Building Universal Fraternity: A Utopian Chimera

The Sant'Egidio Community was founded in Rome in 1968. Over the years, it has become a powerful pacifist humanitarian association, capable of carrying out international humanitarian and diplomatic actions.

It was behind the ecumenical and interreligious meeting in Assisi in 1986. Since then, this association of the faithful, recognized by the Church, organizes annual meetings in the same spirit. “The spirit of Assisi” is combined with “the spirit of 1968,” it was explained on the occasion of the organization's 50th anniversary, on October 14, 2018, in Bologna.

On that day, its founder, Andrea Riccardi, set out the aim of the annual meetings for dialogue between religions and cultures. In his view, world globalization is doomed to failure if it lacks “a spiritual unification to be achieved through dialogue.”

Religions “have often failed to perceive globalization as an adventure of the spirit,” to the extent that the global world has not brought peace, but has produced wars. Dialogue between cultures and religions is therefore supposed to ensure the harmony and peace of a global and anthropological situation on the road to unity. “We must build bridges of peace together.”

Democracy, human rights, the abolition of the death penalty, the welcoming of migrants, the promotion of human dignity, interreligious dialogue and prayer, solidarity between generations, the environment, and disarmament are the main axes of this construction. The role of religions is thus to provide spiritual animation for happy globalization.

In short, this is the Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy (MASDU) that Fr. Georges de Nantes had described as early as 1965, based on statements by Pope Paul VI: instead of the Church, humanity; instead of the Gospel, the charter of human rights; instead of the kingdom of God, universal democracy.

The Pope’s Message

In his message, the Supreme Pontiff warmly greeted the participants in the Paris meeting, and in particular the Community of Sant’Egidio, which “continues to keep the spirit of Assisi alive.” He quotes Pope John Paul II in his address to the very first interreligious Meeting for Peace, which took place in the city of St. Francis on October 27, 1986.

Pope Francis praises the “spirit of Assisi” he invokes, just as he refers to the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” that he himself cosigned with the Grand Imam of the Cairo Mosque on February 4, 2019.

More than ever, the Pope explains, the world needs “men and women of different cultures and religious beliefs” to come together in “universal fraternity,” becoming “artisans of peace” who, as he had said in his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, defend “justice in society.” This universal human fraternity is the prerequisite for “imagining peace,” the theme of the meeting.

Hence the words of the Successor of Peter: “We need to keep meeting, to weave bonds of fraternity and to allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith, in order to join in ‘imagining peace’ among all peoples.” And he insists: “God has placed also in our hands his dream for the world: fraternity between all peoples.”

Are All Faiths Divinely Inspired?

How can the Successor of Peter write that “divine inspiration [is] present in every faith”—that is, every religious belief, without at the same time denying the divine and Catholic faith, the theological Faith, that which has as its object the one true God, outside of which there is no salvation (Acts 4:12), the Faith he has been given the mission of confirming among his brothers (cf. Lk. 22:32)?

Are the Talmud, the Quran, and the Tripitaka now to be regarded as divinely inspired? Is every belief equally good and respectable, the true and the false, those of the children of God and those of the children of Belial, Shiva, or the Pachamama?

The answer is that the Pope has no intention of denying his own faith in Jesus Christ. However, by putting all the beliefs of all the world's religions on the same footing, he reduces divine and revealed truth to the rank of a mere opinion, one option among others.

This was not the conviction of St. Peter, the first Pope, who explained to the Jews, his compatriots: “This [Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead] is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12).

The Church has never held the beliefs of pagans, infidels, or heretics to be divinely inspired. On the contrary, She has always seen in them the mark of Satan and the powers of darkness: “For all the gods of the Gentiles,” of those who do not have the true Faith, “are devils” (Ps. 95:5).

In modern times, Pope Leo XIII denounced in particular the work of Freemasonry, which tends to “teach the great error of this age-that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions” (Encyclical Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884).

Although they deny it, today's Popes, by endorsing such events as interreligious meetings, are encouraging practical relativism and a form of indifferentism between religions.

Above all, they fail in their duty to profess the true Faith: There is but “One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all” (Eph. 4:5-6), one God the Father, and “one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (I Cor. 8:6).

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre criticized this collusion of Roman authorities with Masonic and socialist ideals, “in the service of a global Communism with a religious tinge” (Spiritual Journey, Prologue).

