`Finding' Christ in other religions

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 22, 2000 by Richard P. McBrien

Dominus Iesus doesn't contradict teaching that Christ died for all

The document Dominus Iesus, released in early September, stirred a proverbial hornets' nest of controversy. Many concluded, on the basis of excerpts in the press and various other public reactions, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had reversed the ecumenically enlightened teaching of Vatican II and reverted to the pre-conciliar claim that the Catholic church is the "one, true church," outside of which there is no salvation.

The document does not say, however, that the true church of Christ continues to exist only in the Catholic church. It says that it is only in the Catholic church that it continues to exist fully. As one of my former teachers in Rome, Jesuit Fr. Francis Sullivan (now of Boston College), put it, "The difference between those statements is the difference between the doctrine of Pius XII and that of Vatican II."

Nor does the document consign non-Catholics to eternal perdition. On the contrary, it cites Vatican II's teaching that, because Christ died for all, "the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery."

Nothing in Dominus Iesus contradicts this teaching. Indeed, it also follows the council in recognizing that the various non-Catholic churches are, by the action of the same Holy Spirit, instruments of salvation for their own members.

This whole question of the role of Christ in the salvation of the world is especially relevant to the feast and to the season we are about to celebrate. At the core of Christian faith is the conviction that God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, a divine person with both a human and a divine nature. Christians believe that through his life, death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation (in other words, through the whole paschal mystery), Christ took upon himself the sins of humankind and won divine forgiveness and redemption for all -- for Christians and non-Christians, for believers and non-believers alike.

Such a faith may have been easier to profess in the Middle Ages when the world was thought to be much smaller and, at the same time, overwhelmingly Christian. But through the process of exploration and discovery in subsequent centuries, it became clear to all except those too stubborn to see it that the world was not coextensive with Christendom, that there were many millions of non-Christians living happily in other parts of the globe, and that most of them had never even heard of Christ.

As missionaries attempted to proclaim the gospel in these foreign lands, some of them came gradually to appreciate the cultures and even the religions of these so-called "pagan" peoples. They detected similarities with the figure of Christ and the content of the gospel in the beliefs and practices of those whom they sought to convert.

Unfortunately, some church officials and rival missionary communities disdained the newer approaches taken by their more ecumenically minded brethren. The Dominicans, for example, fought the efforts of the great Jesuit priest and scientist, Matteo Ricci (d. 1610), to adapt Christianity to Chinese culture and to promote the use of Chinese rites in the liturgy.

Although Alexander VII had explicitly approved of these new missionary methods in 1656, a later pope, Clement XI, revoked that approval in 1704 and forbade the use of Chinese rites -- a decision that proved disastrous for the church's future missionary outreach to China. Its negative effects are felt to this day.

In the latter part of the 20th century, a few innovative Catholic theologians attempted a similar adaptation of Christian doctrine to the culture an the religious practices of the many millions of Buddhists and Hindus in Asia. In two or three cases, theologians may have gone too far in collapsing any meaningful distinction between Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ of faith and other so-called "Christ figures."

As a consequence, the Vatican adopted an initially skeptical, then an openly censorious, attitude toward the work of most other theologians engaged in this quest. There was a tendency to lump these theologians together, as if all were, in effect, denying the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the one redeemer and mediator of salvation for humankind.

Given our growing appreciation of human diversity and the minority status of Christianity in much of the world, the need has become even more pressing to "find" Christ also within other religions and in the human family at large, and somehow to proclaim him there.

Is not this one of the central and enduring challenges of the Christmas message?

Fr. Richard McBrien teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.