Author: Dileep Padgaonkar
Publication: The Times
of India
Date: September 10,
2000
If a week is a long time
in politics, it seems to be akin to an entire yuga in the realms of religion
and spirituality. On August 31 a quite unprecedented event took place
in New York. On that day, over a thousand participants in the Millennium
World Peace Summit drawn from all parts of the world and representing almost
all faiths, beliefs and spiritual tenets signed a document which affirmed
that all religions are equal and went on to condemn violence committed
in the name of religion.
The assertion that all
religions are equal was a triumph of the quintessentially Hindu view that
the paths to the Divine are many, that all religions merit equal respect,
that at its core every spiritual experience is uplifting. From Anglicans
to Zorastrians, the Peace Summit participants sent out a powerful message
viz. that truth, salvation and redemption were not the monopoly of
any organised religion, of any sect, of any particular brand of clerics.
The seeker is free to drink at whichever source he chooses to.
But barely had the ink
dried on this bold document than two developments took place to deprive
it of its singular worth. Both involved the Roman Catholic Church
or, more precisely Pope John Paul II and the Vatican. In the first
instance, the Pope beatified his 19th century predecessor, Pope Pius IX,
who is widely regarded as the most dogmatic and anti-Semitic pontiffs of
modern history. His reign from 1846 to 1878 was a period marked by
obscurantism of a near-pathological sort. Indeed, he had once described
Jews as dogs.
The European Jewish Congress
quickly condemned the beatification. In a statement, it accused Pope
Pius IX of being responsible for the "forced transfer of Rome's Jews into
the ghetto and charged that the Vatican is "sowing confusion and trouble
among participants in the Jewish-Christian dialogue".
Even as this controversy
gathered steam, the Vatican issued a document which is bound to sow more
confusion and trouble in all interfaith dialogues like the Peace Summit.
Prepared by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and endorsed
by Pope John Paul II, it rejected out of hand that Roman Catholicism could
be placed on a par with other religions. The news summary of the
36-page document which is all that I have read quotes the Vatican's view
that non-Christians are in a "gravely deficient situation" regarding salvation
and even that other Christian churches had "defects". The latter
is doubtless an allusion to the fact that such churches do not acknowledge
the primacy of the pope in theological matters.
The document challenges
"relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism" since
only the revelation of Jesus Christ is "definitive and complete".
Non-Christians could not hope to attain salvation because they did not
admit that Christ was the Son of God. As for Christians other than
Roman Catholics, they need to understand that the Catholic Church alone
possessed and had been entrusted with "the fullness and grace and truth."
While they were not deprived of the "significance and importance in the
mystery of salvation", complete salvation would elude them if they refused
to subscribe to the "divinely willed" primacy of the Pope.
Following the Vatican
Council II in 1969, many non-Catholics, impressed by the openness of Pope
John XXIII, were led to believe that the Roman Catholic Church would be
less dogmatic in its rejection of other religions. Many Catholic
theologians were themselves excited at the prospect of an inter-Christian
and an intra-faith dialogue. But the excitement was short-lived.
Hans Kung, a front-ranking German theologian who earned the wrath of the
Vatican for suggesting church reforms, once told me: "The United Nations
secretariat is more catholic than the Roman Curia of the Catholic Church."
In the Indian context, the publication of this document will only fuel
fears about Christian exclusivism, about the unwillingness of the Church
to shed its arrogant demeanour of superiority and, not least, about the
ulterior motives of Christian missionaries. The debate over conversions
is bound to sharpen. Apologists for the church will have a harder
time convincing the world that Christians have been at the receiving end
in India.
Overnight, the Vatican
has metamorphosed a celebration of pluralism into a carnival of a mean
and narrow creed. This is particularly troubling for someone like
me who to this day cherishes the fine education that I received in a Jesuit-run
school without a shadow of proselytization.
