Introduction

This article presents the Church’s teachings on other religions. To “think with the Church” allows ample room for critical exploration and development of arguments and engagement with a wide range of issues. We will begin with teachings on our topic from the Magisterium—the universal councils of the Church, the bishops speaking together, certain teachings by popes, and authoritative statements from pontifical offices within the Vatican.{1} However, every text has elicited disputed interpretations among Catholic theologians, so occasionally I will refer to these debates. Nonetheless, one can formulate a basic orientation toward the religions of the world from authoritative Catholic sources. In what follows, I will first outline the biblical and historical background to arrive at a proper understanding of contemporary (Vatican II and after) Catholic teaching on this matter.

I. The Catholic Teaching on Other Religions

Biblical and Early Church Background

Three interesting attitudes toward the religiously pluralist reality, already discernible within the first few centuries, continue to shape contemporary Catholicism.{2} First, there was a clear emphasis on the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, echoing John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” This faith had an ecclesial dimension, including the necessity for baptism into Christ’s body, so that membership in the Church (in the case of adults, always assuming active faith, hope, and love in the person’s heart) was required for salvation (Acts 2:23, 41; 8:12–13; 16:15, 31–33; Mt 28:19; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; 3:27; Rom 6:3–4). This first emphasis meant that Christianity was a vigorously missionary religion with an explicit desire to convert all peoples. This found expression in the famous axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus teaching (no salvation outside the Church), which was taught at the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century, but which originates from as early as the second century and was confirmed by St. Augustine. It is still taught in the Catholic Church despite misreadings of the Council. This missionary drive excluded no religion or culture, although Jewish rejection of the Gospel was always an embarrassment in the early days of the Church and eventually led to a strong anti-Jewish polemic (which has been addressed in the Vatican II Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra aetate [October 28, 1965], no. 4—see below).

The necessity of faith and baptism into Christ presupposed that God created the world good and that the fall brought about death and alienation between humans and God (Gn 3; Rom 5:12–21; Lk 11:21–22; Jn 16:11). This breach between God and humanity was initiated by Adam and Eve and meant that all humans were born into sin. There were different models employed to understand the transmission of this “original” sin and much discussion on the matter of those infants who died without baptism. However, the basic drama relates to the history of restoration of the broken covenant between God and humans, which begins in Israel and Abraham’s response to God, and which comes to its full and eschatological completion in Jesus Christ. It is important to note that until the last century there has generally been what might be called a salvation-pessimism about the fate of non-Christians. That is, there was an assumption that because of sin, non-Christians may well be lost. This salvation-pessimism was never part of formal magisterial teaching. In contrast, the nineteenth century onward can be characterized by a salvation-optimism, which is always in danger of playing down the power of sin and exalting the scope of human goodness. Doctrinally and biblically, human goodness, while being a wonderful reality, is insufficient for salvation: men and women cannot save themselves by their own righteousness.

Second, various early Christian intellectuals had learned greatly from Greek philosophy and could not help but wonder at the wisdom they had found there: truths that were consonant with revelation, moral exhortation of a high order, and philosophical frameworks that allowed for the sophisticated explication of Christian revelation and for its defense against philosophical attacks. Such apologists developed three crucial theories to explain pagan wisdom: the prisca theologia (ancient theology), the praeparatio evangelica (the preparation for the Gospel), and the semina verbi (the seeds of the Word). The first held that all pagan wisdom was actually an explicit or unacknowledged borrowing from the Old Testament—a theory of a form of intellectual plagiarism. The latter two theories, by contrast, argued that God provided knowledge in nature and in cultures that prepared people for the truth of the Gospel, and such truth, goodness, and beauty outside of Christianity are always derived causally from God’s Word. These truths prepared the person for salvation through cultivating the good life, but they were not in themselves saving revelation—which came through Christ. Such truths found their fulfillment and culmination in Christ.

Third, the early Christians were faced with the question of the righteous of Israel: Abraham, Sarah, Moses, and many saints of the Old Testament, who included non-Jews like Melchizedek, Ruth, and Job. Were they lost because they were born before the time of Christ? Since the early Christians were Jewish, they would have known the devout and holy patterns of some of their own parents and grandparents and, further, the great towering figures of the biblical world. The saints of Israel had valid faith in God, for they partook of the very covenant that is the root on to which the Church was grafted (Rom 11:11–24). Ideas of the justice of God (in tandem with passages like Acts 2:7; Rom 10:6–7; Eph 4:8–9; 1 Pt 3:18–20) led to the notion that these righteous awaited the coming of Christ, who, as the creed has it, descendit ad inferos, “descended into hell / the underworld,” where he preached salvation to the righteous so that they might be saved.{3} This scenario led to the idea of the limbus patrum (the limbo of the fathers) as a kind of space for the righteous who died before Christ. In the third century Clement of Alexandria and others argued that righteous pagans had also been in the limbus patrum, which suggested the possibility of salvation for all the righteous, not just the righteous Israelites. Augustine likewise insisted on an invisible church, which existed from the time of Abel, composed of the righteous. For all these thinkers, the assumption was that after Christ came, no one was in an analogous position to these righteous gentiles and pre-Christian Jews.{4}

Together, these three insights run throughout Christian history, with varying emphases that lead to the following points in Catholic teaching: (1) the necessity of Christ and His Church for salvation; (2) the justice of God toward the righteous before the coming of Christ; (3) the possibility of goodness, truth, and beauty being present in pagan traditions, but never in a manner equal to Christ and His sacramental presence in the Church. However, the modern period introduces a new hermeneutical context within which these teachings are received.

The Medieval and Early Modern Period

Until the age of discovery in the fifteenth century, it was often assumed that after the time of Christ everyone knew the gospel, because of the extent of missionary activity. If a person was not a Christian, they had probably explicitly rejected the truth of God. This meant that Jews and eventually Muslims (from the seventh century onward) were seen as willful sinners, apostates, and heretics, rather than genuinely “other”, as we sometimes view these and other traditions today. The age of colonialism also brought on a development in doctrinal theology with the discovery of the “new world”, in which millions of women and men, through no fault of their own, had never heard of the gospel. Some lived impressive moral lives closely related to their religious practices. It was difficult to rely on Thomas Aquinas’s (thirteenth century) speculation that, were there to be a young boy brought up by wolves (and who thus had never heard the Gospel), God’s justice would require that an angel would visit him or that he would have interior revelation.{5} The evidence indicated that angels had not visited non-Christian peoples en masse, and private interior revelations were unrecorded. New thinking was required in a new context. However, this did not change the dogmatic theological view regarding the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation and the damage done by original sin to all humans, even if they had never heard the gospel. They were still guilty of sin and required redemption. However, the existence of such people generated conceptual categories that would help later theologians reflect on these matters.

