[The Wide Shot] Making sense of the Pope’s ‘all religions are a path to God’

Catholic social media exploded after Pope Francis, in an interreligious meeting with youth in Singapore, made a provocative statement about other religions. 

In this meeting at the Catholic Junior College of Singapore on Friday, September 13, the 87-year-old Pope warned the youth against arguing about the “better” religion: “My religion is more important than yours,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true.” This can only lead to destruction, Francis said.

“All religions are a path to reach God,” said the Pope. 

“They are — I make a comparison — like different languages, different idioms, to get there,” he continued. “But God is God for everyone. And since God is God for everyone, we are all children of God. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’ Is this true?”

”There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to reach God. Some are Sikh, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, some are Christian, but they are different paths,” the pontiff said in the tone of a grade school teacher.

(Watch the video below, where the Pope originally delivers these lines in Italian. I did not use the real-time translation of the interpreter, but, for precision, referred to the Italian transcript of the Pope’s words and translated his remarks into English.)

When Rappler shared a quote card of the Pope’s statement on Saturday, September 14, our social media account was flooded with notifications. It now has more than 20,700 reactions and 8,000 shares as of posting time. 

Not everyone, however, is happy.

What seems to be the problem? “It’s something that’s obvious, isn’t it?” a friend asked me as I was writing this.

The Pope’s words in Singapore are part of a centuries-old debate across different faiths: Who will be saved?

I myself am still trying to analyze the Pope’s statement, and I will spend the next few days reading up, talking to experts, and chatting with you — hopefully — in the faith chat room of the Rappler Communities app.

But, like a companion on a journey, allow me to provide you with a mental framework to help us make sense of the Pope’s statement.

This topic was the subject of much of my masteral coursework at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, while I was on a one-year sabbatical around five years ago. At RSIS, I took a course on Christianity and religious diversity, a separate one on Islam and religious diversity, and another on interreligious dialogue.

Many of our lectures and classroom debates revolved around the topic called “theology of religions.”

The theology of religions tackles different ways by which religions regard nonbelievers. 

It follows what is called the “three-fold typology” in classifying responses to the religious other:

1. exclusivism, which means only our religion is a valid path to salvation;
2. inclusivism, which means other religions are valid paths, but ours is the best; and
3. pluralism, which means all religions are valid paths to salvation

The Catholic Church, for centuries, responded to other faiths based on the words of Saint Cyprian of Carthage in the third century: “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.” (Outside the Church, there is no salvation.)

Gradually, however, the Catholic Church saw problems with this exclusivist position. What about people, especially in lands that are farthest from Europe, who had never heard of the Catholic Church? Will they be damned because of their place of birth? What if they are not Christians for no fault of their own?

There was a push and pull as church doctrine developed — especially as European explorers, including Christopher Columbus in the 15th century, encountered more non-Christians in other parts of the world. 

Centuries later, the most monumental change took place in the early 1960s, when Pope John XXIII convened and Pope Paul VI continued (after John XXIII’s death) the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II. The council discussed the Catholic Church’s engagement of the modern world, as well as its view of non-Christian religions.

Two documents promulgated during Vatican II can help us understand the Pope’s statements in Singapore. 

The Vatican II document titled Nostra Aetate — the “declaration of the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions,” proclaimed by Paul VI on October 28, 1965 — states the official Catholic position to this day.

Nostra Aetate states: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”

“Truth” here is capitalized because it refers to the one who said “I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6)”: Jesus. In this inclusivist statement, the Catholic Church declares that other religions can also “reflect a ray” of Jesus, even if they differ from the Catholic Church in terms of doctrine.

Another Vatican II document — Lumen Gentium (Light of the Nations), which is more authoritative because it is a dogmatic constitution — states that “those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God.”

According to Lumen Gentium, the plan of salvation “also includes those who acknowledge the Creator” — including Muslims, “who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.”

Lumen Gentium declares: “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life.”

From the exclusivist position of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, the Catholic Church evolved to become inclusivist in both Nostra Aetate and Lumen Gentium.

The teachings of Vatican II have been applied by succeeding popes, including Pope Benedict XVI. The late German pontiff, who is often caricatured by media as intolerant, actually followed the lead of Pope John Paul II in convening different religious leaders in Assisi, Italy, for an interreligious meeting in 2011.

(Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, did not attend the Assisi interreligious meeting convened by his boss John Paul II in 1986. Ratzinger, as doctrinal chief of the Vatican under John Paul II, opposed the Assisi meeting. But I guess it is true: the office changes the person.)

Benedict XVI even spoke kindly of agnostics, and even introduced a change to John Paul II’s Assisi legacy in 2011 by inviting atheists.

Providing a modern-day interpretation of Matthew 21:32, Benedict XVI said in a September 2011 homily in Germany: “Agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of their sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is ‘routine’ and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting it touch their hearts, or letting the faith touch their hearts.”

At Assisi in October 2011, Benedict XVI described agnostics as “people to whom the gift of faith has not been given, but who are nevertheless on the lookout for truth, searching for God.”

“Such people do not simply assert: ‘There is no God.’ They suffer from his absence and yet are inwardly making their way towards him, inasmuch as they seek truth and goodness. They are ‘pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace,’” said Benedict XVI. 

By embracing believers and nonbelievers alike, Francis, in a way, follows the lead of Benedict.

The question now is, by stating that “all religions are a path to God,” is Pope Francis taking an inclusivist or a pluralist stance?

It can be interpreted as a pluralist statement because of the word “all.”

But it can also be interpreted as inclusivist because, if we look at his statement closely, the Pope is putting certain religions in a position of privilege.

The Pope, after all, declares that “there is only one God.” But there are religions with many gods, such as Hinduism, or religions with no god, such as Buddhism. 

The Pope’s statement, therefore, adopts the worldview of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, those who believe in one God. His statement is not as pluralist as many would like to believe, because it puts certain religions on a pedestal.

If it is inclusivist, then, does it not merely echo Vatican II? 

By saying “all religions are a path to God,” did Pope Francis change any church teaching? – Rappler.com