Chapter 26 - FILL IN HERE
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Searching and Dialogue, Death of the
Missionary Spirit
The liberal Catholic spirit, as we have seen, does not have enough confidence in the truth. The conciliar spirit loses the hope of ever attaining the truth: beyond a doubt the truth exists, but it is the object of an indefinite pursuit.
That means, as we shall see, that society cannot be organized in the truth, the Truth which is Jesus Christ. In all of this, the key-word is searching—or again orientation, tendency towards the truth, appeal to the truth, advancing towards the truth. The conciliar and post-conciliar jargon abounds in this vocabulary of movement and of dynamics.
The Vatican II Council indeed canonized searching in its Declaration on Religious Liberty: “The truth must be sought according to the manner proper to the human person and to his social nature, namely, by means of a free investigation…” The Council puts searching into the first place, ahead of instruction and education! Reality however, is otherwise: children develop strong religious convictions by a solid education. Once they are acquired, anchored in the minds, and expressed in religious worship, why search anymore? Moreover, unrestricted research has very rarely led to religious and philosophical truth. The great Aristotle is not immune from errors. The philosophy of open investigation results in the philosophy of Hegel. What is there to say of the supernatural truths? Speaking about the pagans, here is what Saint Paul writes: “How will they believe, if no one preaches to them? How will anyone preach to them, if missionaries are not sent?1
It is not the search that the Church must proclaim, but the need for the mission: “Go, teach all nations.” (Mt. 28:19) such is the only order given by Our Lord. How many souls will be able to find the truth and remain in the truth without the help of the magisterium of the Church? This free searching is a total unreality and at the end of the day, a radical naturalism.
In practice, what is it that distinguishes a free searcher from a free thinker?
The Values of the Other Religions
The Council took pleasure in exalting the salvific values, or the values—period—of the other religions. Speaking of the non-Catholic Christian religions, Vatican II teaches that “Although we believe them to be victims of deficiencies, they are not in any way devoid of meaning and of value in the mystery of salvation"2 This is a heresy! The only means of salvation is the Catholic Church. Insofar as they are separated from the unity of the true Faith, the Protestant communions cannot be operated by the Holy Ghost. He can act only directly on souls or make use of the means (for example, Baptism) which, in themselves, do not bear any indication of separation.
One can be saved in Protestantism, but not by Protestantism! In heaven there are no Protestants, there are only Catholics!
With regard to the non-Christian religions, this is what the Council declares:
The Catholic Church does not reject anything which is true and holy in these religions. It considers with respect these ways of acting and of living, these rules and these doctrines, which, although they differ on many points from what It itself holds and proposes, nevertheless, brings a ray of the truth that enlightens all men.3
What? I should respect the polygamy and the immorality of Islam? Or the idolatry of Hinduism? To be sure, these religions can keep some sound elements, signs of natural religion and natural occasions for salvation. They can even preserve some remainders of the primitive revelation (God, the fall, a salvation) which are hidden supernatural values that the grace of God could use in order to kindle in some people the flame of a dawning faith. None of these values belongs in its own right to these false religions. Their attributes are their aberration far from the truth: the deficiency of faith, the absence of grace, superstition, and even idolatry. For these people, these false cults are only “vanity and affliction of spirit,” if not even forms of worship rendered to the demons! The wholesome elements that can subsist still belong by right to the sole true Religion, that of the Catholic Church; and it is this alone that can act through these elements.
Religious Syncretism
To speak, therefore, of the values for salvation in other religions, I repeat, is a heresy! “To respect their ways of acting and their doctrines” is a way of talking which scandalizes true Christians. Go speak to our African Catholics about respecting the animist rites! If a Christian were caught while participating in such rites, he would be suspected of apostasy and excluded from the mission for a year. When you reflect, John Paul II made such an animistic gesture in Togo4. Likewise at Madras, February 5, 1986, a sugar cane was brought into his presence woven in the form of a cross, which signifies the Hindu offering to the carnal god; then, during the offertory procession, some coconuts were brought to the altar, a typical offering of the Hindu religion to its idols. Finally, a woman placed the sacred ashes on John Paul II by running her hand across his forehead.5 The scandal of the true Indian Catholics was at its height. To these people, confronted daily in all the corners of the streets with the idolatrous temples and the mythological beliefs of the Buddhists and the Hindus, it is not necessary to go and speak of “recognizing, preserving, and helping to advance the spiritual, moral, and socio-cultural values which are found in these religions.“6
If, in the first centuries, the Church was able to baptize pagan temples or consecrate the days of the pagan festivities, it is because its prudence avoided upsetting respectable customs and because its wisdom knew how to discern the elements of natural piety that were not to be suppressed from the idolatrous hodgepodge of which it had cleansed the minds of the new converts. Throughout the history of the missions, the Church has not lacked this spirit of intelligent mercy. Is it not the Church’s note of Catholicity precisely its capacity to reunite in a sublime unity of faith the peoples of all times, of all races, and of all localities, without suppressing their legitimate diversities? It can be said that the discernment was made a long time ago, in regard to all religions, and that there is no more to do! Thereupon Vatican II comes to ask of us a new respect, a new discernment, a new assimilation, and a new construction. In what terms! In what concrete applications! This is called enculturation. No, that is not the wisdom of the Church!