The sixteenth-century Dominicans of Salamanca Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto planted the seeds for later Catholic theology on this topic in two significant ways. Vitoria (c. 1492–1546) was outraged by the behavior of some of the Spanish missionary conquistadores in South America. He argued that unless the gospel was presented properly, without violence, threat, or coercion, either before or after its preaching, the hearers were under no obligation to accept it and should not be enslaved as a result of their non-acceptance. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) was also deeply critical of certain Spanish military and political authorities for their exploitative ambitions and disregard for the indigenous natives and for their blindness to some peace-loving elements within the Indian civilization they encountered. Las Casas obviously thought mission to be essential, but he also thought it must be conducted justly. Through Spain’s violent encomienda, entire communities were forcibly reduced to slavery by being entrusted to Spanish conquistadores, whom they were required to pay for their tuition in the Spanish language and instruction in the Catholic faith. While contemporary Catholic missionaries are, as a result of this history, deeply sensitive to questions of justice and peace, some missionary groups are today in danger of playing down the necessity of the gospel and Church for salvation.

Second, Domingo de Soto (1494–1560) argued that implicit faith in Christ would suffice for those “who had never heard the gospel” but who had followed the natural law evident in creation through the use of their reason prompted by grace. His argument came about partly through information seeping back from the mission field that called for a serious encounter with the phenomenon of non-Christian religions that demonstrated high moral values and traces of goodness, truth, and beauty. This attitude, which recovered the tradition that allowed for some pagan philosophers to be included in the limbus patrum, contextualized the necessity of the Church for salvation, while nevertheless still viewing it as a binding dogmatic truth. This position, with various qualifications, remains the official Catholic position today, as we will see below.

The Modern Period

There are five important European factors that mark the modern period and that provide a context for understanding contemporary Catholic sensibilities. The implications of all five factors are disputed among those who call for radical change, including in doctrine; others who argue for change because of contemporary circumstances, thus viewing issues of doctrinal continuity as irrelevant; and those who wish to be pastorally sensitive to new situations while continuing to draw from the major doctrinal traditions of the past. While the actual situation is very complex and cannot be reduced to these three positions, this entry follows the latter sensibility.

What are these five factors? First, there was the end of “Christendom”. Europe slowly became secularized, initially through the so-called wars of religions, when Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other; and later through the nation-state’s overcoming of these differences through a unitary identity found in belonging to the state rather than to a particular religion.{6} The second factor that marks the modern period is the profound crisis of two world wars fought in the heart of Christian Europe. Christians slaughtered each other savagely. Partly because of this, many Europeans had little confidence in the cultural resources of their ancient religion, turning to other traditions, new, old, or newly recreated “antiquity,” including the sometimes highly individualized “New Age” religions.{7} Some found solace in modern science, which was perceived to have more authority than religions in its claims. Science also had vast instrumental power and seemed to offer possibilities of “redemption” for millions of people in poverty. Others turned to ethics without religion, drawing on the strong Kantian Enlightenment trajectory that emphasized the centrality of ethics rather than historical revelation. Some intellectuals turned to the “East”, which had been particularly idealized by German Romanticism. This mythical East seemed to offer something different from war and destruction.{8} A third factor was the Holocaust. The slaughter of nearly six million Jews at the heart of a Christian culture raised deep questions about Catholicism’s attitude to the religious “other” and more specifically its own complicity in European anti-Semitism.{9} This trauma was seminal in creating Nostra aetate, inasmuch as that document was initially written as a statement on the Jews and the rejection of the charge of deicide against the Jewish people, then and now.

A fourth factor was the critique of missions from the viewpoint of secular modernity. Many liberal Europeans saw Christian mission as culturally arrogant: it failed to learn from the deep wisdom of the East, bore responsibility for the destruction of primitive and ancient cultures, and falsely valued Christianity over other religions. While there was a grain of truth here, it hardly draws the whole complex picture of missionary work.{10} Fifth and finally, some “prophetic” voices within Catholicism saw the future as requiring a deeper assimilation to modernity. This latter issue is still unresolved in the Catholic Church, although popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have developed a trenchant critique against many aspects of modernity that should certainly call into question any uncritical assimilation.{11}

This background helps us in part to understand the importance of our topic for dogmatic, apologetic, and pastoral reasons. It is also the background that prompted the Second Vatican Council to address the issue of other religions in two of its documents. 

II. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65)

In this section, the article will outline the major teachings of the Catholic Church on the world religions in the light of the Second Vatican Council,{12} and I will argue that we find in the modern teachings central dogmatic continuity with the ancient faith of the Church, but also deepening insights and development in the modern magisterial orientation toward other religions. I contest the notion of doctrinal discontinuity but support the idea of novelty and development of doctrine.

The most important dogmatic statement (in contrast to a pastoral document or declaration) on this question is to be found in The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican Council II, Lumen gentium, November 21, 1964; subsequently LG), no. 16. Before we turn to section 16 in detail, it needs contextualizing. Lumen gentium, in nos. 1–7, reiterates the basic Christian story: God created the world, which was good. After the fall, humans seek the living God and yearn for that original communion, which has been lost. Restoration begins in the people of Israel, and the broken relationship is fully and finally restored in the second Adam, Christ, who is founder of the Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it succinctly:

Although to some extent the People of God in the Old Testament had tried to understand the pathos of the human condition in . . . Genesis, they could not grasp this story’s ultimate meaning, which is revealed only in the light of . . . Christ. We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin. The Spirit-Paraclete, sent by the risen Christ, came to “convict the world concerning sin” (Jn 16:8), by revealing him who is the Redeemer. (CCC 1994, no. 388; see www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm)

Lumen gentium then expands on the Trinitarian foundation of the Church through the Father and the Son who founded the Church through the power of the Spirit (nos. 2–4). It recognizes the way the kingdom is made present in the Church, in its sacramental character but also in the works of charity that follow conversion of the heart, mind, and will to God (no. 5). It shows how the Church is prefigured in the Old Testament (no. 6) and then reflects upon New Testament images of the Church (no. 7), leading to the conclusion that the Church is the sacramental mediator of saving grace:

Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation through which He communicated truth and grace to all (LG, no. 8).

It then states that this unique Church of Christ “subsists [subsistit] in the Catholic Church.” The term “subsists” replaced the term “is” [est] in the original draft, and there has been much discussion about the significance of “subsists”. Some see “subsists” as an intended weakening of the claim, and this explains the change from “is”, while others see a nuancing and deepening of “is” to take proper consideration of other Christian churches and communities.{13} The sentence just quoted continues: “although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG, no. 8). It is arguable that this concern for other Christian churches and communities, shown in the use of “subsist”, was then falsely applied to interpret the status of other religions in too optimistic a manner.{14}

The rest of the document until paragraph 16 delineates the different types of relation and belonging to the Church, first for Catholics and then for other Christians and then, finally, in section 16, for other religions. Catholics are “fully incorporated” (plene incorporantur) into the Church, and catechumens, unbaptized people wishing to join the Church, are “united” (coniunguntur) to the Church in virtue of their desire to join the Church (no. 14). The term voto (desire) is used solely for catechumens. Then we have non-Catholic Christians, who are “joined” (coniuncti) to the Church in various ways, but are “incorporated” (incorporantur) into Christ. Finally, in section 16, the Council turns to non-Christian religions and non-religions. The stage is now set for our topic, and three points are important.

