Council affirmed worth of all religions - acknowledging validity of non-catholic faiths and believers

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 7, 1997 by Gary MacEoin

This is the fifth of 11 articles exploring the future of the papacy. The series of essays, edited by Gary MacEoin, will be expanded and published as a book, The Papacy and the People of God, by Orbis Books, in the near future.

Official Catholic teaching on God's intentions for those who are not members of the Catholic church has varied widely through the centuries. Even today many questions remain unanswered.

The early church fathers were quite clear. Following the lead of John's Gospel, which declares that the word of God is a true light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Origen describe Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus as "pedagogues" guiding their readers to Christ.

In the third century, however, radical change occurred under the influence of Stoic and Manichean notions of human depravity. According to Origen, Cyprian and Augustine, extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the church there is no salvation").

Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was even more explicit. In the decree Unam Sanctam, he taught that obedience to the pope is also a prerequisite for salvation. To which the Council of Florence (1442) added that all heathens, Jews, unbelievers and schismatics who fail to become Catholics before death "will be subject to the everlasting fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels."

As Europe expanded its horizons in the 15th and subsequent centuries with the voyages of exploration and conquest, the cross traveled with the sword. With the Council of Florence mentality, missionaries denounced the religions they found in their way as the work of &tan, to be extirpated with all their idols and temples. This was the attitude that dominated in missionary activity down to the middle of the 20th century. It was reinforced by the widespread belief that Christianity was in fact establishing itself as the universal religion, that it was only a matter of time until all competitors were eliminated.

In this century, however, with the meteoric expansion of communications of all kinds, from the airplane to the Internet, it has become more difficult to think in these terms. Religions are no longer separated geographically. Thanks to massive migrations, members of many religions now live side by side in practically every country of the world, especially in the big cities.

Our neighbors and fellow workers may include Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems. We know that Christianity after 19 centuries is but one of the world's great religions, the religion of perhaps one human in five. Projections for the foreseeable future tell us that its proportion of believers will grow smaller, while other great religions -- notably Islam -- will increase the proportion of their adherents.

A small percentage

To the issue of justice, namely, whether God shows favoritism to some, is now added the issue of statistics. And some would add yet a third issue. Has the movement of secularization, inaugurated by the 18th century Enlightenment, offered an alternative that is destined to replace religion? The question is valid, but the evidence both anecdotal and statistical gives an overwhelmingly negative answer.

Atheism and agnosticism have indeed become far more socially acceptable than in any previous period of history, but their adherents constitute only a small percentage of the world's population. Even the Soviet Union's aggressive propaganda in favor of atheism for several generations had minimal impact on the subjects of that empire.

Given all these agreed facts, we have to think quite differently about religions other than Christian. Far from being the work of the devil, they constitute the result of a high level of human intellectual exploration. Every religion represents a structured response to the questions that each of us must ask and for which we must find an acceptable answer: Where have we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? An integral part of the divine plan for humans, religion guarantees supreme values and unconditional norms and creates a spiritual community and home.

This is essentially the view accepted by the Second Vatican Council. Every religion, it said, arises from the depths of the human mind in its search for truth. Each of them offers answers to the deepest mysteries of the human condition, what is the meaning and purpose of life, what is goodness and what is sin, where is true happiness to be found, what is death, what follows death.

Thus in Hinduism, the council said, devotees "contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an unspent fruitfulness of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our condition through ascetic practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God.

"Buddhism in its multiple forms acknowledges the radical insufficiency of this shifting world. It teaches a path by which it is possible, in a devout and confident spirit, either to reach a state of absolute freedom or attain supreme enlightenment by one's own efforts or by higher assistance.