Pope – Page 5 – eyebeleave

Science and religion: a set-theoretic view

Universe

The question of how science and religion relate is a staple of this blog, yet in spite of numerous posts¹ on this topic already, I feel the need to revisit it again (and probably not for the last time either). What I would like to give some thought to here, are different beliefs (or at least assumptions) about how God and the universe relate² and the consequences they have on how science and religion are viewed.

For a change, let me start with what I believe myself and then proceed to contrast it with alternatives. To my mind, God infinitely exceeds the universe and is present everywhere and always – as St. Augustine puts it, God is “more inward to me than my most inward part; and higher than my highest.” (Confessions 3, 6). He has both created and sustains the universe, but does so in a way that is intelligible (and therefore also repeatable – the expectation of different outcomes when doing the same thing being one of the definitions of insanity, as Albert Einstein puts it). My position is therefore panentheistic (as opposed to pantheistic – God being equal to the universe – or deist, believing in a distant, separate God) and one that is fundamentally rational as opposed to fideist (a point also emphatically underlined by Benedict XVI during a general audience in November ’12). Here the universe, created “in and by” God,³ is both other than God and very much part of God and the top left quadrant of the diagram above is an attempt to depict it in terms of sets: the universe is represented by a circle, situated in an infinitely extending plane – God.

In this worldview, science is profoundly good not only because of the improvements to life that it can yield, but also because it tells me about how the universe that God created operates. It tells me about God in a way that is like learning about a mime artist by viewing their performance – the information is not immediate, but nonetheless leads to insights about the actor. Another source of understanding God comes to me from theology, which seeks to understand what God has revealed about himself through his relationship with the people of Israel, through his Son, Jesus and through his presence among his followers since then and into the present. These two sources of information about God are in perfect complementarity and equally fill me with wonder and admiration.

Yet science and religion (theology) are not the same – the former has methods finely tuned to bringing the laws of the universe to light and spans the sensible (empirical), while the latter has a span that exceeds that of science, by addressing the extra-empirical aspects of the universe (the whys and ought(’nt)s) as well as events and entities exclusive to its scope. This is not to place one above the other, but simply to put them in relationship as far as their scopes are concerned (bottom left quadrant of the above diagram).

In summary, my understanding of science and religion is that they jointly yield an understanding both of the world I live in and its source and purpose that I believe in. As John Paul II said, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”

As for alternative views, a positioning of the world as separate from God and outside God, as shown on the right side of the above diagram, is also widespread among religious believers. Here God’s involvement in creation is only an initial impulse and setup, followed by a subsequent separation and distance. The scope of what science and religion have to talk about has no overlap.

My impression here is that this separation also extends into other spheres, beyond just the relationship between God and the universe. At times I come across (repulsive) statements that, e.g., imply that ethical behavior is “owned” by those who hold religious beliefs or that the same applies to truth or beauty.⁴ In my set theory of the God-universe relationship, all that is good, true and beautiful in the universe, and is accessible without faith, is mine and I just feel like I am being given more or being helped more to live it from my additional, extra-empirical sources.

I have a feeling that this (right) picture also applies to atheist believers, with the circle representing God removed. Here all that is believed to exist is the universe, which is being understood by scientific means and religion is a separate activity that has no corresponding object.

Finally, I suspect that those atheists, who don’t acknowledge that their position is a belief, operate on a worldview like mine (i.e., on the left above), but with the labels swapped. Claims about God are treated like claims about an entity enclosed in the universe and therefore fully subject to the methods of science. Religion too is an activity that can be fully reduced to scientific scrutiny just like any other human activity. If this is correct, then I can understand why atheists who fall in this category find religious belief as lacking in credibility, to the point of being hostile to it.

If any of you, my readers, identify with one of the positions other than mine, I would very much appreciate it if you let me know if I misunderstood something about it. And even if you agree with me, I’d be keen to hear from you :).

¹ With previous looks at the science of creation from nothing, a mystical view of creation, the role of belief in science (also here), the dialogue between Chief Rabi Sacks and Prof. Dawkins, the ambiguous relationship between theory and evidence, the constraints of empiricism, the “God of gaps” caricature, atheism as a creed, the evidential equivalence of atheism and religious belief, Martini and Eco’s dialogue on ethics and a call for recognizing rationality in (some of) religion and science alike – to mention just a few :).
² Many thanks to NP and AG with whom I have spoken about some aspects of this picture by email and over on Facebook over the last weeks. Their insights triggered a lot of interesting and valuable discussion.
³ “The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the “image of the invisible God,” is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the “image of God” and called to a personal relationship with God. Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §299)
⁴ My friend, SC, told me of a particularly saddening and vile case of her parish priest telling her (at the age of 7) that she wasn’t even human, because she didn’t believe in God. This has nothing to do with Christianity as I understand it, as I hear it taught by the current and previous popes or presented in the Catechism. Instead, it is its perversion.

Man and woman: the beginning

It has been a long time since I last read a text that filled me with excitement and admiration and lead me through a seemingly inexhaustible sequence of insights and profound realizations. The book I am talking about is John Paul II’s “Man and Woman He Created Them,” which presents his “Theology of the Body” – a term that I have heard mentioned on various blogs but that has meant little more to me than a buzz-word so far.

The book presents the content of a series of talks that Blessed John Paul II gave during his Wednesday general audiences between September 1979 and November 1984 (!) that closely track a manuscript he wrote before being elected pope. Instead of the usual pastoral material, typically presented at events like these, the first chapter already makes it crystal clear that the book is going to be technical and intellectually challenging material. To think that he shared it with the crowds who came to see him in Rome is astonishing to me by itself, as it is the polar opposite of the typical dumbing-down that so often informs pubic communication.