First, Lumen gentium (no. 14) reiterates the ancient teaching: extra ecclesiam nulla salus (there is no salvation outside the Church) but with a different phrase: Docet autem, sacra scriptura et traditione innixa, Ecclesiam hanc peregrinantem necessariam esse ad salutem (“Basing itself on scripture and tradition, it teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation”).{15} The different Latin phrase outlines an important shift of emphasis: the dogmatic truth is reiterated—that Christ and His Church are necessary for salvation—but that truth is now expressed not in negative relation to others, but as a positive teaching about the Church and its binding force upon those who properly hear its proclamation. Hence, this same section ends: “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved” (no. 14). What might be negatively employed against nonculpable non-Christians in the past is now turned into a profound call to mission and humility for Catholic Christians and all those who truly hear the gospel message. But it does not negate the objective claim that the Church is necessary for salvation. Rather there is an acknowledgment that hermeneutically, the way this might apply to different groups requires contextualizing and further theological reflection.

We should note that before the Council there had already been an important clarification on the teaching extra ecclesiam nulla salus when in 1949 the Holy Office, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, condemned the teachings of Leonard Feeney, SJ, who held a literal interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Feeney claimed all non-Catholics were damned, including non-Catholic Christians and those in non-Christian religions. The Holy Office issued a letter against Feeney’s interpretation, making it clear that the teaching did not mean damnation for all those who were not Catholics.{16} The letter stressed that all people who had not explicitly rejected the gospel (we might think of Moses) had a possibility of being “related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unconscious yearning and desire.” Moses denotes, uncontroversially, those before Christ, but it is now accepted that there are those who, like Moses, and through no fault of their own, did not explicitly know of Christ. This teaching would find different expression in the Council, which dropped the notion of “unconscious desire” and “Mystical” Body, as the former was just one model of explaining how this might happen. The Council was not keen to close down discussion in this area, but simply wanted to offer a general orientation. It thus still insisted on a connection to the body of Christ, the Church. The Council also reiterated the clear teaching that those who die not knowing Christ on earth, and even those who do not explicitly know God, might still be saved:

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. (LG, no. 16)

This is not Pelagianism through the back door (salvation by works); rather, this view presumes grace for the possibility of the “good life”. This is important, for otherwise the effects of original sin would be gravely undermined.

Here we have Christological, Trinitarian, and ecclesiological truths welded together in Catholic theology. Christ, the self-revelation of the triune God, through the power of the Spirit, is the source of all salvation. But Christ, through the power of the Spirit, founds the Church, which is His instrument for salvation to the entire world because the Church is the sacramental body of Christ to the world. Thus, all non-Christians who are eventually saved are now related to the Church, oriented (ordinantur) to the Church. The relationship of Christ to the Church and precisely how it is to be explained in the context of the salvation of non-Christians is a matter for Catholic theologians to attend to. The Council was simply laying down the legitimate dogmatic parameters for reflection, reiterating the tradition.

After the Council there have been significant debates about the two central links in this claim: first, whether and how Christ is the sole constitutive cause of all saving grace; and second, whether and how the Church is the means of salvation to those who die outside its visible boundaries but may nevertheless be saved. What is important here is to state those claims and note that there has been considerable discussion about them, which is as yet unresolved.{17}

Second, Lumen gentium, no. 16, addresses the question of non-Christians (those from other religions and from none) and distinguishes their relation to the Church not in terms of those “incorporated”, or “united”, or “joined”, but as those “ordained (ordinantur) in various ways, to the People of God.” In the footnote to the term ordinantur, Aquinas’s Summa theologiae III, q. 8, a. 3, ad. 1, is cited. In that section of the Summa, Thomas is discussing the headship of Christ both to the Church and to all humans and is answering the objection that the unbaptized have no relation to the head, as they are not part of the body (the Church).{18} The answer given by Thomas resists any such decapitation and severance of relation:

Those who are unbaptized, though not actually in the Church, are in the Church potentially. And this potentiality is rooted in two things—first and principally, in the power of Christ, which is sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race; secondly, in free-will.

It should be recalled that Aquinas’s adoption of Aristotelian terms here requires “potentially” to be understood as referring to something in the future, which at present exists only as a germ to be evolved. This potentiality has been variously interpreted since the time of Aquinas, as we saw above in Vitoria and Soto, and see more recently in the work of Karl Rahner.{19} Pius XII used the term ordinantur in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) of those who have not been baptized to say they are “oriented towards [the Church] by a certain unconscious desire and wish” (inscio quodam desiderio ac voto ad mysticum Redemptoris corpus ordinari) (no. 103). Here, Thomas’s “potentiality” is given its future orientation toward actus (being fulfilled) in terms of “unconscious desire”. This matter has been hotly debated since the Council.{20} However, let me make two brief remarks concerning salvation and the eschaton.

First, it is clear that salvation is possible for the non-Christian, yet salvation involves the beatific vision (the direct vision of God as Father, Son, and Spirit), which would imply that salvation for the non-Christian is an eschatological event (as it is for the Christian, in terms of final consummation, not present participation that the Christian enjoys through communion in the Church). It cannot be an event that happens in this life for the non-Christian who dies as a non-Christian, not because they are necessarily lost (which is contrary to Church teaching), or because they lack nobility, holiness, and goodness that might put many a Christian to shame, but simply because to posit the beatific vision for such a person would be epistemologically overriding their freedom. Ontologically, in God’s eyes so to speak, this person is known to be saved, but the personal transforming, epistemological, and ontological reality of this is yet to happen.

The beatific vision will be enjoyed in the eschaton only by Christians: those who have come to know and love God as trinity. All those who are addressed in paragraph 16 of Lumen gentium will eventually come to Christ, even though now they do not know him explicitly. Most Christians, excluding the saints and Mary, while being justified by baptism and faith, will die still lacking purity and perfection, which is what will be required for their participation in the beatific vision. Hence, this sense of seeing the salvation of non-Christians as a future event does not in any way provide a commentary on the individual person. They may be more holy and just than a baptized Christian. However, their religion cannot be objectively true as such, although it may contain many elements of goodness, truth, and beauty, and it might reflect the Light that enlightens all men and women and is a preparation for the fullness of that Light. This leads to neither universalism nor pessimism, but a realistic sense of not knowing the fate of non-Christian individuals.

