these young people from the destructive forces of confusion and doubt. Lead us, Holy Father, and all the peoples of the world, along the path of Truth towards the gates of heaven, that our souls may be sanctified in this life and saved to eternal beatitude in the next.

          With devotion and filial piety I continue to pray for you as I have always prayed for you since you became Christ’s personal representative on earth:

 

℣. Let us pray for Francis, our Pope.

℟. May the Lord preserve him, give him long life, make him

    blessed upon the earth, and may the Lord not hand him

    over to the power of his enemies (Ps 40:3)

 

℣. May your hand be upon your holy servant.

℟. And upon your son whom you have anointed.

 

Let us pray. O God, Pastor and Ruler of all the faithful, look down, in your mercy, upon your servant, Francis, whom you have appointed to preside over your Church; and grant, we beseech you, that both by word and example, he may edify all those under his charge, so that, with the flock entrusted to him, he may arrive at length unto life everlasting. Through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

 

 

I remain your servant in Dno.,

 

 

Fr Joseph Welch

The Commemoration of

the Impression of the Stigmata of St Francis of Assisi

 

17^th September 2024