Tuesday, 11/19’13
Today’s Mass offers us two fine readings, but somehow they
do not move me to speak about them. We have climbed that sycamore with
Zacchaeus too many times lately, and the experts assure us that the reading from Second Maccabees is a fictitious account.
Le me, instead, comment on something I have been reading
lately. Through the centuries much has been made of a statement of St. Cyprian
in the third century. His statement was, “There is no salvation outside the
Church.”
In 1949 Rome condemned Father Leonard Feeney, a popular
Jesuit writer, for insisting that there was no salvation possible for anyone who
was not an official member of the Catholic Church. Rome was not denying the
truth of what St. Cyprian wrote, she was just saying that his statement could not be
taken too narrowly: that some non-Catholics could belong to the
Church through what we were calling “Baptism of Desire.”
Several of Vatican II’s documents seem to have gone further
then that. The document on non-Christian religions states, “The Catholic Church
rejects nothing of those things which are true and holy in these religions.”
The document on Missionary Activity says, that the efforts in pagan religions
“can at times be leading toward the true God.” It says, “Whatever good is found
to be sown in peoples’ hearts, or in their particular rites or customs can be
brought to the glory of God.”
That last part about their religious rites is most
significant. It says that their way of worshipping, though imperfect, still has
value. St. Francis Xavier, when he went out to India, organized groups of young
Catholic to go around smashing the idols in Hindu temples. Today the Church
teaches us to see the limited value in such worship.
No comments:
Post a Comment