Second, if we are to uphold Augustine’s teaching that conversion cannot happen after death, a teaching that has been upheld by the majority of the tradition since Augustine’s days and forms one of the parameters within which the Church must try to address the question, have we come to a dead end when dealing with the question of the fate of the non-Christian? Fortunately, there is another way to think about this matter. It is related to the righteous before the coming of Christ. Elements of the tradition teach that Christ descended into hell to save these souls who were destined for paradise but could not yet enter the gates of heaven as they had not yet met Christ. Are there not many millions after Christ who are in an analogous situation? These people have not had the opportunity to hear the gospel but may, through God’s Spirit and thus through the promptings of grace, have followed the dictates of their conscience and the good elements within their religions and thereby sought to follow the good at great personal cost. This does not mean that they have formally accepted Christ, but rather that they would do so, if it were an option put to them with maximal clarity (as in Thomas’s difference between potentiality and actuality). In this sense, their future salvation may be construed.

This analogical application of an ancient doctrine is not without problems, but has the benefit of keeping intact a non-Christian’s freedom, allowing for their decisions in this life (potentiality) to bear full fruit (actuality) and enjoy the beatific vision. Clearly, there is some continuity and discontinuity involved, but we must assume that only God is the just judge who can adjudicate on such questions. After all, it took the thief on the cross a single moment of recognition to be assured of future salvation (Lk 23:39–43). One can imagine that after death he had much inner transformation to undergo before final purification was attained. Augustine, in order not to weaken his argument about conversion after death, argued that he was probably someone who had already been baptized and had fallen away from the Church, but there is little support for such a reading. Admittedly, there is little evidence to directly refute it. Furthermore, it should be remembered that apart from Mary and the saints who enter into heaven immediately, Catholic theology teaches that many who are Christians and are destined for salvation will nevertheless after death enter into an interim stage of further purification and transformation before enjoying the beatific vision. This is called purgatory. Some theologians have utilized these doctrines of purgatory and the limbus patrum (the limbo of the fathers, the place where the righteous before Christ awaited his descent into hell and the opening of the gates of heaven) to provide a solution to an unresolved lacuna in Catholic teaching: how a non-Christian who dies as a non-Christian can be said to be saved, when salvation (as beatific vision of the blessed Trinity) entails a state of which they have no conscious awareness in this life.{21} These are speculative opinions and an attempt to explain the implications of a magisterial teaching that has been explained in other ways.

The metaphoric complexity of both the limbo of the fathers and purgatory should make us wary of pushing these models too far. When writing about the fires of purgatory, Benedict XVI touches on this deepest of mysteries:

Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time . . . it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. (Encyclical Spe salvi [November 30, 2007], no. 47)

 To conclude this section let me summarize what I take to be the Catholic position on the matter: God through Christ is the cause of all salvation, and the Church is Christ’s body on earth, the means by which all grace is mediated. How this grace might be mediated to those outside the Church is an area that is not formally defined, nor resolved, but that this grace is mediated to those outside the Church is affirmed. Catholics can be confident that non-Christians might be saved, and this is the solemn dogmatic teaching on this matter. There is obviously a lot of work for theologians to do in developing, explicating, and defending this teaching, but I think it is the basic teaching of the Catholic Church on these questions. I will now examine an interesting dogmatic development that takes place in magisterial teaching after the Council.

III. The Holy Spirit and the Religions: Magisterial Developments after Vatican II

The Council and Pope Saint John Paul II’s papal teachings after the Council have developed Catholic teaching regarding the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) in some interesting ways. I will briefly summarize some pneumatological points, with minor commentary in places.

First, the Holy Spirit is acknowledged to be at work from the time of creation and before Christ’s incarnation. The Spirit “blows where he will” (Jn 3:8). This is most explicitly found in a passage in John Paul’s encyclical On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World (Dominum et vivificantem, May 18, 1986), no. 53, which draws on Vatican II’s Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad gentes (December 7, 1965; subsequently AG), nos. 4, 11:

We cannot limit ourselves to the two thousand years which have passed since the birth of Christ. We need to go further back, to embrace the whole of the action of the Holy Spirit even before Christ—from the beginning, throughout the world, and especially in the economy of the Old Covenant. For this action has been exercised, in every place and at every time, indeed in every individual, according to the eternal plan of salvation, whereby this action was to be closely linked with the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, which in its turn exercised its influence on those who believed in the future coming of Christ. This is attested to especially in the Letter to the Ephesians (See Eph 1:3–14). Grace, therefore, bears within itself both a Christological aspect and a pneumatological one, which becomes evident above all in those who expressly accept Christ: “In him [in Christ] you . . . were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it” (Eph 1:13f.). . . .

The Second Vatican Council, centered primarily on the theme of the Church, reminds us of the Holy Spirit’s activity also “outside the visible body of the Church.” The Council speaks precisely of “all people of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this Paschal Mystery” (GS, no. 22; LG, no. 16).

We have a twofold direction of activity in the Spirit’s operation related to Christology: (1) in preparing people for Christ before His coming (and perhaps, analogically, preparing people for Christ after the time of Christ); and (2) in applying the fruits of Christ to people after His coming, both to those who have received Him in faith and to others retrospectively (the righteous Jews and gentiles) and prospectively (the righteous of the nations and the religions).

Second, we see that the Holy Spirit can be found in the hearts of non-Christian people and also in their values, cultures, and religions (John Paul II, Encyclical letter Redemptor hominis [The Redeemer of Man, March 4, 1979; subsequently RH] nos. 6, 11; drawing on Vatican II, AG, no. 11; LG, no. 17). This is an important move because it accounts for both the subjective work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of women and men and the fruits of the activity that inheres in their cultural institutions, texts, rituals, and practices. While these latter are not to be understood sacramentally, in an ex opere operato fashion (see below), this does not diminish either the subjective or the historical elements of God’s grace that may be found in the hearts of persons and in visible elements in their religion. Third, the Holy Spirit, at work within these religions, can cause Christians deep shame at their disposition to doubt “truths revealed by God and proclaimed by the Church” (RH, no. 6). It would follow that if the Spirit is at work in other religions, it can also call into question false practices and beliefs held by Christians who have failed to grasp their own faith properly, when, for example, the faithfulness in prayer five times a day or fasting at Ramadan in Islam rightly calls into question the way prayer and fasting are ignored by some Christians. This action of the Spirit will also help deepen the Church’s grasp of the truths that have been given to her in revelation.

Fourth, the Holy Spirit’s work serves as a preparation for the gospel (praeparatio evangelica) and can be understood only in reference to Christ (RH, no. 6). This latter emphasis is important in countering those pneumatologies that have been employed to bypass what is sometimes called the Christological impasse in the theology of religions, the difficult claims regarding the utter uniqueness of Christ. These revisionist moves end up in danger of being binitarian or very vague about the nature of the Holy Spirit (RH, no. 6).{22}

Fifth, the Holy Spirit moves every authentic prayer of those from other religions: “We can indeed maintain that every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person” (John Paul II, Encyclical letter Redemptoris missio [December 7, 1990; subsequently RM], no. 29; drawing on AG, no. 11). This is a profound acknowledgment that when we speak of the Spirit we speak of the deepest longings and desires within a person, which are to be found in the cave of the human heart (RM, no. 29). Finally, and related to the discussion above regarding salvation and the eschaton, it is through the Holy Spirit that every person is offered the “possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery [Christ],” (GS, no. 22) so that all may have the possibility of salvation. These six themes regarding the Holy Spirit are important doctrinal developments in this field. 

