On Friday, September 13^th Pope Francis delivered a speech to the youthful students at Singapore’s Catholic Junior College, a group which included many non-Christians. In it he fired a shot that has been heard round the world. Putting aside his prepared script, His Holiness began speaking spontaneously, with words that now, more than ever, we can presume to have come straight from his heart. With soft, grandfatherly tones and intently earnest body language, he led his young audience gently and persuasively down a very different path from the straight and narrow one marked out by his predecessors in the chair of Peter.

Those previous popes had repeatedly censured and warned against religious relativism or indifferentism– the tendency to gloss over and deny the importance of the differences between Christ’s Gospel and other religions. After all, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me”. To the apostles he sends out as missionaries he says, “He who hears you, hears me; whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk 10: 16). Again, “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn. 17: 3). Countless other New Testament texts could be cited to the same effect. Essays of a Catholic Belloc Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $15.95 (as of 07:02 UTC - Details)

But a very different message was sent to those Singapore school students by none other than the earthly leader of Christ’s Church. Eliciting their smiles and applause, he led them down a wide and shining path whose smooth surface seemed to iron out all those troublesome, contentious differences between rival creeds. Comparing the world’s mutually contradictory religions to its different “languages” – none of which, of course, is ‘truer’ or morally better than any other – Francis affirmed bluntly, “Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio“. This was immediately rendered accurately by the translator at his side, who said loudly and clearly, “All religions are a pathway to arrive at God”. No hint of any nuance or qualification there.

Magisterial as well as biblical pronouncements against this kind of levelling of religious differences could also be cited in abundance; but two examples, one from two centuries ago and the other from Vatican Council II, will suffice here. Gregory XVI, in his 1831 encyclical Mirari Vos, denounced

indifferentism, . . . that base opinion which has become prevalent everywhere through the deceit of wicked men, that eternal salvation of the soul can be acquired by any profession of faith whatsoever, provided morals are conformed to the standard of justice and honesty.

And no. 846 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, citing Lumen Gentium #14, recalls that Christ

explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church. . . . Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it” (emphasis added).

If Catholicism is the “necessary” path to salvation – even supposing that to be a necessity of precept rather than of means – it clearly can’t be presented as just one path among others. The blood of countless martyred missionaries down through two millennia has testified to their conviction, based on the Lord’s clear teaching, that all human creatures need to know Christ the Savior. The purpose of preaching the Gospel to every creature is to save souls! (Cf. Mk 16: 16.) Accordingly, the sensus fidelium of Catholic believers down through the centuries has always reacted sharply and intuitively against the siren song of any preacher or teacher who lumps Christianity together with other religions as one among many paths that lead to a common transcendent destiny.

Now, the Italian original of Pope Francis’ assertion, cited above, went up immediately on the Vatican website, as did accurate translations into six other languages. But with the English translation came a little silver lining to this dark cloud hovering over Roman skies: a sanitized version of the Holy Father’s key statement. Some English-language Vatican official was evidently so dismayed by Francis’ heterodox affirmation that he felt a duty to do some damage control. Mindful, perhaps, of Noah’s sons, who in filial piety covered their father’s nakedness after his lapse into drunkenness (cf. Gn. 9: 20-24), this official tapped out a bowdlerized version of the Pope’s words that turned them from an explosive theological statement into a bland empirical observation. He wrote, “Religions are seen as paths trying to reach God.” Note these three changes:  1) the sweeping word “All” is deleted; 2) it is said that these religious paths are only “trying” to reach God (and so don’t necessarily succeed); and 3) we’re told that they are only “seen as” i.e., believed to be, paths of that sort – a sociological statement that prescinds from whether or not said belief is true. One or two other relatively minor ‘improvements’ to the original also polished up the posted English version.

Unfortunately, this silver lining soon vanished. Our anonymous harm-limiting official was apparently rapped over the knuckles for misrepresenting the Holy Father’s statement, and the Vatican website’s English version was promptly amended so as to translate more correctly the words I have placed in bold type in the following citation of the Pope’s key paragraph. It is still not quite accurate because “a path” has become “paths”, and the verb “reach” (equivalent to “arrive at”) is included only in Francis’ second iteration of his novel claim. Nevertheless, the message is now pretty clear: How the Catholic Churc... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $8.00 Buy New $9.06 (as of 05:30 UTC - Details)

One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, ‘My religion is more important than yours…,’ or ‘Mine is the true one, yours is not true….,’ where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, ‘Destruction’.] That is correct. 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. ‘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. Understood?

The significance of this swift correction should not be underestimated, because it is hard to imagine that Francis could have been unaware of it. English is the most widely spoken language on earth, and if millions of us round the world saw the initial sanitized version and learned of its discrepancy from what the Pope actually said, is it likely that he himself was left in the dark about this? Or that whoever ordered the correction did so without knowing that he (she?) would be supported by Higher Up? There has long been a reported consensus among Vatican insiders that Francis keeps close tabs on everything important that goes on in his curia.

But if the Holy Father approved this amendment to the first English-language version of his speech, this shows that, far from wanting to clarify, correct, or nuance his spontaneous and unscripted assertion to the Singapore highschoolers, he is doubling down on it. He’s telling the world, “That’s exactly what I meant to say, and I still mean it!” And unless some contrary announcement on this matter comes very soon from the Vatican, I think we must draw this troubling conclusion.

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