The starting point is the origin of the family in marriage, whose indissolubility Jesus categorically reaffirms when challenged by some Pharisees:

“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator created them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and unite with his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? So it is that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined let man not separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6; emphasis by John Paul II)

Here John Paul II picks up on Jesus’ emphasis on “the beginning” and his quoting of verses from two separate chapters of Genesis. Instead of this passage from Matthew being only taken as a confirmation and reinforcement of the Genesis model of marriage, Jesus’ emphasis on “the beginning” triggers an analysis of the creation of humanity. In fact, John Paul II focuses on the specific features and complementary differences of the two Genesis accounts to look not only at the differences between male and female genders, but at key characteristics of what it means to be human.

The first account (which is chronologically more recent and which has more of a theological character) is that “God created man [hā’ādām, collective noun: “humanity”?] in his image, in the image of God he created him, man [zākār, male] and woman [neqēbāh, female] he created them.” (Genesis 1:27, John Paul II’s additions in []). In other words, the creation of man and woman is “a single act.” In contrast, in the second account (which is more ancient and has more of a mythical character), man’s creation (Genesis 2:5-7) precedes that of woman’s (Genesis 2:18-23). However, even here, the first human being is called “man” (’ādām), “while from the moment of the creation of the first woman, [Genesis] begins to call him “male,” îš, in relation to ’iššāh (“woman,” because she has been taken from the male = îš).”

While the above “single-act” creation of the sexes is an aspect of Genesis that I certainly was not aware of, the most impressive move in John Paul II’s analysis comes next and is the insight that the solitude of the pre–male-female differentiated “man,” – expressed in Genesis as “It is not good that the man should be alone” (2:18) – is a reference not only to an individual’s solitude (lacking a mate) but to a fundamental feature of every person’s nature. In Genesis, the first “man” is shown both as being separate from the rest of creation (being alone in spite of a multitude of other living beings already populating the world) and as searching for his identity (being asked by God to name “every living creature” but not “find[ing] a help similar to himself” (Genesis 2:19-20)).

This original solitude of the human person indicates self-consciousness and the commandment about not eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” introduces self-determination (free will) as a basic feature of humanity. These two together make the human person “created in the image of God” and a “partner of the Absolute.” Next, John Paul II argues that it is man’s (’ādām’s) body that is the source of his awareness of solitude. This body that could have made man place himself as equal among the other created bodies, instead gives him awareness of his otherness and solitude. This in turn makes it evident that “the “invisible” determines man more than the “visible”.”

Next, man’s body is also the means of his “cultivating the earth” (Genesis 2:5) and “subdu[ing] it” (1:28), as the Genesis account further states. As a result, the human body is not only involved in man’s awareness of his separateness from the rest of creation and his potential for self-determination, but also “permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity[, where] the body expresses the person.” The final ingredient that John Paul II identifies in the Genesis account is the introduction of the difference between death an immortality in the form of the mystery of the three of knowledge: “The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” (Genesis 2:16-17).

With man’s features emerging as his self-consciousness, self-determination and, as their consequence, relating to God as a partner, John Paul II turns to taking a closer look at the meaning of the original unity of humanity. The starting point here is an argument for there being a distinction between “bodiliness and sexuality” whereby our being bodies is fundamental to the structure of our being personal subjects, even before differences between the male and female genders are considered. Being a body is fundamental to being human and is intrinsic to the nature of that humanity (as John Paul II argues above), while masculinity and femininity are “two ways in which [a] human being […] is a body.” These two ways of being human bodies – the “double unity as male and female” – are introduced as means of overcoming the solitude of the sexually undifferentiated human. From the Genesis account of how male and female are differentiated, John Paul II notes in particular two aspects: First, that the “second I” – the female – that emerges from the “torpor” of the undifferentiated man during which differentiation is created – is “also personal and equally related to the situation of original solitude.” Second, that man “shows joy and even exultation […] for the other human being, for the second “I”.”

The first 8 chapters, a high-level synthesis of which the above has attempted, take us to the point of the basic features of man and woman having been sketched out, which is then the starting point for looking at the nature of the marital relationship. What I found particularly impressive, beyond the actual content and the psychological and anthropological profile of the human person that John Paul II presents, is the method of analysis he applies to Genesis. Throughout this discourse he is very clear about considering that text to be of mythical character, which “does not refer to fictitious-fabulous content, but simply to an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.” And he goes on to say that “[w]ithout any difficulty, we discover that content under the stratum of the archaic narrative, truly marvelous in the quality and condensation of the truths contained there.” What a guy! While I certainly cannot echo the “without difficulty” qualifier, the marvelousness and “quality and condensation of the truths” that he manages to reveal in this ancient text is amazing. His approach strikes me as being categorically different both from a naive, literal reading of Genesis that leads some to highly irrational and a-scientific conclusions and from a superficial “this is just a story” approach that fails to uncover deeper meaning.

Venture freely into the open sea of the truth

I am glad I kept tabs on Pope Benedict XVI’s sermons, articles and speeches over the Christmas period and that I now had a chance to read them, as there were some true gems to be found there.

Let’s start with his Christmas Vigil homily, where he summed up the trusting fragility of the Christmas paradox particularly vividly and beautifully:

“Again and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and love me.”

Then, in his article in the Financial Times, he drew out the consequences of God’s becoming man and the love for humanity He thereby demonstrated:

“Christians shouldn’t shun the world; they should engage with it. But their involvement in politics and economics should transcend every form of ideology.

Christians fight poverty out of a recognition of the supreme dignity of every human being, created in God’s image and destined for eternal life. Christians work for more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources out of a belief that, as stewards of God’s creation, we have a duty to care for the weakest and most vulnerable. Christians oppose greed and exploitation out of a conviction that generosity and selfless love, as taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth, are the way that leads to fullness of life. Christian belief in the transcendent destiny of every human being gives urgency to the task of promoting peace and justice for all.”