Dialogue and Engagement with the Actual Religions in Their Particularity

What precisely does Lumen gentium say about the different non-Christian religious cultures? At this point I will draw from the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra aetate (subsequently NA). A “declaration” has no dogmatic value but here acts as a commentary on the dogmatic claims in Lumen gentium, no. 16. We must recall that Aquinas had already argued that the minimal condition for salvation, following Hebrews 11:6, was faith in a God who rewards good and punishes evil. This became well established in the tradition. Theism (faith in the true God) and morality are the minimal requirements for saving faith. After all, this had sufficed for Israel before Christ.

The Council takes this approach a step forward, recognizing the genuine theism in both Judaism and Islam (assuming that Jews and Muslims have not knowingly rejected the gospel), while also recognizing the sui generis relationship with the Jewish people. It also moves beyond this in positively affirming Hinduism and Buddhism (developed in NA, but only indirectly in LG, no. 16, referring to “shadows” and “images”) in so far as some Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices are not in contradiction to the gospel. First, let me cite the relevant section in Lumen gentium, no. 16, before interlacing Nostra aetate’s comment on Lumen gentium:

Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related [ordinantur] in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh (see Rom 9:4–5). On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues (see Rom 11:28–9). But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the 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. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things (see Acts 17:25–8), and as Saviour wills that all men be saved (see 1 Tim 2:4).

Let me address each religion in turn, interpolating commentary from Nostra aetate into the discussion. 

Judaism

In Lumen gentium the Catholic Church provides a particular reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans that marks a real advance in formally accepting that God does not revoke His covenant with His people, Israel. This formally excludes the notion that Israel’s covenant has come to an end with the coming of Christ—a position that is called supersessionism. While supersessionism was not formally taught by the Magisterium, one might say it was present in the Catholic bloodstream. It also led to heinous forms of anti-Semitism (against Jews as persons) and anti-Judaism (against Judaism as a religion) during certain periods of Church history. The bones of supersessionism entailed the following: the Jews had rejected and killed their messiah; they were punished by God for this; this punishment included being expelled from their land and becoming a wandering people. Many argued that the charge of deicide fueled anti-Judaism, and after the Holocaust nearly all mainline Christian churches have revisited and attempted to dismantle supersessionism. The Catholic Church is in the forefront of this movement, as a result of building blocks laid in Nostra aetate. What were these building blocks? Three, which were particularly important, have been unpacked and unfolded after the Council.

The first was the rejection of the charge of deicide. “Neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during [Jesus’] passion” (NA, no. 4.d). With this single sentence, supersessionism was surgically removed from the body politic. No longer could the Jews be called cursed, no longer were they viewed as people whom God had forsaken, and no longer was their covenant simply abrogated. Catholics cannot move away from the position of fulfillment, given that they claim Jesus is the Jewish messiah who came to fulfill the promises made to the Jewish people. As a result of this, the Council actively rebukes any form of “anti-Semitism levelled at any time or from any source against the Jews” (NA, no. 4). It took thirty-five years and Pope John Paul II to produce a formal repentance for anti-Semitism within Catholicism. This repentance was expressed in the Liturgy of the Day of Pardon presided over by the pope on the first Sunday of Lent in the new millennium. The Church also reflected, in the document “We Remember,” by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, on its part in the Holocaust and the roots of anti-Semitism. This document argued that, while many Catholics were guilty of anti-Semitism and this attitude brings a deep stain upon the Church, nonetheless, this anti-Semitism was not formally taught or attributable to the Church, as the body of Christ. This was not to remove Catholic complicity, but to indicate that Christianity was not anti-Semitic to its core. The Church had within it the resources to address this disease.

Second, Lumen gentium and Nostra aetate both cite Romans 11:28–29. Here Paul underlines that “God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues” (Rom 11:28–29). This verse has led to serious postconciliar theologies that increasingly recognize the implications of this irrevocable covenant. Some of these implications are found summarized in a 2015 document promulgated by what is now the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, “The Gifts,” where it is said that the Church (a) recognizes that the Jewish people are in a living covenant with God (no. 21); (b) acknowledges that the Church can learn from Jewish readings of a common Scripture (the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible) (nos. 7, 13); (c) more controversially, suggests that in the light of the Holocaust and this living covenant, “institutional mission” to the Jews should be eschewed (no. 40), although the Church must witness to its faith; and, also controversially, (d) states that Jews’ being  “participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery” (no. 36). I mention these two latter points to indicate how doctrine has a domino effect in sometimes shifting our perception of issues that we might otherwise ignore. These latter two points require much attention, explication, and defense, and the 2015 document makes it clear that:

The text is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church but is a reflection prepared by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews on current theological questions that have developed since the Second Vatican Council. It is intended to be a starting point for further theological thought with a view to enriching and intensifying the theological dimension of Jewish-Catholic dialogue. (“The Gifts,” Preface)

 Third, Nostra aetate recognizes the Jewish roots of Christianity: Jesus was a practicing Jew, as were his mother and his disciples. It testifies that “the Apostles, the Church’s mainstay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ’s Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people” (NA, no. 4). Later documents would develop this idea, so that in 2015, “The Gifts” would state a startling ecclesiological doctrine: “It is and remains a qualitative definition of the Church of the New Covenant that it consists of Jews and Gentiles, even if the quantitative proportions of Jewish and Gentile Christians may initially give a different impression” (“The Gifts,” no. 43). The recovery of the Jewish identity of the Catholic Church is still in its infancy.{23}

Islam

The postconciliar magisterial developments acknowledge that Islam teaches a genuine theism and a genuine basis for morality, for “along with us they adore [adorant] the one merciful God who will judge humanity on the last day” (LG, no. 16). This is an important dogmatic point. Nostra aetate adds three further points. First, it notes the high esteem in which Jesus is held in Islam and also the honor given to the Virgin Mary, who is “at times devoutly invoked” (NA, no. 3.b). Of course, there is also the common root of Abraham “to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own” (NA, no. 3). Notice that the phrase does not affirm or deny this claim, but states it as a point of possible contact. As with the mention of Jesus, these commonalities operate within the context of a greater and insuperable difference: “Although not acknowledging [Jesus] as God” is the rightful beginning of the sentence just quoted above.{24} This allows for possible points of contact, or what the document calls “what men have in common” (NA, no. 1). Second, the document offers a qualified approval of selected beliefs and practices, rather than some disembodied notion of Islam. The Council notes the Muslims’ “way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting” (NA, no. 4.b), which arise out of Muslim belief and worship of the creator God. Third, as it did with the Jewish people, the Council tries to move forward from periods of very troubled relations between Islam and the Church. The purpose of this move forward is mutual service to the “common good,” as it is the Church’s duty to “foster unity and charity” among individuals, nations, and religions (NA, no. 1). It is worth noting that working together for the common good becomes an established theme regarding Catholics and the world religions after the Council.

