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Religions
aren't equal, Vatican says
By R. Jeffrey Smith -Washington Post
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/09/06/national/VATICAN06.htm
The reassertion followed a study. Leaders of
other faiths expressed dismay.
ROME - A new Vatican declaration issued yesterday says
that only faithful Catholics can attain full salvation from earthly sin, and
that other beliefs - including Protestant Christian ones - have defects that
render them inferior.
The goal, according to a top Vatican official,
is to combat the "so-called theology of religious pluralism," which
suggests that Catholics are on par in God's eyes with, say, Jews, Muslims or
Hindus.
The declaration drew statements of dismay from other religious groups, with whom
Pope John Paul II has sought to establish more peaceful and cooperative links
over the last two decades. Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox Christian leaders have
repeatedly asked to be treated as equals in dialogue with the Vatican, an idea
that the new statement circumscribes by reaffirming centuries-old claims of
Catholic primacy.
Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, spiritual head of Anglicanism, which
includes the Episcopal Church U.S.A., said that "the idea that Anglican and
other churches are not 'proper churches' seems to question the considerable
gains we have made," the Associated Press reported.
The World Council of Churches said it would be a "tragedy" if
Christian cooperation were "obscured by the churches' dialogues about their
relative authority and status."
The Rev. Valdo Benecchi, president of the Methodist Evangelical Churches of
Italy, said: "It's a jump backwards in terms of ecumenism. . . . There is
nothing new about this, but we had hoped they had taken another road. This is a
return to the past."
Issued after two years of study and timed to coincide with the millennial
celebration of Jesus' birth, the document
reflects age-old Vatican anxieties about the dilution of Catholic authority,
which church officials maintain comes directly from God through the Pope. The
document also may grow from a heightened concern by church officials that
Catholicism must remain competitive with Islam and other expanding faiths.
The document states that equality "refers to the equal personal dignity of
the parties in dialogue, not the doctrinal content" underlining their
religions. Without citing particular alternative religions, it describes others
as inherently inferior because they depend on "superstitions or other
errors [that] constitute an obstacle to salvation."
The document appears to differentiate non-Catholic Christian churches from other
religions. The non-Catholic churches "suffer from defects," but they
"have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the
mystery of salvation."
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