However, the engagement of Christians in the world is to be done on Gospel terms and here Benedict introduces a (to me) new reading of Jesus’ famous response to the trap some Pharisees laid him: “Christians render to Caesar only what belongs to Caesar, not what belongs to God.” He goes beyond a splitting of responsibilities and highlights the wrongful demands that secular powers can lay claim to:

“Christians have at times throughout history been unable to comply with demands made by Caesar. From the Emperor cult of ancient Rome to the totalitarian regimes of the last century, Caesar has tried to take the place of God. When Christians refuse to bow down before the false gods proposed today, it is not because of an antiquated world-view. Rather, it is because they are free from the constraints of ideology and inspired by such a noble vision of human destiny that they cannot collude with anything that undermines it.”

Benedict then takes this central idea of freedom in truth and applies it, in a to me surprisingly bold way, to the topic of inter-religious dialogue, which “is a necessary condition for peace in the world and is therefore a duty for Christians as well as other religious communities.” He first presents the current rules of this dialogue as, first, “not aim[ing] at conversion, but at understanding” and, second, that “both parties to the dialogue remain consciously within their identity, which the dialogue does not place in question either for themselves or for the other.” While he underlines the correctness of not aiming at conversion, Benedict sees these rules as “too superficial” and instead proposes the following to the Christian participant:

“[T]he search for knowledge and understanding always has to involve drawing closer to the truth. Both sides in this piece-by-piece approach to truth are therefore on the path that leads forward and towards greater commonality, brought about by the oneness of the truth. As far as preserving identity is concerned, it would be too little for the Christian, so to speak, to assert his identity in a such a way that he effectively blocks the path to truth. Then his Christianity would appear as something arbitrary, merely propositional. He would seem not to reckon with the possibility that religion has to do with truth. On the contrary, I would say that the Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of the truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.”

This is decidedly not a cautious edging towards compromise, but instead a realization that Christians “can enter openly and fearlessly into any dialogue.”

Lumen Gentium: On the People of God

[Just a quick apology before you proceed – this post has turned out to be rather longer than I hoped for, but there was just so much of interest in this chapter of Lumen Gentium that I couldn’t be any more succinct. You may prefer to read it in parts rather than all in one go …]

To have any chance of reading the full set of 16 Vatican II documents during this Year of Faith, I need to press on and take a look at the second chapter of Lumen Gentium, the council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church. In the first chapter, we got a view of who the Church is, as seen from God’s perspective – i.e., what the ultimate end of the Church is, while here, in chapter two, the focus is more on a view from the trenches: the People of God.

If you are reading this as an agnostic or a non-Catholic, let me first point you to the caveat in my post on Dei Verbum (paragraph 2), and re-iterate how this particular document does not use the most accessible language (e.g., with sentences like “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect.”). While I would feel quite at ease recommending a direct reading of Dei Verbum to anyone interested in how the Church understands Scripture, I’d hesitate when it comes to Lumen Gentium. Nonetheless, if you consider Lumen Gentium to be like a patent is to a scientific paper and take the time to peel away its particular form, the substance it carries is well worth the effort.

The starting point of Chapter 2 is Jesus’ New Testament, which forms a new people (the People of God) by means not of genetics (as was the case in the Old Testament, where the Israelites are already called the “Church of God”) but of the Spirit. All who believe in Jesus, become members of His people through baptism and the actions of the Holy Spirit. “The state of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in His temple. Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us.” A clearer distinction is made here between those who are members of the People of God and those who are not than in the first chapter. The Church is presented as the salt or yeast from which the whole world can benefit: “although it does not actually include all men, and at times may look like a small flock, [the Church] is nonetheless a lasting and sure seed of unity, hope and salvation for the whole human race.” Looking back at chapter one and at Dei Verbum, this should not be taken as an indication of superiority, but simply as an attempt at specificity. Clearly not all of humanity believes that Jesus is God, who came to show us the way to Himself, and Lumen Gentium here strives to spell out what it is that those who hold this belief are like and how they live as a community. This positioning of the Church is particularly clear from the following: “Established by Christ as a communion of life, charity and truth, [the Church] is also used by Him as an instrument for the redemption of all.”

The role of the People of God is to “bear witness to Christ and give an answer to those who seek an account of that hope of eternal life which is in them.” This is done by all members of the Church by participating in the priesthood of Jesus, who is its head. Those consecrated to the “ministerial priesthood” “teach and rule the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, making present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offering it to God in the name of all the people.” The laity too participate in Jesus’ (“royal”) priesthood, which they exercise “in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.” The whole church therefore is a “priestly community.”

It is a community that operates through the “sacraments and the exercise of the virtues,” where members are “[i]ncorporated in the Church through baptism” (incorporated since the Church is the Body of Christ, as chapter one sets out). This membership is further perfected by confirmation, when “the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed.” The Eucharist, which is “the fount and apex of the whole Christian life” strengthens them and “manifest[s] in a concrete way [the] unity of the people of God.” Through the sacrament of Penance, they “obtain pardon from […] God for the offence committed against Him and are […] reconciled with the Church.” Through the anointing of the sick, the People of God “associat[e] themselves freely with the passion and death of Christ.” Those who are consecrated by “Holy Orders[,] are appointed to feed the Church in Christ’s name with the word and the grace of God,” while those who receive the sacrament of Matrimony, “partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church, help each other to attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and education of their children.” “From the wedlock of Christians there comes the family, in which new citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the people of God through the centuries. The family is, so to speak, the domestic church.” What is crystal clear from the above is that the sacraments (shown in bold) are the “means of salvation,” helping the members of the Church to “bear witness to Christ.”