Eastern traditions

In Lumen gentium, no. 16, apart from Judaism and Islam, theistic religions, no other religion is mentioned by name. However, the Council’s document provides an analogical concept, which might be applied to non-theistic religions, and which is developed in Nostra aetate, nos. 1–2. This is the deployment of Paul’s speech to the Areopagites regarding the worship of the “Unknown God” in “shadows and images”. The two dogmatic points here are as follows: first, there is an acceptance that non-theistic religions might exemplify a genuine search for God—and, in this sense, Aquinas’s “potentiality” may be analogically extended to apply to them; second, there is a further extension to non-religious cultures that can also be oriented toward the Church. The latter is a remarkable move, given the Catholic Church’s opposition to Communism and secularism, although neither is affirmed per se.

The Eastern traditions are given a little more flesh in Nostra aetate. The Declaration acknowledges that in Hinduism, which contains theistic strands, although it is quite different from Semitic theism (NA, no. 2), there is an exploration of the divine mystery in “myth” and “philosophy” (beliefs) and also in practices. This latter is found in the “ascetical practices” and “profound meditation” present in the non-theistic traditions, and through “recourse to God in confidence and love” in the bhakti devotional traditions. The fact that Hinduism can legitimately accommodate non-Western theism (which gives the status of creation as something ex nihilo, whereas in Hinduism it is either preexisting or illusory) and forms of non-theism is due to the fact that practices, not beliefs, define who is a Hindu. This is something alien for Western Christian minds. While any scholar of Hinduism might balk at this thin description, one should instead perhaps marvel and rejoice that any positive description is being made at all. A door is being opened to serious scholarship and Indology to theologically flesh out and think through these starting points for engagement with a view to realizing the “common good.”{25}

Buddhist beliefs and practices are likewise singled out, even though there are no theistic elements within Buddhism, at least in the sense of Abrahamic theism. Nevertheless, in Pure Land and other forms of Buddhism there are emphases upon “divine” aid. Thus Nostra aetate affirms the insight regarding the “inadequacy of the changing world” and the way Buddhists seek “perfect liberation” and “supreme illumination” “either through their own efforts or by the aid of divine help” (NA, no. 2).

I want to use the example of Buddhism to make a subsidiary point. Nostra aetate is concerned only to encourage positive pastoral orientation. It makes no claims about comprehensive or detailed evaluation of any religious culture. How could it? Hence, it should be no surprise that two intellectually probing popes after the Council have, in their private writings (i.e., writings that have no magisterial authority), made negative judgements about Buddhism. Cardinal Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, suggested in an interview with a French newspaper that in Buddhism the self-help involved in meditation and release amounted to salvation by one’s own efforts and thus might be compared to auto-eroticism. He is reported as saying: “If Buddhism is attractive, it is because it appears as a possibility of touching the infinite and obtaining happiness without having any concrete religious obligations. A spiritual auto-eroticism of some sort.”{26} Pope John Paul II, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, explored the question whether Buddhist meditation and contemplation is the same as meditation and contemplation in orthodox Christianity. Buddhist meditation strives to “wake” one from existential delusions regarding the status of the world. Christian meditation in the Carmelite tradition begins where the Buddha left off. He continues: “Christian mysticism . . . is not born of a purely negative ‘enlightenment.’ It is not born of an awareness of the evil which exists in man’s attachment to the world through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit. Instead, Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the living God” (John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope [London: Jonathan Cape, 1994], 81).{27} These critiques, however, are not condemnations. Taking another religion seriously in terms of what it teaches is part of the process of respectful and informed theological engagement. None of these explorations negate the Church’s positive outreach toward Buddhism.

Vatican II opened the door to scholarship about the religions and theological engagement and reflection on the religions. There is thus room here for both a theology of religions (which is concerned primarily with the dogmatic questions of Christology, Trinity, Church, grace, salvation, etc.) and a theology in engagement with each particular religion (dealing with the different contexts of engagement and thus with often very particular sets of questions).

I should note that Vatican II mentioned only some religions. There are many more in the world, such as Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism, folk and tribal religions, and, in the West, New Religious Movements. The Council could hardly address all these, but it started a process that would orient Catholic scholarship and practice toward a positive and rigorously critical engagement with these traditions. Catholics may have much to learn from this process about the disciplines and practices that help build up the common good, that help men and women resist evil and despair, and that encourage selflessness and service. But none of these things, however true, good, and noble, can displace the necessity of Christ’s call to total conversion to the triune God, to rejecting the depths of sin and violence and falling upon His forgiving grace, knowing that only in this grace is there salvation. Nothing allows the Catholic Christian to forgo offering that which is the greatest gift that they themselves know: Jesus Christ, the transforming and redeeming relationship between God and His creation. Thus, engagement with other religions is inevitably complex in terms of not only acknowledging and rejoicing in that which is true, good, and holy, and in the many promptings of the Holy Spirit, but also respectfully questioning and critically engaging with a given religion.

The Significance of Other Religions in God’s Plan of Salvation

What is the theological status of these religions in the light of the discussions above? There is widespread consensus that Vatican II was silent about the theological status of these religions, neither denying nor affirming that they can be viewed as “salvific means.”{28} The Council itself does use a group of cognate phrases that indicates a reasonably clear answer. In the most important dogmatic document, Lumen gentium, no. 16, we find the significant phrases that these positive elements in the religions and non-religions are “considered by the church as a preparation for the gospel [praeparatio evangelica].”{29} Eusebius and the tradition after him that employed this phrase did not impute any salvific significance to what was to be found in the traditions, but rather held that the truth there at least provided a bridge whereby the gospel might be understood and error abandoned. The prisca theologia (ancient theology) tradition is not invoked, but the semina verbi (seeds of the Word) is. Nostra aetate, no. 2, says of the religions that, while differing from the Catholic Church’s teachings, they nevertheless “often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men.” This is also found in Ad gentes, no. 11, which says that Christians living among non-Christians “should be familiar with their national and religious traditions and uncover with gladness and respect those seeds of the Word which lie hidden among them.” From Justin Martyr onward and in the Council, “seeds” is not used in any way to justify religions per se but denotes them as preparatory, like Aquinas’s potentiality, for the coming of Christ, even while they are immersed in error and superstition.{30}

