ROME — The redoubtable Archbishop Charles Chaput has offered fraternal correction to Pope Francis, urging him to hold to the basic tenets of Christianity.
The former archbishop of Philadelphia was responding to the pontiff’s off-the-cuff remarks to youth in Singapore on Friday, in which the pope told his listeners that all religions are paths to God, seeming to suggest that none is superior to the others.
If people start fighting over whose religion is more important “or saying, ‘Mine is the true religion; yours isn’t true,’ where does that lead? Where?” the pope asked.
“All religions are a path to reach God,” he stated. “They are, to use a comparison, like different languages, different dialects to get there.”
“Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths. Understood?” he said.
In response, Chaput wrote that such loose comments “can only confuse.”
“Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God,” he said. “To suggest, imply, or allow others to infer otherwise is a failure to love.”
“We are called Christians because we believe Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity,” he stated. “From the beginning of our faith, followers of Christ were unique among world religions because they accepted as true Christ’s extraordinary claim that he is God.”
“Christians have also always believed that this reality makes Christianity categorically distinct from all other religions, and in turn requires a total commitment of our lives,” he added.
The archbishop also reminded the pope of his responsibility to teach the faith clearly.
The pope “is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide,” Chaput wrote. “This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically.”
“Simply put: Not all religions seek the same God, and some religions are both wrong and potentially dangerous, materially and spiritually,” he wrote.
Chaput’s words echoed those of Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, who also warned about treating all religions as equals.
Before becoming pope, Ratzinger wrote on the differences between religions, noting that “anyone who sees in the religions of the world only reprehensible superstition is wrong,” but, also, “anyone who wants only to give a positive evaluation of all religions… is equally wrong.”
In his own critical considerations of religions, Ratzinger wrote with brutal honesty, observing that there are “deviant, esoteric forms of religion on offer” as well as “pathological” forms of religion. He wrote of religions that are “obviously sick” and religions that are “destructive for man.”
He asserted, moreover, that with the detachment of religion from reason, “pathological forms of religion are constantly increasing.”