‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ The Rhetorical Question That’s Losing Axiomatic Power

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” is old and well-used rhetorical repartee. It doesn’t require and answer. Or it didn’t until recently.

After Pope’s Francis recent remarks about inter-religious dialogue in Singapore, theologians and laity are questioning whether what he said was authentically Catholic.

As so often, when the Pope shoots from the hip, he causes either excitement or chaos depending on how Catholic or secular the listener is.

His remarks at Singapore were so at odds with what might be expected from a pope that they have achieved significant global publicity – again.

Francis reflected out loud that “all religions are a way to arrive at God”, adding: “I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine.”

But are they?

Some responses have praised him for finding irenic words to help teenagers and young people from across a diverse religious spectrum revaluate the competition between the world’s religions and declare: “My God is more important than yours!”

This presents the Church with a number of serious problems, however.

The first is the difference between how the different religions understand themselves. Beyond that, Pope Francis appears to be taking an anthropologically prioritised approach to religion. He is giving voice to the familiar secular spirit of pluralism, so beloved of relativistic RE teachers over the last 70 years. He is overriding their claims to be different, with different understandings of the divine and the journey towards it, and insisting that they share the same goal.

The methodology of anthropology is different from that of a Christian theologian, however.

Continue reading at the Catholic Herald