The Church, Peace, and Universal Fraternity

The goal Pope Francis sets himself in his message is akin to the unhealthy utopia already denounced by Pope St. Pius X in a letter to the bishops of France concerning the Christian Democrats of Marc Sangnier's Sillon movement.

In this letter, entitled Notre Charge Apostolique (Our Apostolic Mandate) and dated August 25, 1910, the Pope unmasked the modern Utopianists who make light of words with “A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity.”

“No, Venerable Brethren,” St. Pius X continues, “there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness. By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization.

If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.”

Any other path would be biased, false, and illusory: “for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.”

The project of “fraternity and peace among peoples everywhere” that Francis dreams of after John Paul II ruins the Church's missionary charity and corrupts the truth of the Gospel and the Catholic religion. How did we get here?

The Culmination of 60 Years of Progression: The Vatican II Revolution

Pope Francis's message first of all sets itself in continuity with the Second Vatican Council. The Council took up certain condemned ideals of the Sillon, placing the Church at the service of humanity and the construction of a universal fraternity.

The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes states: “Therefore, this sacred synod, proclaiming the noble destiny of man and championing the Godlike seed which has been sown in him, offers to mankind the honest assistance of the Church in fostering that brotherhood of all men which corresponds to this destiny of theirs” (no. 3, 2).

The declaration Dignitatis humanae thus justifies the right to religious freedom as a natural and positive right, founded on human dignity, allowing the spread and dissemination of any religion, on the grounds that “All nations are coming into even closer unity. Men of different cultures and religions are being brought together in closer relationships” (no. 15).

Moreover, in the name of the same ideals and the same utopias, the Council Fathers revised their judgment on false religions. Firstly, with regard to other Christian communities: the Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis redintegratio affirms that “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation” (no. 3), and highlights “anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren” (no. 4).

Finally, with regard to non-Christian religions, the Declaration Nostra aetate says that, in the name of “human dignity,” there is no longer any reason for “any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people” (no. 5).

The Spirit of Assisi or the Accelerator of Revolution

For John Paul II, the gesture of Assisi was “a living illustration of the Second Vatican Council,” and like the realization of his dream to build “a future of peace and prosperity for all,” to realize “the dream of the unity of the human family.”

“The ‘spirit of Assisi,’” he explained, “encourages religions to make their contribution to the new humanism that the contemporary world so badly needs.” This humanism consists in “a new way of seeing and understanding one another, of thinking of the world and of working for peace” (Pope John Paul II to Cardinal Kasper, September 3, 2004).

Its aim is to build “the civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice and liberty,” (Encyclical Tertio millenio adveniente, no. 52), “where there is no longer a place for hatred, violence, or injustice” (Message of November 12, 1986).

The “civilization of love” will thus unite all believers, of whatever denomination or even no denomination at all, as well as followers of all philosophies, even atheistic ones, as long as all agree on the transcendent dimension of the human person, the true foundation of this new humanity on the move. Justice, peace, solidarity, and liberty are the key words (Encyclical Tertio millenio adveniente, no. 52). Pope Francis adds the environment, the welcoming of migrants, the peripheries, and Synodality.

Today

Pope Francis is clearly following in the footsteps of his predecessors, particularly Paul VI and John Paul II, the Popes who implemented the Second Vatican Council and undoubtedly understood it better than anyone else.

But he surpasses them, just as John Paul II surpassed Paul VI, daring to launch the dynamic of the “spirit of Assisi.” Francis adds his own personal touch, breaking down the last barriers and doing away with everything that the very texts of the Council seemed to want to rule out, such as doctrinal pluralism or strict indifferentism, equal and undifferentiated [1].

Let us return to St. Pius X, who was so clear-sighted a century ago. His diagnosis was unambiguous: he saw among so much agitation the sign of “the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions.”

“We fear that worse is to come,” the holy Pope explains. “[T]he end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the ‘Kingdom of God’. – ‘We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind.’”

“The exaltation of their sentiments, [...] their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel.” This is how our modern apostles intend to build a universal brotherhood whose foundations are no longer those of the Catholic City.

And St. Pius X concludes: this Catholic City “has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO.”

Ungodliness and unhealthy utopianism are, in short, the characteristics of Pope Francis's universal brotherhood.
 

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[1] Cf. The Neo-Pastoral Work of Francis (2)