Submitted to the Star Banner for publication, September 7, 2000
Editor,
The Vatican recently issued a document which can have a negative political impact on it. Phillip
Pullela of Reuters headlines it 9/5/00: Vatican Says No Religion Equals Roman Catholicism.
The St. Petersburg TIMES headlines it 9/6/00: "Vatican declares Catholicism is superior
religion." The headlines are not news; how the Vatican defines other religions in the document is
news.
The Vatican document is titled, "Declaration The Lord Jesus--On the Unicity and Salvific
Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church." Church officials say it is to be considered
"infallible."
In the Vatican's drive to increase its influence on laws of the USA, American bishops were
directed to recruit Evangelical Protestants and Orthodox Jews to their cause, which they did.
With these recruits, the bishops won support from the Republican party, the Christian Coalition,
and leaders from like minded religions. Vatican descriptions in this document of these other
religions as inferior and defective could diminish this support.
The Vatican combats the "so-called theology of religious pluralism," which suggests Catholics
are on a par in God's eyes with members of other religions, like Jews, Muslims or Hindus.
Without citing particular religions, it describes other religions as inherently inferior because they
depend on "...superstitions or other errors (that) constitute an obstacle to salvation."
They say other Christian churches have defects which render them inferior. Part of this is
because these religions do not recognize the primacy of the pope, "...which, according to the will
of God, objectively has and exercises over the entire Church."
Jesuit scholar Thomas J. Reese fears, "The danger is that this document will be seen as a
rejection of that (productive) dialogue...going on for the past 35 years between Catholics and
Protestants."
Leaders of the World Council of Churches and other Christian religions feel this document is a
return to the past when the Vatican openly considered other churches were not "proper churches"
and such churches did not trust the Vatican.
This Vatican document may prove to be a big bump, if not an insurmountable bump, on its road
to be the religion of the USA and of the world..
James M. O'Hara