Given the subsequent heated theological debate on this matter after the Council, the Magisterium issued a specific clarification on this issue: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, August 6, 2000; subsequently DI). Paragraphs 20 to 22 address the intention of the Council teachings and also indicate illegitimate explications from the Council documents. Dominus Iesus acknowledges that while the non-Christian religions may contain truth and goodness moved by the Spirit, nevertheless “it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church towards the eschatological kingdom of God” (DI, no. 21). This thereby counters any form of pluralism de iure (in principle). It also shows why the other religions cannot be understood as a “means of salvation”, as this term is applied uniquely to the Church precisely because of its Christological foundations. It is for this reason that the document is able to say, despite the many positive teachings that are unhesitatingly repeated, that the other religions per se cannot be understood as ways to salvation. Section 21 is important (as are its notes{31}):

Certainly, the various religious traditions contain and offer religious elements which come from God, and which are part of what “the Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures, and religions.” Indeed, some prayers and rituals of the other religions may assume a role of preparation for the Gospel, in that they are occasions or pedagogical helps in which the human heart is prompted to be open to the action of God. One cannot attribute to these, however, a divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific efficacy, which is proper to the Christian sacraments. Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked that other rituals, insofar as they depend on superstitions or other errors (cf. 1 Cor 10:20–21), constitute an obstacle to salvation.

The door is thus closed on trying to establish any form of pluralism de iure,{32} but it is kept open to explore how these religions might be forms of “participated mediation” insofar as their positive elements might actually be part of God’s plan to lead all people to Christ. These positive elements cannot be viewed as positive in themselves, but only as some form of praeparatio. Such a distinction is crucial. Dominus Iesus rightly suggests that this is a question that requires serious theological exploration.

However, it also needs to be said that the “positive elements” that might act in this fashion are not necessarily how those religions would interpret themselves. In some cases the positive elements will be mutually affirmed by both Christians and the other religion, as in almsgiving and fasting, valued by both Muslims and Catholics (and affirmed in Nostra aetate). And in other cases the positive elements might cause deep shame, learning, and wonder in a Catholic—as when Catholics encounter ritual Muslim prayer and silent Buddhist meditation and nonviolent practices in Jainism. Needless to say, these latter topics and how to properly grasp these elements in their cosmological worldview raise many critical questions.

To summarize: while other religions might be affirmed in the way outlined above, they can be seen as part of God’s plan only insofar as they provide a praeparatio to the gospel, but not in themselves as a means of salvation. While saying the latter, there is no implication that non-Christians are damned or that genuine holiness and wisdom are absent from non-Christian religions. We see emerging a nuanced and delicate balance among a group of theological principles that both uphold the ancient orthodox faith of the Catholic Church and positively engage with this new context whereby the other religions are seen as something other than schismatic and heretical cultural configurations. Of course, that they might contain idolatries and heresies of all sorts is also an important continuity in teaching. This point is consistently made in all the documents we have examined.

I have been stressing the positive points of contact, but they cannot be taken seriously and in a balanced manner without fully considering the reality of sin. Lumen gentium, no. 16, adds this ominous and realistic note after the positive appraisal of the religions: “But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator (see Rom 1:21, 25). Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mk 16:16), the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.”

Mission and Inculturation 

I have touched on these two themes above, but it is time to be explicit: What does the Council teach about mission? Three things are clear in numerous Council documents. First, it is the nature of the Church to be a light to all nations, to call all men and women to the good news that Christ has come to bring salvation into the world (LG, no. 1; GS, no. 3; AG, no. 1). There is no exception to the extent of evangelization, for to exclude anyone would be to exclude them from God’s great gift to all men and women. However, evangelization may be different in relation to those who already know the living God (Jews) compared to those who do not (Hindus and Buddhists). Second, while there is a call to universal mission, there is also a call to respect the dignity of every human person and thus their freedom of conscience (besides Ad gentes, the key document here is the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom [Dignitatis humanae, December 7, 1965], no. 3). No one should be coerced to follow Christ, and mission does not call for disrespect or the belittling of other beliefs and practices. Third, mission means planting Christian communities in every nation so that all cultures and creation can join in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the triune God. Mission involves the gradual transformation of the Church through a critically sifted process of inculturation.

This third point is worth dwelling on further, for it raises an important question: What elements from other religions might transform future Christian practices and beliefs? The answer is, in principle, simple: anything that is good, true, and holy in the cultures of the world can and should be incorporated into the Church if it is not already there. In practice, the answer is far more complex. After the discovery of the New World, as it was called, Catholic missionaries engaged with all types of religious cultures, some of which had appalling dark elements and others of which elicited high praise and respect. It goes without saying that the same was true for the missionaries’ own religious culture. Discerning dark from light is sometimes complex, and incorporating the good and positive elements likewise. Today, for example, we would not necessarily share the judgement of a Jesuit in India who found in the practice of widow immolation (sati) something so noble and dutiful that it would truly challenge Hindus if Christians could engage in such self-sacrificial martyrdom!{33} His point, nevertheless, was important. Likewise in India, some Catholic missionaries were perhaps uniquely able to appreciate what some of the Protestant missionaries could only see as Hindu “idol worship” in the practices of Hindu pūjā (those same Protestant missionaries sometimes saw idol worship in the practices of Catholicism!). Regarding inculturation (the use of cultures to give shape and form to the proclamation of the gospel), it is a fair generalization to say that within Catholicism the Western Latin tradition dominated for historical and geographical reasons. As St. John Henry Newman has argued, the Latin tradition was a long slow process of critical inculturation of Greek and Roman traditions, practices, and concepts.{34} The inculturation of positive elements from non-Christian traditions forms the historical explication of faith, which, as faith, cannot be reduced to any single culture. In this sense, although these elements might be Western in their origins, they have universal patrimony for all Christians if they have been received by the Church, for they form that which is called tradition, and tradition contains all sorts of normative statements (in Councils, etc.) that are determinative for shaping developments and articulations of the faith in different cultural mediums. With the slow crumbling of European economic and political power this issue will become more and more acute in the Western Latin tradition. In 1659, in the early days of the discovery of the new non-European worlds, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith issued an instruction to new missionaries to China regarding the matter of adapting to local customs and respecting the habits of the countries to be evangelized:

Do not act with zeal, do not put forward any arguments to convince these peoples to change their rites, their customs or their usages, except if they are evidently contrary to the religion and morality. What would be more absurd than to bring France, Spain, Italy or any other European country to the Chinese? Do not bring to them our countries, but instead bring to them the faith, a faith that does not reject or hurt the rites, nor the usages of any people, provided that these are not distasteful, but that instead keeps and protects them.{35}

It might be said that the famous Chinese rites controversy was not about inculturation, but rather was a battle between the Dominicans and Jesuits. Pope Pius XII, when in 1939 he lifted the ban of 1705 against using local rites, was in part politically motivated, for he sought to free up the Catholic Church’s operations in China.{36}

Lumen gentium continues in this tradition of respect for cultures but with a sharp critical eye, recognizing that the process of inculturation will often transform the elements of that which is incorporated: “Through her work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God, the confusion of the devil and the happiness of man” (LG, no. 17). An example from the Church in Asia will be helpful here. Some Catholics employ meditational techniques from the yoga tradition of Hinduism and from Japanese Buddhist practices. Breathing, posture, stillness, and concentration, it is sometimes claimed, are immensely helpful ways of stilling the mind to be receptive to God. Examples could be drawn from the French Benedictine Dom Henri Le Saux, later called Swami Abshiktananda, who learned meditation under a Hindu guru, or the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who found great wisdom in Zen meditation to enrich his own contemplative Trappist tradition.{37} Furthermore, some Asian Catholics are trying to think through dogmatics with the aid of Sankara and Ramanuja in the same way that Aquinas employed Aristotle.{38} As Lumen gentium put it, all that is good in people’s hearts, rites, and cultures will be raised and purified in this transformation into a hymn of praise to God when incorporated into a church that we might find very difficult to recognize.