So far, so good, but what comes next in §12 is to me the most interesting part of Chapter 2 (as the preceding paragraphs were edifying, but had a sense of the taxonomical about them):

“The entire body of the faithful […] cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when “from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God. Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints, penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life.”

This is strong stuff, both as it states that the entire body of the faithful “cannot err” when it comes to faith and morals and as it calls for careful thought being applied to these beliefs and for their ever more perfect putting into practice. To my mind the key takeaway here is that infallibility here is attributed to the “entire body of the faithful” – i.e., the Mystical Body of Christ that has Jesus as its head. If truly all the faithful hold a certain belief then I can well subscribe to that belief having to be taken seriously and having to be attributed to the Holy Spirit. What this view does is to place the whole of the Church in a position of tremendous importance and responsibility, far from the usual caricature where the hierarchy is seen as dictating to a flock that follows it blindly and unthinkingly. The flip side of such status is the responsibility we carry for disagreements and disunity within the Church, which prevents us from accessing the unerring insights that the Holy Spirit has prepared for us when we are united.¹

Two aspects of the above strike me as relevant: first, that this is not a new idea, but instead a centuries-old idea that has had new light shed on it and second, that it again points to the continuing action of the Holy Spirit. In terms of the first aspect, the basic idea can be seen already in the Latin proverb: “Vox populi, vox Dei” (“The voice of the people is the voice of God”) which has been quoted as a proverb already in the 8th century AD. The second aspect then is particlarly clearly illuminated by what Pope Benedict XVI in fact said just today:

“This gift, the sensus fidei, constitutes in the believer a kind of supernatural instinct that has a connatural life with the same object of faith. It is a criterion for discerning whether or not a truth belongs to the deposit of the living apostolic tradition. It also has a propositional value because the Holy Spirit does not cease to speak to the Churches and lead them to the whole truth.”

To underline the profound vocation of every single member of the People of God, Lumen Gentium points to the Holy Spirit’s gifts being bestowed on anyone whom He chooses: “[T]he Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, “allotting his gifts to everyone according as He wills.” He distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church.” This acknowledges very clearly that it is not the hierarchy of the church alone who have a role of leadership in the Church, but that the Holy Spirit can choose anyone to contribute to its renewal, “but judgment as to their genuinity and proper use belongs to those who are appointed leaders in the Church, to whose special competence it belongs, not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to that which is good.” A very careful balance is presented here between the hierarchical and the “charismatic” aspect of the Church, which underlines again the fact that the Church are all the People of God.

Paragraph 13 then focuses on there being only one People of God, “which takes its citizens from every race, making them citizens of a kingdom which is of a heavenly rather than of an earthly nature.” This “takes nothing away from the temporal welfare of any people. On the contrary it fosters and takes to itself, insofar as they are good, the ability, riches and customs in which the genius of each people expresses itself.” All the diversity in the Church then has as its goal the fulfillment of St. Peter’s words: “According to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10).

In paragraph 14 we turn to the role of the Church in the context of salvation and we start with a warning: “Whosoever, […] knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.” Membership in the Church requires acceptance of “her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and [being] united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops.” Even membership (for those who know that it is necessary for salvation) is not sufficient though: “He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart.”” And it gets even worse! Those who “fail […] to respond to [the grace of Christ] in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.” Reading Chapter two very much gives you a sense of growing wonder as you proceed towards the end of §13, only to be followed by a cold shower and stark warnings!

So, what does §15 hold? First, it starts by acknowledging that there are Christians outside the Catholic Church:

“They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognize and accept other sacraments within their own Churches or ecclesiastical communities. Many of them rejoice in the episcopate, celebrate the Holy Eucharist and cultivate devotion toward the Virgin Mother of God. They also share with us in prayer and other spiritual benefits. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power.”

The key to me here is not only the extensive list of similarities that the Catholic Church sees in other “churches and ecclesiastical communities” but also the warmth of the language used (“lovingly believe,” “consecrated by baptism,” “rejoice in the episcopate,” “cultivate devotion,” “joined with us in the Holy Spirit”). There is a real yearning and well-wishing here and a desire to “pray, hope and work” towards being “peacefully united.”

Paragraph 16 then talks about where the Catholic Church sees non-Christians in this picture and there is again a sense of openness, warmth and yearning here. First come the Jews, “from whom Christ was born according to the flesh”: “this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues.” Next, come the Muslims “who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.” Then there are all others who seek God: “Nor is God far distant from [them], for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved.” Finally, all those of good will are in the picture too: “Divine Providence [does not] deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life.” The message is very clear: all are called to salvation and each has to take advantage of all the means they are offered for reaching it, according to their conscience and understanding.

Finally, Chapter 2 closes with a reminder of Jesus’ words: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Mathew 28:19). All members of the Church have an “obligation of spreading the faith” so that “whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God.” All this is done so that “the entire world may become the People of God,” which instead of being an attempt to conquer or colonize is one of striving for unity in diversity.

¹ I would just like to tip my hat to my bestie PM, who has essentially arrived at this point without having read Lumen Gentium!

In search of joy

As I haven’t managed to write a post here for over a week, I would just like to take the opportunity now to tie together a couple of the strands of the last seven days, which happen to have a shared theme of joy.

First, there is a talk by Pope Benedict XVI that I have been wanting to read for a while and that I finally got to last night. It is the first sermon he gave after the start of the Year of Faith, where he sets out to – what else – talk about the nature of faith. Amongst other things (and I encourage you to read the original in full), he says that “[f]aith is a gift of God, but it is also a deeply human and free act” and he asks himself how we can get “that openness of heart and mind […] to believe in the God.” The answer Benedict puts forward comes from Dei Verbum (§5): “To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving “joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it” (Second Council of Orange, Canon 7, 529 AD).” And this makes him conclude: “To believe is to trust freely and joyfully in God’s providential plan” and saying “yes” to God “transforms life, opens the way towards fullness of meaning, thus making it new, full of joy and of reliable hope.”

