(LifeSiteNews) — The idea of brotherhood among all people, regardless of their beliefs, as long as they are people of good will, has become established in the Church, not only between Catholics and Protestants, but also between them (Catholics and Protestants) and followers of other religions.
I find this very questionable, not to say wrong! I would rather speak of friendship, if these relationships deserve the name in individual cases, which is not the case in general.
I would rather speak of our neighbor, whom the Gospel commands us to love (even our enemies). But brothers and sisters? Siblings? What kind of brotherhood is there, for example, between Christianity and Islam, which persecutes or suppresses the Christian faith in most countries where it prevails? Christians are demonstrably the most persecuted in Islamic countries.
The situation is not much better in communist China. The so-called “patriotic association” under Xi Jinping in China is a successful attempt to subjugate the Catholic Church and sinicize it (reinterpret and transform it), which many blind people still see as a gain. How regrettable!
Do you really believe in the benevolence of the Chinese Communist Party, Islam, or Orthodox Judaism towards Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular? Hinduism, too, has recently become much more aggressive towards Christians. How many Catholic churches have been set on fire by our so-called “brothers and sisters” in France, for example? How many Catholic priests have been killed? It happens every year.
How many believers have been accused and sentenced to death or simply killed by Islamic terrorist groups, for example, in African countries? In Jerusalem, it can happen that as a Christian you are treated with open contempt by Orthodox Jews. The list is long. I am only giving a few examples here. In what bubble or parallel world does the talk of universal brotherhood take place, measured against the worldwide facts in interreligious relations?
How can we Catholics, in this context, speak indiscriminately of our “brothers and sisters,” among whom are militant exponents of their religion or ideology? They do not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the only door to the Father. They fight against this creed and all who adhere to it. The number of Christian martyrs is certainly not decreasing.
How can their persecutors be my brothers and sisters, my siblings? They cannot be. I am not questioning the Gospel of the Good Samaritan. Nor am I limiting charity, which even extends to enemies. But I do not call the latter my brothers and sisters, at least not as long as they do not fulfill the criteria of faith, reject it, fight against it – sometimes to the point of bloodshed – or tolerate it only at the price of massive discrimination and oppression.
St. John also says quite explicitly in the prologue to his Gospel that Jesus Christ has given us the power to become children of God, and that this requires begetting from above: in spirit and in truth. So we are not children of God by nature, but because of our faith in Jesus Christ and the baptism that He has made a condition of salvation.
Talk of universal brotherhood is unrealistic, not to say sentimental. In our mouths, it is a kind of naive and well-meaning capatio benevolentiae (“winning of goodwill”) of those of other faiths, but the facts speak against it. Every error on their part becomes “acceptable” as a result.
In the mouths of others, this talk is not found in an interreligious context anyway, or only sporadically, at least in my perception. However, I would like to point out that I have Muslim relatives and friends and have had since my youth.
The situation is different between baptized Christians. I don’t need to elaborate on that. But even in this relationship, there is no real unity except in the truth. And the latter is Roman Catholic. This must be stated very clearly. This does not stem from my arrogance, my conceit, my psyche, or any alleged extremism on my part, but from the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, in which we believe, as is well known, and which we profess in the Creed. We have thus named the problem, which is generally avoided. If it is ignored, the much-vaunted unity is nothing more than discord, contradiction, and hopeless heterogeneity of beliefs, beautifully colored as supposed “diversity.”
On closer inspection, and structurally, this ecumenical mode is anything but unity in truth. I do not believe in love without truth. It is not love but truth that makes us one, just as it is not love but truth that separates us.
All this talk of brotherhood and diversity is therefore based on the exclusion of the question of truth in order to achieve supposedly better relations. In relation to those of other faiths, it means relativizing Jesus’ claim to absoluteness, excluding His uniqueness and normativity for all people; and in relation to other Christians, it means relativizing the Roman Catholic Church’s necessity for salvation, its visibility, its universal significance for salvation and mediation, its sacraments, and, last but not least, relativizing or downgrading its papacy to an honorary primacy with maximum accommodation.
I repeat my thesis: Those who have no truth can merge with everyone and be nice to everyone without it hurting. They can include everything and everyone. Exclusivity and uniqueness are then a thing of the past. People want this too. But as soon as the question of truth is raised in all its breadth and scope, polarization, distancing, rejection, and martyrdom or conversion in the best sense of the word occur: the acceptance of the Catholic faith, baptism, the Roman Catholic Church in its visibility, uniqueness, catholicity, and apostolicity, its sacraments, its apostolic succession, and its unity sub Petro et cum Petro (papacy).
The dividing sword of truth, which Jesus Christ claimed for Himself and identified with Himself, passes through families, according to His words. We do not accuse Jesus of unkindness. We agree with him that He is the truth and that this truth is rejected by many. Hence the reference to the sword. Unlike Mohammed, Jesus does not know violence. He said that this sword should be put back into its sheath (and this to Peter, of all people, who is supposed to vouch for the truth of the traditional faith). In this respect, no concession or agreement can be expected from other religions unless they convert to the revealed, divine truth as manifested in Jesus Christ.
But even with Christians who are separated from us, there is no true unity unless they convert to the Roman Catholic Church – as converts have always done – and return to unity with Peter and his successor. Christ founded His Church on this rock. In the biblical sense, His power of the keys means authority over the whole house, Latin jurisdiction, not just honorary chairmanship, nor just first in love, but rock and binding guarantor of unity in the full truth of the traditional faith. For separated Christians, this also involves regaining the sacraments they have lost, apostolic succession, and true unity in faith, which they cannot find even among themselves. Come, Holy Spirit! Consensus talks will not fix it.
