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MEN ARE THE DOO
2005
HOW OPEN ARE THE DOORS OF THE VATICAN?
Professor Cromwell Crawford
University of Hawaii
The inauguration of Pope Benedict, on April 17, 2005 was marked with great jubilation, not only by the one billion plus members of the Roman Catholic Church, but by many non-Catholics as well. The pope has promised that the doors of the Vatican will be opened wide to people of all faiths. This should come as good news to the people of India who were not pleased when his predecessor proclaimed the need to evangelize India's masses, during his visit, a few years ago. The question is: How far will the doors be opened?
The problem is, the word "open" is a weasel word, fraught with ambiguities, and is relativistic in meaning. The thrust of this essay is that: relative to the Jain meaning of "openness," the Catholic meaning is not wide enough. This is not just a game in semantics: If the mission of the Church is to bring peace, it must start with itself, and the extent to which it deems itself superior to other faiths, it cannot expect to win their respect. Still worse, if a religion occupies a house of glass, it is not wise to throw stones.
It is instructive at this point to examine the relative meanings of openness in Roman Catholicism and in Jainism.
Starting with St. Peter, the first Pope, the Church has maintained that there can be no salvation outside the church, and that the supernatural divinization of humans, through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, cannot be substituted by good will, good deeds, and a good life. In the presence of the holiness of God, all of our human goodness is like filthy rags. Christ is the Saviour of the world, because he does for fallen human beings what they cannot do for themselves; including those who think that they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps of their own religion.
All of the missionaries who sacrificed to come to India "to convert the heathen," were inspired and informed by this gospel message; but in recent years the position of the Roman Catholic Church toward other faiths has been opened up. On the one hand it seemed a little preposterous to think that God would allow millions of souls to perish who had not heard the Christian gospel, and on the other hand, Roman Catholic doctrine came to believe that God in his grace must communicate with every soul he has created in the context of their own religious world. The conclusion was thus reached that when a Jain, for example, followed the teachings of Lord Mahavira, he was able to do so through the grace of Christ, which is present among all of God's children. The love of God excludes no one, and uses the scriptures, rituals, prayers and hymns of all religions as conduits for the outpouring of his
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