Second, this joy and freedom of choice (also supported by the ultimate emphasis placed on the freedom of conscience in the Catechism (§1790)) then lead to lives like those of the saints, whom Benedict considers to be “the greatest apologetic for our faith,” alongside art. The accessibility and attractiveness of the joy that another person has, was then one of the topics that I spoke about with my bestie JMGR – a (in my opinion accurately) self-proclaimed “born-again agnostic” :). While our beliefs and views cannot be transferred to another and can remain the subject of doubt and suspicion, the joy and goodness of another’s life is accessible to us regardless of what we think about their beliefs. We can recognize the goodness of the fruit and as a result be more receptive to listening to the tree. A related theme that came up during our chat was also the role of uncertainty in the context of building personal relationships. Acknowledging the fundamental limitations of knowledge (which make it impossible to go beyond one’s self epistemologically) can lead not to indifference or nihilism (which is exhausting) but instead to openness and a greater readiness to hear out those who hold other beliefs.

Third, preceding these explicit instances of thinking about joy as the primary focus, was my reflecting on the activities of aggressive atheists like Richard Dawkins and realizing that I should be grateful for them! On this blog alone, I have confronted their claims repeatedly (about goodness, rationality, science, cosmology) and have always come away from the process enriched both because I read up on the relevant science or philosophy and because I have discovered that the views held by the Church (through the Catechism, the teaching of the Popes or the insights of the Saints) are eminently rational, warmheartedly open and very much my own. There is also no denying the fact that the Church’s teaching has become what it is today also in response to attacks from militant atheists, which have meant that it had to think more carefully about how faith and reason relate and to clean itself from some aberrations that have crept in over the centuries.

Fourth, a very good friend of mine – MK – has been a constant source of joy to me over the last months, during which he has been battling with a serious, life-threatening disease. Throughout this time he has been sharing his experiences on Facebook and on a blog, where he chronicles his battling with the disease, while firmly keeping his sight set on God and on loving his neighbors. His blog is such a source of light for me that I could pick a paragraph at random and share it with you here. In fact, I am just going to share the beginning of what he wrote today:

“I am a child of God not by merit but by a gift of love from Him. Not only that, everybody else is a child of God and if God is our father, we are brothers and sisters, equal! Sounds obvious, but from my, our behaviour, we don’t treat each other as equal. How many times do I put me before loving God in my neighbour. I have all the experience in this and that, I know best, because I have done it before, I have a talent from God! More and more I discover that all these things are given into my hand to make his love visible! When I and my talents, inspirations and gifts from God get in the way of taking time to love my neighbour, it is always me. Where there is me there God can’t be! Here is the challenge: To love the way Jesus loved when he was on the cross, giving everything, becoming nothing out of love!”

True joy is rich, rewarding and all-encompassing. It is not a matter of only the good, easy times, but an insight and gift that transforms challenge, difficulty and suffering. My bestie Margaret once wrote the following to another bestie of ours – DF – and me: “Hope all is very very well (I mean, of course all manner of things are always well because we are loved immensely, so maybe I should wish that you are in the state where you are able to see that it is).” That too is joy and I couldn’t put it any better myself.

Amazing mechanisms

During this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI has started a series of sermons on the Creed, with the latest focusing on how one can come to know God. He starts out by emphasizing that God respects each person’s freedom and that, instead of us having to look for Him, He seeks us out and makes himself known to us. Nonetheless, Benedict picks out three sources for finding signs of God and exhorts believers to “[a]lways be ready to respond, but with gentleness and respect, to anyone who asks you for the hope that is in your hearts” (1 Peter 3:15) The Gospel needs to be communicated “joyfully, feeling it to be [one’s] own, through a life truly animated by faith, marked by charity, service to God and to others, and capable of radiating hope.”

The three sources of signs of God’s presence that Benedict puts forward are: “the world, man and faith”:

1. The world. “[D]azzled by the glitter of worldliness,” we are in danger of becoming blind to how the universe can fill us with wonder. Instead, “contemplat[ing] creation, its beauty, its structure” leads us to discover its “amazing mechanisms” and patterns that can lead to an intuition of the “Beautiful One” who is behind them. Benedict quotes Einstein here as saying that the laws of nature “reveal such a superior reason that all rational thought and human law is but a very insignificant reflection by comparison” (The World as I See it). This is not to be taken naively as: look at nature and you’ll instantly believe in God. That is not what Benedict means, nor would that respect our freedom. Instead, the point is: look around you, contemplate the beauty and intricacy of the universe, instead of just getting sucked into the consumerist rat-race, and you might discover God. This is not proselytism (with the emphasis on freedom and on it being up to God to call people, instead of saying that they ought to make the first move, or even be made to make it!) – his advice is good regardless of what you think about the likelihood of God’s existence and is very clearly mirrored in the mystical traditions of all religions and of contemplative practice outside religion.

2. Man. Benedict here quotes St. Augustine as saying: “God is closer to me than I am to myself” (cf. Confessions, III, 6, 11) and “truth dwells in the heart of man” (True Religion, 39, 72). “The ability to stop and take a deep look within ourselves and read that thirst for the infinite that we carry within” is at risk of being lost “in the noisy and distracted world in which we live.” Again Benedict basically says (to paraphrase him): “Don’t take my word for it – just give yourself a chance to reflect about yourself and the world you live in and I believe you will see signs of God’s presence.”