The spirit of the Church has led it to inscribe in its liturgy some timely words, intended for our time, under Pope Pius XII, a little before the Council: read the offertory prayer from the Mass of the Sovereign Pontiffs, extracted from the divine calling of the prophet Jeremias:7
Behold I have put my words into thy mouth, behold I have established thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root up and to destroy, to build and to plant.
For my part, I never attempted to convert the hut of an animist priest into a chapel. When a sorcerer died (often by poison!), we immediately burned his hut to the great joy of the children! In the sight of all tradition, the order given by John Paul II in Redemptor hominis: “Never destruction, but taking into account of values, and a new construction” is nothing less than the utopia of an armchair theologian. Indeed, clear-headed or not, this is an explicit urging on to religious syncretism.
Dialogue
Dialogue is not a discovery of the Council. Paul VI in Ecclesiam suam8 is its author: dialogue with the world, dialogue with the other religions. It therefore must be admitted that the Council singularly aggravated the liberal tendency. Thus:
The truth must be sought…by means…of exchange and dialogue, by which some [people] set forth to the others the truth that they have found, or think that they have found, in order to help each other reciprocally in the search for truth.9
Hence, in the same way as the unbeliever, the believer should always be searching! St. Paul, however, really pinned down the false doctors “who are always learning, without ever arriving at the knowledge of the truth”!10 For his part, the unbeliever could provide the believer with the elements of truth that are lacking to him! The Holy Office, in its instruction of December 20, 1949 on ecumenism, nevertheless dispelled this error and, speaking of the return of the separated Christians to the Catholic Church, said: “We will, however, avoid speaking on this point in such a manner that, in coming back to the Church, they delude themselves that they are providing it with an essential element that it would have been lacking up to now.“11 Contact with non-Catholics can supply is what is found from human experience, but not doctrinal elements!
Furthermore, the Council considerably altered the attitude of the Church towards other religions, the non-Christian ones in particular. I had a conversation on September 13, 1975, with the secretary of Bishop Nestor Adam, then the bishop of Sion. This secretary came to agree with me: “Yes, something has changed in the missionary orientation of the Church,” but he added: “It was necessary that this change take place.” He said to me, “For example, now, in those [souls] who are not Christians, or in those who are separated from the Church, we look at what there is of good, the positive, in them. We try to discern, in the values that they possess, the seeds of their salvation.”
Of course, every error has its true, positive aspects. There is no error in the pure state, just as absolute evil does not exist. Evil is the corruption of a good and error is the corruption of the truth (in a subject that nonetheless keeps its nature, certain natural qualities, and certain truths). There is very great danger in basing oneself on the residue of truth that error preserves. What would we think of a doctor who, called to the bedside of a sick person, would declare, “Oh, but this person still has something; it’s not as bad as it seems!” In regard to the sickness, there would be no use in saying to this doctor, “But then, look at the sickness, can’t you see that he is sick? He has to be taken care of, or he is going to die!” He would reply, “Oh, after all, he is not as bad as all that. Besides, my method is to pay no attention to the disease that is in my patients—that is negative—but to the remainder of health that is in them.”
In such a case, I would say, let us leave the sick to die their peaceful death! The result is that, by dint of our saying to non-Catholics or non-Christians, “After all, you have an upright conscience, you have some means of salvation,” they wind up by believing that they are not sick. How are we supposed to convert them after that?
Now, this spirit has never been that of the Church. On the contrary, the missionary spirit has always been to show the sick their wounds openly so as to heal them and to bring them the remedies that they need. To stand before non-Christians, without telling them that they need the Christian Religion and that they cannot be saved except through Our Lord Jesus Christ, is an inhuman cruelty. In the beginning of a private conversation, to make a captatio benevolentiæ by praising whatever is honorable in their religion is indeed legitimate. To raise that up to being a doctrinal principle is an error; it is to deceive souls! The salvific value of other religions is a heresy! To make a basis of this for the missionary apostolate is to wish to keep souls in error! This dialogue is anti-missionary to the highest degree! Our Lord sent his Apostles not to dialogue, but to preach! Now, as it is this spirit of liberal dialogue that has been inculcated since the Council in the priests and the missionaries, we can understand why the conciliar Church has completely lost the missionary zeal, the very spirit of the Church!
Enough has been said about free searching and dialogue; let us go on from there to the outcome of these conciliar discoveries, namely, religious liberty. We will discuss it in its historical, then its individual, and finally, in its social aspects.
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1 Romans 10:15
2 Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, n.3.
3 Declaration on the Non-Christian Religions, Nostra aetate, n.2.
4 Observatore Romano, August 11, 1985, p.5.
5 It is a question of the “Tilac” that John Paul II received on February 2nd at Delhi (cf. Fideliter, n.51, p. 3), but of the sacred ashes or “Vibhuti” (cf. Indian Express, February 6th, 1986).
6 Vatican II, Nostra aetate, n.2.
7 Jer. 1:10.
8 August 6, 1964.
9 Dignitatis humanae n.3.
10 II Tim. 3:7
11 Instruction “de motione oecumenica.”