The Neo-Pastoral Work of Francis

1. During his recent journey to Indonesia, Pope Francis wanted to meet with young people at the Catholic Junior College of Singapore, on Friday, September 13, 2024. An interreligious meeting, in the sense that the young people in question, far from all being Catholic, belonged to different confessions, Catholic or not, Christian or not.

2. Encouraging these young people to “dialogue,” the Holy Father clearly told them that all religions lead to God. “All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.”[1]

3. The comparison is interesting. Indeed, Aristotle and St. Thomas tell us that language is the sign, the direct and immediate expression, not of extra-mental realities, but of ideas—that is to say, of intellectual concepts by means of which our mind makes present to itself, within its own depths, the reality that it knows.

And language is at the same time the means that nature has given to men so that they can communicate with each other, by exchanging their thoughts, through their adequate expression [2]. Comparing religion to a language is therefore comparing the path that leads to God to the path that leads to ideas, that lead to thought.

If religion is a language, God is an idea, and different religions are different ways of expressing the same idea. The Pope insists on this point: “’But my God is more important than yours!’. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.”

4. The underlying presupposition of this speech of the Holy Father is precisely that different languages are only different expressions of one and the same idea. The different followers of different religions all have the same idea of the same God, and the only difference lies in how they express it.

5. But does the idea of God correspond to a reality, and is this the reality of only one true God? For example, does the idea of God, as Catholics and Jews express it in different ways, correspond to the eternal and objective reality of the Holy Trinity, the one God in Three consubstantial Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

Does the idea of Jesus Christ, as expressed by Catholics and Muslims in different ways, correspond to the historical and objective reality of Jesus of Nazareth, true Man, Son of the Virgin Mary and true God, eternal and consubstantial Son of the Father? Is there a reality, beyond our ideas? And if there is one, what is it?

Is it the reality of the extra-mental being—that is to say, of a being independent from our psychological and subjective reactions? Is it the same reality as that of our vital reactions, the reality of our religious feeling, of our need for the infinite, feeling, and need as they are lived and experienced? And would the idea of God be anything other than the awareness of this experience?

And can such an idea, with the language that expresses it, manage to give a sufficiently accurate account of this reality to which it refers? There are many decisive questions raised by this speech of Pope Francis, certainly richer in issues than it might seem at first glance.

6. For his part, Pope St. Pius X, in the Encyclical Pascendi, had given—quite clearly, moreover—several elements of response and discernment. According to the constant and duly established data of the Catechism, God is a personal Being, independent of thought, and He made Himself known, through His supernatural Revelation, as being One in the Trinity of His consubstantial Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And as having united, in the Person of His Word, the individual human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, Son according to the flesh of the Virgin Mary. It seems difficult to see paths that lead to God in so many different religions, since these fundamental truths are denied as much by the religion of contemporary Judaism as by that of Islam, and more generally by “non-Christian” religions.

7. Unless we postulate that God is only an idea, referring at most to an existential experience or to a feeling, an experience and feeling that no religious expression could adequately express. Then, each believer can well feed the ambition to adhere, beyond the expressions of his religion, to the unknown truth that is never exhausted by any language.

In such a view, all the believers already share in the same faith, and all the beliefs in the world are only variations. Interreligious dialogue, such as Pope Francis encourages it, should hasten the dawn of the day when there will be a single religion for all humanity, after all contentious divisions have been abolished forever [3].

8. Should we then call for religious relativism or latitudinarianism? Not at all, because the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus is that of those who assert that “all religions are equal [4].” In asserting that “All religions are paths to God,” Pope Francis does not say that they lead to Him “equally” or with the same value.

The teachings of Vatican II admit this salvific value, provided that it is understood in a differentiated way [5]. The Catholic religion would thus be the favored expression of the relationship between man and God—or of religious feeling that has become conscious. Would this allow us to speak of a “mitigated latitudinarianism”? Why not, as long as we do not exaggerate the scope of this possible “mitigation.” It would likely be better to try to say “neo-latitudinarianism,” but let us move on since de nominibus non est disputandum.

9. There was, let us not forget, a precedent. On Monday, February 4, 2019, Pope Francis cosigned, with the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, a joint Document on Human Fraternity, for World Peace and Living Together. This text already asserted that “pluralism and the diversity of religions [...] are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings [6].“ The pastoral work—neo-indifferentist—carried out with young people should logically flow from there.

[1] Address of His Holiness to the Interreligious Meeting with Young People at the “Catholic Junior College” (Singapore) on Friday, 13 September 2024
[2] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Perihermeneias of Aristotle, book I, lesson 2, no. 2.
[3] Cf. the article “Exhortation synodale et postconciliaire” [“Synodal and Postconciliar Exhortation”] in the November 2019 issue of Courrier de Rome.
[4] The condemned propositions 16 and 18 of the Syllabus state precisely this equality of the different religions, from the point of view of salvific value. Proposition 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation”; proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.”
[5] Constitution Lumen gentium, nos. 15 and 16; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, no. 3; Declaration Nostra aetate, no. 2.
[6] See the article “François et le dogme (II)” [“Francis and Dogma (II)”] in the February 2019 issue of Courrier de Rome.