3. Faith. Here Benedict argues that looking at those who believe is a hint about God’s presence too:

He who believes is united with God, is open to His grace, to the power of charity. So his existence becomes a witness not of himself, but of the Risen Christ, and his faith is not afraid to show itself in everyday life, it is open to dialogue that expresses deep friendship for the journey of every man, and knows how to bring the light of hope to the need for redemption, happiness, and future.

This echoes Archbishop Williams’ recent words on what holy people are like and again underlines the “self-noughting” of those who truly believe in God and their friendship with and openness towards all. Benedict proceeds to spell out misconceptions of faith as “illusion, escapism, a comfortable shelter, sentimentality” and instead contrasts them agains what it is: an “involvement in every aspect of life.”

Finally, Benedict concludes with a call for all Christians to purify themselves and make themselves “conform to” Jesus also so that others may rid themselves of a misunderstanding of Christianity as a “mere system of beliefs.” Instead:

Christianity, before being a moral or ethical value, is the experience of love, of welcoming the person of Jesus. For this reason, the Christian and Christian communities must first look to and help others to look to Christ, the true path that leads to God.

Hellfire and brimstone: not in my name

While the current bishop’s synod in Rome is a joy to follow (with gems like Archbishop Williams’ talk or the pope’s opening sermon and contributions from many of the world’s bishops as well as other invited participants), there are the inevitable oddities swirling around its periphery.

Today, for example, I came across a piece about one of the synod’s observers, Dr. Ralph Martin, Director of Graduate Theology and New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, who argues that “Evangelization should include fear of hell” and that “[t]he assumption that almost everyone is basically good and destined for heaven is a “silent apostasy” infecting a culture “drifting toward destruction.”” Martin then proceeds to invoke Lumen Gentium (the Vatican II document I am reading now) and say that while it “does allow the possibility “for certain people to be saved without hearing the Gospel under specific conditions,” […] very often people aren’t inculpably ignorant of the Gospel, they’re not seeking God, they’re not living according to the light of their conscience, they’re not responding to God’s grace, and they actually exchange the truth of God for a lie.” In summary, “we can’t presume that everyone’s on the way that’s leading to Heaven.”

I couldn’t disagree more!

While Martin (rightly) points out that people are often “not living according to the light of their conscience” (and who isn’t at some time or another?!), it is some stretch to go from there to suggest that they (we!) are not on the way to heaven.

Lumen Gentium makes absolutely no mention of hell (or any related concept I could think of) whatsoever, so brandishing it as the justification of one’s views is a bit of a leap of (non)faith.

Martin’s approach seems divorced from both Benedict XVI’s and John Paul II’s teaching about hell:

“[H]ell is the ultimate consequence of sin itself… Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.” (Blessed Pope John Paul II, general audience, 28 July 1999)

“Who will [be in hell]? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard. This is a mystery, truly inscrutable, which embraces the holiness of God and the conscience of man. The silence of the Church is, therefore, the only appropriate position for Christian faith. Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matthew 26:24), His words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.” (Blessed Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope)

“Perhaps there are not so many who have destroyed themselves so completely, who are irreparable forever, who no longer have any element upon which the love of God can rest, who no longer have the slightest capacity to love within themselves. This would be hell.” (Pope Benedict XVI, question and answer session with the priests of Rome, 11 February 2008)

With the above concept of hell (a voluntary separation of oneself from God, in the face of God!), it is hard to see who would be there. Benedict XVI only goes so far as to say that there are perhaps “not so many” there, while John Paul II flatly refuses to speculate! Both of their positions are very much aligned though with the view that Martin opposes (“[t]he assumption that almost everyone is basically good and destined for heaven”) and calls a “silent apostasy” … Not the smartest of criticisms to level at a pope and especially not at the current and previous ones.

Threatening others with hell just seems to be contrary both to the Golden Rule and the Good News that Jesus taught, as can be seen also from what some of the early Church Fathers had to say about the subject, including St. Gregory of Nyssa’s belief that “all free creatures will share the grace of salvation” (i.e., apocatastasis) and another exclaiming: “If anyone has to be in hell, let it be me.” Even just from the perspective of charity, I cannot see how I could wish for anything other than for hell to be empty.

Even from a psychological perspective, reinforcement of good behaviour is more effective than threatening to punish bad behaviour (e. g., see Kahneman’s treatment of the subject).

Jesus’ call is a positive one: love your neighbor as yourself, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, … Following it leads to heaven, while just trying to avoid transgressions that are punishable is not enough.

I don’t mean to deny the reality of hell – just like heaven (communion with God-Love), a foretaste of hell (separation from God-Love) can readily be had in this life already. What I am saying though is that a focus on hell is counterproductive. By keeping my eyes on God in my neighbors, I am leaving myself less time to be absorbed by myself. Hell is kept at bay by my being busy with the pursuit of heaven.

The agrapha: Jesus’ extra-canonical sayings

Over the course of the last week I have come across a – to me previously unknown – source of Jesus’ sayings: the “agrapha,” and this straight from two places: first, Pope Benedict XVI’s off-the-cuff (!) remarks during the first day of the Bishops’ synod, where he quotes Origen quoting Jesus as saying “Whoever is close to me is close to the fire,” where the fire is God’s presence. Second, an article about the Servant of God Igino Giordani, where he reflects on Tertullian and St. Clement of Alexandria quoting Jesus as saying: “Have you seen your brother? You have seen your God.”

