July 17 Mon
God permits, not desires, many religions. The New Testament, tells us that he who rejects Christ’s messengers rejects Christ, and that Christ commissioned the Church to preach the Gospel to the whole world.
Thus, the ultimate purpose of any Church activity is to propose the Truth and to provide the means of salvation. It is not to get people of all faiths, and of no faith, to feel comfortable with each other.
The forced adhesion to a certain religion or culture, of course, must be rejected.
Some elements of our nature (such as “color”, “sex”, and “race”) are received without our consent. But religion is a matter of commitment of mind and will (even if sometimes under compulsion).
The commitment to a religion is a personal decision, as is to accept a belief system that –in itself– may be true or false, or even good or evil.
When we say that God “wills” something bad, we mean that He wills it in the sense of permitting it as part of his Providential plan (as is the case with every evil that happens).
Or, we may imply that He wills an evil by itself; that He presents an evil as a good which we are to accept and embrace. That is a monstrosity. If not from common sense, then from Divine Revelation, we know that the multiplicity of religions is not actively willed by God as a good, but merely permitted. For we believe that it is only the Divinely-attested revealed religion that God actively wills us to accept.
The greatest service we can provide for our neighbors is our witness to our following Christ, as exemplified by the corporal works of mercy, but also by the spiritual works.
Christ always subordinated everything to the goal of being one with Him in the Father’s love. This cannot be accomplished through a purely humanitarian, solely “socially oriented”, interpretation of the Gospel. Either we are willing to lose our life –our earthly attachments, our personal theories of existence, our desire for worldly peace and security, our enchanting habits and socially comfortable attitudes– in order to receive and give the life that Christ offers…or else, we are simply preaching a very different gospel, a gospel which serves our own prejudices and our own comfort in this world.
Facing disoriented crowds in the present world, without faith, without Christ, should we limit ourselves to make them “feel good”? Is this really fraternity? Should we proclaim that our purpose is not to get them to know the Truth; that it is rather, to get people of all faiths, and no faith, to feel comfortable with each other? If so, shouldn't we re-think our answer to our Savior’s question: “What father, when his child hungers for bread, will give him a stone”?