(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis repeatedly warns against proselytism, which he sees as having an exclusively negative connotation, as if there were not also a positive understanding of proselytism, as in ancient Judaism, and of mission in particular, as in the letters of St. Paul.
Above all, St. Paul emphasizes that mission has nothing to do with manipulation and bullying but is a demonstration of spirit and strength. In other words: It is the Holy Spirit who convinces a conscience of the truth, not the missionary. This truth is Jesus Christ, which Francis regularly fails to mention in the interreligious context.
READ: Pope Francis doubles down, says ‘diversity of religious identities is a gift of God’
The diagnosis is not correct either. The great danger in the Church since the last Council is not reprehensible proselytizing but the almost complete paralysis of missionary efforts, apart from isolated revivals, which are a reaction to the absence of mission for 60 years.
“I am against mission!” This statement reflects the prominent opinion of the then 82-year-old Ernesto Cardenal, who saw himself as a supporter of religious pluralism. In his opinion, no religion should place itself above another or deprive other peoples of their religion (see Kontinente, 2008/2, p.20). In contrast, Pope Francis writes that the power to preach to those far away must not be lost, as this is the “first task of the Church.” Missionary activity is therefore still the greatest challenge today, and so the concern for evangelization must be “the first” of the Church.
The Pope goes on to ask what would happen if we really took these words seriously. He answers this himself: “We would simply recognize that missionary action is the paradigm for all the work of the Church” (Evangelii gaudium, Preface, no. 15). Why then does he only ever speak negatively of proselytism where mission is concerned? Why does he not clearly proclaim Jesus Christ as the truth and salvation for all peoples in an interreligious context? He knows that no other name has been given to us in which we can find salvation than the Name of Jesus, before Whom every knee will bow.
Instead, he speaks primarily of universal brotherhood, but unfortunately not of Jesus Christ as its mediator and condition; he speaks of one God for all, but not as He has revealed Himself in Christ (the Trinity). Do we need Jesus Christ for this brotherhood? One might think: No, at most in the sense of inspiration, but not as a mediator in the strict sense; because people of other faiths, all of them, all of them, all of them, are supposedly already children of God and therefore kiss each other’s hands.
Pope Francis says that there is only one God, the Creator, and that we are therefore already brothers and children of God by nature as His creatures. Is that true? Where is Jesus Christ in this relationship, without Whom, according to His Own words, we do not have the Father (the Creator)? Where is the talk of Jesus Christ as the only door to the Father? Where is the mention that Jesus Christ has given us the power to become children of God? That we are not without Him. Where is the mention of the fact that we pray in His Spirit, which He has given us: “Abba, Father”?
Pope Francis conceals all of this and also avoids the Sign of the Cross during the blessing so as not to alienate anyone’s feelings or stimulate a debate in the sense of a critique of religion and a missionary impulse to confront Jesus’ absolute claims. Today, we understand tolerance as the renunciation of convictions and truth claims.
Mission can then mean all sorts of things (campaigning for the climate or migration without barriers or borders), but not trying to convince someone of the truth – in our context, of Jesus Christ. To think that we are in possession of the truth seems like an unnecessary provocation. But Christ stands before Pilate with precisely this claim. He is the Truth in person. And we possess it in the Gospel and in the sacraments. We are worshippers in spirit and in truth. This concerns all people, the incarnation of God! That is why Jesus wants us to proclaim Him. We are to make all people His disciples. A Catholic Church that renounces this is no longer Catholic.
Once again: as human beings, we are not children of God by birth, but His creatures. We must first accept and affirm our filiation. It is offered to us in Christ. Our faith is the appropriate response to this offer.
Does this apply to a Muslim who, from his faith, must wish to overcome Christianity as a heresy? These are serious questions. Christ gives us the power to become children of God: if we believe in Him and are baptized! Anyone who wants to include everyone and exclude no one at the cost of relegating Christ to the background as the Son of God and universal truth, as the salvation of nations, as the mediator and exclusive door to God, or placing Him in a row with other options, does not deserve the name “Christian.” He is neither convinced nor convincing. He is not a witness to Christ. Also, this universal brotherhood will fail without truth. There is no love without truth.
Anyone who constantly suspends the truth in order to supposedly love more denies or conceals the truth in order to supposedly lovingly embrace and include everything and everyone, to avoid any conflict of truth. It turns the Christology of the Gospel and the faith of the Church into a “Jesus-ology” of its own design: the propagated Jesus is then only the epitome of a soft humanism or a belittled God who includes everyone, excludes nothing, condemns no one, even abstains from judgment (“who am I?”), especially in an interreligious context, leaving everyone to their own faith.