So, what are these “agrapha”? The word comes from the Greek agraphon – “non written” and refers to these sayings (sometimes also called logion/logia) not being found in the canonical Gospels, but instead having been (up to a point) handed down by word of mouth. As of today there are 21 that are generally though to be authentic, based on a specific set of criteria, spelled out in the Catholic Encyclopedia. They come from the rest of the New Testament (unsurprisingly) – i.e., being instances of someone quoting Jesus as opposed to Jesus being recorded as speaking directly as in the Gospels, from apocryphal sources – contemporary or near-contemporary sources to the Gospels that have not been included in the New Testament due to overall questions about their authenticity, from the Church Fathers – early Christian teachers quoting Jesus’ sayings passed down by verbal tradition and from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri – a set of manuscripts discovered in 1897 and 1904 dating from the early half of the 3rd century AD. While the current set numbers 21 such sayings, it is certainly open to extension if new sources are discovered and if their likelihood of authenticity is judged high. Also worth pointing out is the fact that these sayings are not attributed the same status as those of the canonical texts (more on that in the future post on Dei Verbum) and that a less stringent level of scrutiny is applied to them.

Nonetheless, if these sayings are likely to come from Jesus, there is great merit in knowing of them and understanding how they might shed new light on what is recorded about Jesus in the Gospels. Having the Pope himself quote one of them and having such a great Catholic writer as Igino Giordani reflect on them, should add further impetus to looking at them myself.

The following then are my favorites from among the full set found here, skipping ones found in the New Testament outside the Gospels, which are already familiar:

Let your alm sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it. (Didache, 1.6)

Those who wish to see me and take hold of my kingdom must receive me in tribulation and suffering. (Barnabas, 7.11b)

There shall be schisms and heresies. (St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 35)

In what things I take you [by surprise], in those things I also will judge.(ibid, 47)

The days will come in which vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape, when pressed, will give twenty-five measures of wine. And, when one of those saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will clamor: I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me! Similarly a grain of wheat also will generate ten thousand heads, and each head will have ten thousand grains, and each grain five double pounds of clear and clean flour. And the remaining fruits and seeds and herbiage will follow through in congruence with these, and all the animals using these foods which are taken from the earth will in turn become peaceful and consenting, subject to men with every subjection. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.33.3-4, quoting Jesus talking about what heaven will be like, his source being “Papias […] who was a[n] earwitness of John and companion of Polycarp”)

Have you seen your brother? You have seen your God. (St. Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies, 1.19)

Ask for the great things, and the little things will be added unto you. (ibid, 1.24)

With reason, then, the scripture, wishing us to become such kind of dialectics, exhorts: But become approved moneychangers, rejecting the [evil] things, and embracing the good. (ibid, 1.28)

Love covers a multitude of sins. (ibid, 4.8)

No man can obtain the heavenly kingdom that has not passed through temptation. (Tertullian, On Baptism, 20)

How can you say: I have kept the law and the prophets? For it is written in the law: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And behold, many of your brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad in filth, dying of hunger, and your house is full of many good things, and nothing at all goes out of it unto them. (Origen, On Mathew, 15)

On account of the sick I was sick and on account of the hungry I was hungry and on account of the thirsty I was thirsty. (ibid, 13.2)

He that is near me is near the fire. He that is far from me is far from the kingdom. (Origen, On Jeremiah, 20.3)

If your brother sins in word […] and makes satisfaction to you, seven times a day receive him. Simon his disciple said to him: Seven times a day? The Lord responded and said to him: Still I say to you, until seventy times seven. For indeed in the prophets, even after they were anointed by the holy spirit, the speech of sin was found. (St. Jerome, Against Pelagius, 3.2)

And taking them along he entered into the place of purification itself and was walking around in the temple. And there came a certain Pharisee, a high priest, Levi by name, and he joined them and said to the savior: Who allowed you to tread on this place of purification and see these holy vessels, neither having bathed nor the feet of your disciples having been baptized? But after having defiled it, you treaded on this holy place, which is clean, on which no other man unless he has bathed and changed his clothing treads, nor dares to look at these holy vessels. And the savior immediately stood with the disciples and answered him: You therefore, being here in the temple, are you clean? The former says to him: I am clean. For I bathed in the pool of David and by one ladder going down by another I went up, and I garbed myself in garments white and clean, and then went and looked upon these holy vessels. The savior answered to him and said: Woe, blind men who do not see. You bathed in these flowing waters in which dogs and swine are cast night and day, and washed and smeared the outside skin, which even the prostitutes and the flute-girls perfume and bathe and wipe and beautify for the desire of men, but within they are filled with scorpions and all evil. But I and my disciples whom you say have not been baptized have been immersed in waters of eternal life. (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840, 7b-45)

Wherever there are two, they are not without God; and wherever there is one alone, I say I am with him. Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I. (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1)

What a rich harvest! There is much here to think and talk about, but I wanted to share it with you as soon as I could, hence the “bare” presentation. Enjoy!

Eternity today

Today the Church has launched its Year of Faith, whose announcement motivated me three months ago to start writing this blog. While the Year of Faith was its explicit impetus, my deeper reasons were both a desire to be clearer to myself about what it was that my faith meant to me and implied for me and a desire to make explicit my deep-seated conviction that imitating Jesus was not contrary to reason or to my scientific profession and that it ought to be more accessible to my friends with other religious beliefs or none. By this I don’t mean in any way an attempt to convince them of anything, but simply by making my faith explicit and by revealing its consequences and connections to the broader philosophical, cultural, artistic and scientific contexts, show that it makes sense and that it allows me to seek the goals and values that they themselves share. I was also keen to look for the underlying similarities among all who employ reason honestly and who seek the common good and to show that at this level are all close to one another. Whether this is something that has emerged from the last 68 posts is something you’ll have to judge for yourself. All I can say is that it has been a positive experience for me, especially in the cases where a post has lead to or was triggered by dialogue.

