Fr. Michael Muller is quite, quite, quite wrong.
People only believe in other religions because every religion, to be believed, must contain some seed of truth. Insofar as any religion contains any truth, that truth is Christ.
So, to say "I respect every religion" is another way to say, "I see the kernel of truth that is Christ which shines forth in that religion."
True, every non-Catholic Faith has much which is not Christ, much of every religion is falsehood. Where there is falsehood, we see Truth twisted, Christ whipped, crucified and crowned with thorns within, and yet that seed of Christ's blood is what attracts them. And that much we not only CAN respect, but we MUST respect, for Christ is there, calling out through the blood and suffering which wraps every other religion like a shroud, His life lies within or no man would follow.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 comments:
Sorry, but I can see no logical or factual error in what Father Mueller wrote. Your comments, on the other hand, are fallacious.
"People only believe in other religions because every religion, to be believed, must contain some seed of truth."
On the contrary, that obviously isn't the only reason that people believe false religions. Usually the reason people believe false religions is because they adhere specifically to the distinctive errors of those false religions, not merely or chiefly to the truths that might be intermingled with the errors. (The adherence to the distinctive errors is the whole point of belonging to their particular religion instead of to another one.) They believe those errors because of how they were raised, the culture in which they were formed, or because they are attached to some sin that the errors of their religions enable or facilitate.
"Insofar as any religion contains any truth, that truth is Christ."
Quite so. But that doesn't make a false religion worthy of respect. It is the adherents of the religion who must be respected, not their false beliefs. This is why the Catholic Church rejects religious indifferentism, syncretism, idolatry, and heresy.
"So, to say 'I respect every religion' is another way to say, 'I see the kernel of truth that is Christ which shines forth in that religion.'"
Obviously "I respect every religion" is not another way of saying that one recognizes the kernels of truth that might exist in a false religion. The statements aren't in any way synonymous. Sure, one could say the one thing in order to mean the other, but one would have to immediately follow up with a clarification to that effect, because that's not what most people mean by "I respect every religion," nor is there anything about those four words that necessitates that one interpret them in the way you claim they must always be interpreted. Their plain meaning is, in fact, just as Father Mueller said -- that they imply the error of religious indifferentism. Thus, in claiming that Father Mueller is wrong, you fall into serious error.
Finally, the words of the great Solzhenitsyn have no bearing on this question. Father Mueller is referring to religious propositions, which are either worthy of respect or not. He's not talking about individual persons as Solzhenitsyn was. You have conflated "belief" with "believer."
Father Mueller is quite correct. You are quite, quite, quite wrong.
Good post.
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