A God is proclaimed who accepts everyone unconditionally as they are, strokes their hair tenderly without demanding repentance, faith, and obedience from them, offers forgiveness without discernment and remorse, and promises eternal life without judgment. Grave sin is only mentioned in the context of migration; otherwise, it (almost) no longer exists. This “Jesusology” is a selective version of the Gospel, a reduction and distortion. The objectionable and harsh statements in the mouth of Jesus remain hidden, such as the statement that he did not come to bring peace but the sword. What is meant is not the sword that St. Peter should immediately put back into its sheath because those who take up the sword will perish by the sword; no, what is meant is the sword of truth, which is not arbitrarily available or deniable.
Even the aged Simeon prophesied that opinions would differ on HIM and His claim. There is no more convenient way to have this truth. Where are these aspects (truths) in the Pope’s proclamation? We do not proclaim a Jesus tailored to our political and humanitarian views, but Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, the universal truth, the salvation of nations, the only access to the Father, the Savior of the world.
Is it too little, in the full sense of the Gospel, that we all love one another but each of us sticks to our own religious views without knowing or acknowledging the truth revealed by God? Others may see it differently, but we Christians cannot. Since we are in demand, we talk about it. We are not content with the lowest common denominator, such as fraternity at best, which will never prevail and universalize on this basis anyway. “For without Me, you can do nothing!” How are they to recognize the truth if no one proclaims and interprets it, St. Paul asks?
This interpretation is not only necessary ad intra, namely for the faithful (for example, at the Pope’s Sunday Angelus prayer), but also ad extra in an interreligious context for those who do not believe in Christ. Cardinal Américo Aguiar, who coordinated the last World Youth Day as auxiliary bishop of Lisbon, caused a stir with his statement: “We don’t want to convert young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that.” He said that the “main message” of this event was: “I think differently, I feel differently, I organize my life differently, but we are brothers and sisters and we will build the future together.” Aguiar links this view to Pope Francis’ programmatic social encyclical Fratelli Tutti (2020), and not without good reason. It sounded similar in Indonesia.
So, this is the new gospel? I quote Christiana Reemts: “The individual believer may love his own religion and express his subjective convictions, but not claim to have the absolute truth to which every person must bow. The latter would be a form of appropriation that must be rejected in the name of freedom and human dignity.” [Reemts, Christiana, Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Celsus und Origenes im Horizont der Postmoderne, in: EuA 75 (1999), 6]. In this way, everything remains non-binding and (only) has relative, subjective validity, but never with validity for all. This contradicts the Gospel. Unfortunately, Pope Francis speaks in the interreligious context in the manner of this credo. Because otherwise Jesus’ claim to absoluteness, on which the Great Commission or missionary idea is based, could become an interreligious nuisance and thus a problem, it is nobly concealed.
This was also one of the reasons why, in recent decades, the concept of mission has been replaced by the idea of partnership and dialogue (between religions), which carries fewer “negative connotations.” It is better to talk about the fact that we all have the same God and that we are all brothers than to fall into the house with Jesus as the door to this God! But how can someone be a brother to me who explicitly rejects and fights against the Son of God?
In the sense of the parable of the Good Samaritan, everyone is my neighbor, yes, because love of neighbor is universal (including love of enemy). But brother? Isn’t more needed if it is not to remain a mere fraudulent label and gesture of politeness? If blood brothers treat each other as if they were not, where is the power of flesh and blood, of belonging to the same family or humanity or another religion? Where is the source of a Christian – not Masonic – understanding of brotherhood? I answer: In the acceptance of the Son of God (faith) and thus in the Holy Spirit, who emanates from Him and from the Father!
“Dialogue” and “universal brotherhood” as the epitome of a relativistic credo, which from the outset and in principle does not concede more truth to one fellow speaker than to the other, does not do justice to Jesus’ message. It is an anti-gospel, a charm offensive without depth and truth. As you can see, the end of evangelization is the logical consequence of this.
For us Christians, this is tantamount to a denial of Jesus Christ. The latter begins with the concealment of His Name, with the refusal to present Him to all peoples and religions without compromising His claim to absoluteness and His word: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me!” But that sounds different to my ears than the papal speech in Jakarta.