With that preamble out of the way, let me share with you my take on today’s opening of the Year of Faith by pulling together some of the points made by Pope Benedict XVI in his sermon during the opening mass, Archbishop Rowan Williams’ address to the Bishops’ Synod yesterday and Patriarch Bartholomew I’s greeting this morning. This fact alone, of having the heads of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox communities come together at the opening of this Year of Faith is great cause for enthusiasm to me, as it points to their shared belief in Jesus being present “where two or three are gathered together in [his] name” (Matthew 18:20) and in their shared commitment to “witness together to the Gospel message of salvation and healing for the least of our brethren: the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten in God’s world.” (Bartholomew I).

To my mind, Archbishop Williams’ talk yesterday did a great job of setting the scene by reflecting on what it is that attracts people to authentic, lived Christianity:

“[It is] the possibility, quite simply, of living more humanly – living with less frantic acquisitiveness, living with space for stillness, living in the expectation of learning, and most of all, living with an awareness that there is a solid and durable joy to be discovered in the disciplines of self-forgetfulness that is quite different from the gratification of this or that impulse of the moment.”

He argues, as do I, that the behavior to which authentic Christians are lead by their desire to imitate Jesus has universal value and is not something alien or parallel to what all others seek too. Williams follows the above with a warning though: “The man who seeks sincerity, instead of seeking truth in self-forgetfulness, is like the man who seeks to be detached instead of laying himself open in love.” (Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, pp. 114) – striving to share with the world what it means to follow Jesus cannot be sought for its own sake as that defeats its own purpose. Such self-consciousness about one’s faith and its perception by others, by definition, cannot be overcome by being even more self-conscious about it:

“We have to return to St Paul and ask, ‘Where are we looking?’ Do we look anxiously to the problems of our day, the varieties of unfaithfulness or of threat to faith and morals, the weakness of the institution? Or are we seeking to look to Jesus, to the unveiled face of God’s image in the light of which we see the image further reflected in ourselves and our neighbours?”

In many ways it is like how Douglas Adams describes flying in the Hitchhiker’s Guide: a throwing of oneself to the ground and accidentally missing, by having been distracted at the critical moment. Sharing my faith is like throwing myself into following Jesus and being distracted by my friends. 🙂

What does it mean though to follow Jesus? How can you even try to imitate a carpenter, healer, prophet, teacher, … from two thousand years ago? Here Pope Benedict argues that we face a fundamental tension when striving to

“mak[e] the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our time, without sacrificing it to the demands of the present or leaving it tied to the past: the eternal presence of God resounds in the faith, transcending time, yet it can only be welcomed by us in our own unrepeatable today.”

Applying Jesus’ message to the conditions we are in today is essential, but so is remaining faithful to it and this is the challenge that both the Second Vatican Council, which opened 50 years ago today, and this new Year of Faith strive to address. To Pope Benedict, the key though is the person of Jesus, through whom “God’s face is revealed to us.” “[T]he closer [we] get to him, the closer [we] get to the hearts of [our] brothers and sisters” (Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings, p.37; quoted by Archbishop Williams).

Other truths

Beyond being sheep, Catholics are often also accused of claiming a monopoly on the truth – that it is exclusively them who have it and that everyone else is simply wrong. Sadly there is some basis in this accusation, if you look back over the history of the Church – peaking in shameful crimes like those perpetrated by the Inquisition and for which Blessed Pope John Paul II has unreservedly apologized.

Thankfully the Second Vatican Council has restored a much healthier view of appreciating Truth, wherever it is found, and seeking to learn from and live with those who profess other religions or none. At its root, this newfound openness derives from the event described in last Sunday’s Gospel, where John runs to Jesus to complain: “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” It is impressive to see that already at the time of Jesus, his disciples were jealous of Jesus’s actions and teaching and wanted to keep tight control over it. I believe there is a positive motivation for this in that they recognized it as being very valuable and didn’t want it to become distorted by those who did not also have a personal relationship with Jesus.

The response Jesus gives is very clear though: “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:38-40) Again there is the emphasis on orthopraxy and on the Truth being universal, accessible to all, albeit in different ways and expressed using different language and concepts. The Catechism here states that “the Church considers all goodness and truth found in [other] religions” to come from Him “who enlightens all men.” (CCC, §843).

This challenge is far from dealt with though, and Pope Benedict XVI has spoken about it with great openness and honesty at a meeting with Portuguese artists and scientists during his visit in 2010:

“The Church, in her adherence to the eternal character of truth, is in the process of learning how to live with respect for other “truths” and for the truth of others. Through this respect, open to dialogue, new doors can be opened to the transmission of truth.”

He is very frank about this post–conciliar openness being new, and like with all new things, is the beginning of a process where the Church needs to work out how to behave. In his book, Truth and Tolerance, published in 2003 before he became pope, the then-cardinal Ratzinger lays out the pre-requisites for effective inter-religious dialogue and indeed for a true adherence to one’s own religion:

“Can or must a man simply make the best of the religion that happens to fall to his share, in the form in which it is actually practiced around him? Or must he not, whatever happens, be one who seeks, who strives to purify his conscience and, thus, move toward—at the very least—the purer forms of his own religion? […]

The apostles, and the early Christian congregations as a whole, were only able to see in Jesus their Savior because they were looking for the “hope of Israel”—because they did not simply regard the inherited religious forms of their environment as being sufficient in themselves but were waiting and seeking people with open hearts. […]

[I]t is the dynamic of the conscience and of the silent presence of God in it that is leading religions toward one another and guiding people onto the path to God, not the canonizing of what already exists, so that people are excused from any deeper searching.”

The message here is clear: what is needed is a persistent striving for a conscience that is purified of distractions and impediments (which also requires the practice of charity in its broadest sense) and which will then lead one to God and all people closer to each other.