While there are important and exciting developments, some critical problems should also be registered, for the stream of engagement with other religions and cultures contains complex currents. Can a theologian legitimately drawing on Sankara simply dismiss the Latin heritage as “European,” so that the Indian Church is not tied to this Latin tradition, as is argued by some radical Indian theologians?{39} John Paul II argued against such a move in his encyclical Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio, 1998), no. 72: “the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and history.” This is not to privilege the Greco-Latin heritage, for he then continues: “This criterion is valid for the Church in every age, even for the Church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes from today’s engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this inheritance fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves into the future.” What is at stake here is valuing different traditions and allowing fresh formulations to be accountable to the Bible and earlier traditions. The Magisterium is the final arbiter when traditions conflict rather than symphonically reflect God’s truth.

In the West we have seen this issue arise with the employment of Marx by some (but not all) liberation theologians. One must be sensitive to the way some philosophies and practices can contain presuppositions and accompanying worldviews that, if not challenged and questioned, can render “inculturation” mere uncritical assimilation. When this happens, as in the case of some forms of liberation theology, the Church can suddenly be viewed in primarily sociological categories of power rather than in sacramental terms. And with the use of some types of Eastern meditational practices by Christians, this “inculturation” might (though it need not) lead to pseudo-Gnosticism, which aims to liberate the soul from matter and body into a state of superior knowledge. It might also lead to Messalianism, named after the fourth-century charismatics who identified the redeeming grace of the Holy Spirit with the experiences of His sustaining and enlivening presence in the soul. Both errors are in danger of attempting to overcome the distance separating creature from creator and to bypass the humanity of Christ and the sacraments of the Church. These are only dangers, not intrinsic to proper inculturation, but they happen when uncritical syncretism or assimilation takes place.{40} We ought to note these dangers, but they should in no way inhibit critical inculturation as affirmed in Lumen gentium, as the Church’s very Catholicity is otherwise compromised.

In the future, who knows what the Indian Catholic Church might look like in its customs and rites and theology. And this organic growth, when it occurs under the guidance of the bishops, can be understood as the Holy Spirit’s uncovering ever anew the face of Christ. Christ’s face is both known and unknown, but never seen in its fullness until we come to see Christ face to face in the eschaton. The Vatican called upon the Benedictine and Cistercian monastic orders, precisely those trained in meditation and prayer, to engage with Eastern religious traditions and communities to further this important quest for both better understanding of the Other and deep learning through this process. The Monastic Interreligious Dialogue committee has developed its activities over many years and in many different countries.{41}

Social Justice

As we have seen, the relation between religions from a Catholic perspective has been profoundly oriented toward the common good.{42} There are two points to emphasize regarding this issue. First, Catholics are required to work with all people of good will to attain the common good of society, nationally and internationally. Poverty, the environment, the arms race, and the oppression of women and children all over the world are just some of the horrendous crimes that cry out to God. Christians are called to address these problems in every way they can, and that includes working with those from other religions to bring about the common good (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church [Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004], nos. 164–70). These alliances can be grassroots communities working to build a well together, or they can be local groups lobbying politicians, or official international bodies coming together, like the Vatican and certain Muslim states working in tandem to put pressure on the United Nations regarding issues of fertility. Of course, issues of social justice might also entail questioning and challenging religious communities with whom Christians share social space. Hence, the Indian and Pakistani Catholic bishops have repeatedly criticized legislation in those two countries as being anti-Catholic or against the common good, which requires equal rights for all religious communities. The Vatican has made recent demands for reciprocal rights to be granted to Christians in Muslim countries that Muslims enjoy in most Western democracies. Clearly, putting the common good at the center might entail working together with other religions and might sometimes entail working against other religions. The important point here is that there is no inhibition about social cooperation and mutual political activity between religions.

Second, some Catholic theologians have called for a prioritizing of sociopolitical liberation as the basis of interfaith dialogue; while this position is attractive, it also has problems.{43} It is attractive because the gospel is fully oriented to the poor, the outcast, and the marginalized, and they should rightly be a priority, or as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church puts it: “The principle of the universal destination of goods requires that the poor, the marginalized and in all cases those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern. To this end, the preferential option for the poor should be reaffirmed in all its force” (no. 182). But this very prioritizing, as is argued in the Compendium, is based on God’s plan for humanity as disclosed in Christ, so that it is impossible to bypass the question of truth and instead prioritize social justice. For social justice is rooted in both Christ and the natural law that is ordered toward Him. One can understand that some might be impatient with philosophical and theological argumentation between religions while millions die of poverty, but if we are to address the full complexity of the question of the relation between religions, there is no use trying to bypass the central issues of intellectual truth as if they were divorced from practices. 

Conclusion

I want to commend the approach I have outlined above because it remains faithful to the ancient dogmatic teachings of the Christian Church while applying and thinking them through in a very new context. It remains faithful to Christ and the revelation of the triune God, it remains faithful to Christ’s founding of the Church as the means of salvation for all people, and yet without compromising these foundational tenets, it reaches out to other religions and their adherents in the spirit of cooperation and friendship. In this reaching out there is a generous and joyful acknowledgement of the work of God in these religious cultures (in differentiated and nuanced ways) and a patient learning from these cultures. There should also be repentance for our many failures in these areas. In this reaching out there is a concern to join together to act for the common good and to help transform society and alleviate the suffering of the poor, to herald the Kingdom of God. In meeting the other, there should be an acknowledgement that Catholic Christians must reach out as equals, seeking to learn how to love and serve and not to dominate or denigrate. And in this dialogue, there is finally and foremost a call to be witnesses to Christ, to be missionaries of the gospel, and to call all peoples to baptism in the threefold name. Mission requires a delicate sensitivity to a plethora of issues, but it cannot be ignored or downplayed. Of course, the planting of church communities is the greatest witness, especially when those communities are marked by charity, love of the poor, and serving others out of Christ’s endless service to us. Learning to love involves an activity whereby only by being attentive to the triune God, to the forsaken on the cross, can we learn that God’s grace and judgement is to be found where we might expect it least.