A Reply to an Objection

Deacon Doug McManaman

I received the following objection to a comment I posted on a Catholic Forum, a comment that I posted here under the title Manufactured Outrage.

Your comment regarding bad manners when a guest in another’s house made me immediately think of the encounter at the well. Was our Lord exhibiting bad manners when he said to the Samaritan woman, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews”? How wonderful it might be if our Pope could occasionally make such Christlike remarks! Speaking clearly (yes, and respectfully) about the challenging and unique claims that the Gospel makes to each hearer should surely be an important part of the Church’s ecumenical dialog with the people of the world?

This was one of the better and more challenging objections.

The first point that comes to mind as a possible response to your objection is that “who” is speaking makes a world of difference. It was Christ who said to the Samaritan woman at the well: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4, 22). Jesus is that salvation who is “from the Jews”, the offspring that will crush the head of the serpent (Gn 3, 15). He is the Son of God, the Word who reveals (makes known) the otherwise “Unknown God”. However, you and I and the rest of us are sinners. That’s important. There are many things that Jesus could and did say that you and I could not say, without a hell of a lot of audacity and presumption. I wouldn’t dare tell anyone to “Come, follow me”, as he did with Matthew. The specific instructions he gave the Twelve were the following: “And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay.” In other words, our proclamation is to be of the good news of the kingdom, and it is to be accompanied by deeds that prove our words. Our deeds are our words, or at least they are supposed to be, and those deeds are to be healing, that is, life giving deeds. And that’s what he said we will be judged on, not on the dogmas we adhere to (See Mt 25, 31ff). So it’s not about “You are not on the path to God, but we are, because Christ is the Truth, and we are Christians”. Many Christians are not on the path to God, and many who are not Christian are very much on the path to God. 

As for being a guest in someone else’s home, he said: “As you enter the house, salute it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.” Singapore invited Pope Francis into their country. They received him, and Jesus said “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me”. Singapore, a country in which the majority (more than 80%) are non-Christian, received Christ, welcomed him in the very act of welcoming Francis. And so, you want Francis to respond by saying something to the effect that “Your religions are deficient”? Christ never instructed any one of his followers to say that nor anything like that–nor is this what he said to the Samaritan woman. He did say: “You are the light of the world”. What does a light do?  It shines. It shines silently, without words. There’s something to that adage, perhaps falsely attributed to Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel, use words if necessary”. Singapore did not invite me to their country, but they did invite Pope Francis. They know what he stands for; he’s the vicar of Christ; his life is about Christ and nothing but. So what more does anyone want from him? 

Does anyone really think he should not have said “all religions are paths to God”? And that “only our religion is a path to God”? A religion is, by its very nature, a path to God, it is an act of the virtue of justice, that is, the highest part of the virtue of justice, which is the virtue of ‘religion’ (rendering due worship to the gods, as Aristotle would say). Salvation, however, does not come through a religion, but through a Person, namely Christ, the Christ that they invited into their country when they invited Pope Francis. But to speak and act “in the name of Christ” means to speak and act in the Person of Christ, that is, in the Spirit of Christ. The Our Father, the most important prayer, does not mention the name of Christ, but the entire prayer is in the Spirit of Christ. We are not called to proselytize, but to speak and act in the Spirit of Christ. American Catholics have been far too influenced by American Evangelical Fundamentalism that insists that only those who explicitly acknowledge that “Jesus is Lord and Saviour” will be saved and that all others who do not explicitly adhere to that proposition will not be saved. We don’t believe that in the Church. A person can be living in the Spirit of Christ (in the name of Christ) without any explicit awareness of the fact. As I have said before, I do know a number of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh students of mine who I would say are holier than I am, holier in the sense of more charitable, more patient, more humble. Their holiness, I am convinced, comes from Christ, the fount of all holiness, the fount of divine grace, which is the indwelling of the Trinity. How did divine grace end up within them, outside of the sacraments? Perhaps Aquinas has an answer. In the Prima Secundae, he writes: “Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally, through not doing that which is in his power to do. Accordingly thenceforward there cannot be venial sin in him without mortal, until afterwards all sin shall have been remitted to him through grace.” S. T. I-II, q. 89, a. 6. 

God is not limited by the sacramental system. God saves, and He can and does save outside the visible boundaries of the Roman Church. And if others are going to want Christ, they will have to encounter a loveable and attractive Christ in us who claim to be his followers. Gandhi was the exception: “I love your Christ” he said. “It’s Christians I have a problem with”. 

Francis proclaims Christ always every day, but Francis, much to the chagrin of those who would like a safer and more bourgeois Catholicism, tends to stress the social and economic repercussions of embracing the gospel and our duty to work towards a universal fraternity. 

My question is: “What challenging and unique claims do you want Francis to make that he apparently is not making?”