Pope disconcerts faithful again stating all religions are equivalent

It’s a U-turn compared to his predecessor, a step backwards of more than two thousand years in the history of religions, and - an unacceptable pronouncement by any Christian - the cancellation of the heart of the Christian event. Pope Francis' remarks on the occasion of the meeting with the youth at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore leave no room for misunderstanding: for the Pope, all religions lead to God, just as all roads lead to Rome, without conceding even the smallest preference and appreciation for Christianity.

Yesterday's exhortation to interreligious dialogue, on 13 September, is in fact the tombstone not only of interreligious dialogue itself, as conceived by the Catholic Church, but of the very meaning of Christianity: ‘One of the things that has struck me most about you young people, about you here, is the capacity for interreligious dialogue. And this is very important, because if you start arguing: ‘my religion is more important than yours...’, ‘mine is the true one, yours is not true...’. Where does all this lead? Where, somebody answer, where? [someone answers, ‘Destruction’]. It is like this. All religions are a path to God. They are - I make a comparison - like different languages, different idioms, to get there. But God is God for all. And because God is God for all, we are all God's children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’ Is this true? There is only one God and we, our religions are languages, paths to God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths. Understood?’

These words that would sound like a disarming platitude on anyone's lips, but when pronounced by the successor of the Apostle Peter, whose ministry exists to confirm his brothers in the faith, not to disorient them, leave one very perplexed. Instead, Francis, reinterprets it in his own way, as if St. Peter had begun a dialogue with Jews and pagans, telling them that Christ's death and resurrection brought nothing substantially decisive to human history, except a new alternative route to God, but still optional and without the claim of being the only true one. Like the variant of a motorway.

Perhaps the pope believes that the statement that Jesus Christ himself made - ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14:6) - was the typo of some copyist; or a reinterpretation of the Lord's disciples, who had not yet understood anything about interreligious dialogue; or even a delirium of omnipotence of Jesus Christ, who had got it into his head to think he was God. If you know me, you will also know the Father' (Jn 14:6-7): a decidedly opposite “perspective” to that of the pope.

It is not an exaggeration to claim that Pope Francis' perspective is not only to deny that the Christian religion is the only true one, the only one capable of leading to God. By putting it on the same level as any other religious path for mankind, means denying the self-revelation that Christ makes of Himself in the holy Gospels, taught by the Church since its foundation; it means to reject that mankind can in no way come to God, though they seek Him, except through Jesus Christ and His Church; it means to have understood nothing of the necessity of being redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ through baptism, and incorporated into His Church. It means precisely to apostatise from the entire Catholic faith and not to err in any of its points.

Incomprehensible then is the superficiality with which the Pope liquidates the question of the truth of religion. For centuries, the main concern of the Fathers, the Doctors, and theologians has been to show how Christianity is the fulfilment of religio vera. Cardinal Ratzinger, recalling the comparison between Saint Augustine and Varro, had explained with extreme clarity that in Christianity something ‘astonishing’ had taken place: ‘the two fundamental principles of Christianity apparently in contrast, the link to metaphysics and the link to history, condition themselves and relate to each other; together they constitute the apologia of Christianity as religio vera’ (The Victory of Intelligence over the World of Religions, ‘30 Days’, January 2000). Translated: truth, the eternal and primordial Logos, has entered into history, creating the embrace between religion and philosophy; the historical form assumed by the Word constitutes the definitive unveiling of truth, thus definitively establishing Christianity as the true religion, not simply in its principles or, as we say today, in its ‘values’, but precisely in its historical form that is the Catholic Church.

The good news is right here: mankind is no longer left to its own devices in its search for truth, nor even in its yearning for the divine, a yearning that is systematically doomed to failure, until God comes to meet them. And God made Himself known to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ, God made mankind so that mankind could share in the divine life.

With his wretched utterances, Francis wipes out the meaning of Christianity, the meaning of the incarnation of the Word and his Passion, reducing Christianity to a religion among others and even nullifying mankind's search for the truth about God. These are serious statements that nullify the meaning of Incarnation and Redemption and therefore cannot go unnoticed by the College of Cardinals and all Catholic bishops.