Comments by "PeterC" (@peterc4082) on "I Disagree With The Pope" video.

  1. As a Catholic, I can also say that we'd need to hear the entire speech and context here. Because saying all religions are a path to God, does not mean all religions are the correct way to reach God. All religions could be said to be attempts to reach God, well all honest religions, not fake ones created to get money or create armies of servants. But there is a teaching in the Roman Catholic faith or tradition that some of God's nature can be known by reason and that God has created or instilled in us a Sensus divinitatis, which is also found in Calvinism and even Islam. Catholic teaching says that primitive man and later on, even the pagans did have some sort of idea about God and hence there are religions, it's just that we need the Christian Revelation and so the Church to complete this. If we understand the Pope's words in terms of "All roads are an attempt to lead to Rome, but most fail, or perhaps all fail but one" without saying the last bit explicitly, we can understand that the Holy Father is not being heretical here. I would really need to know more context here. And while the Pope should be more prudent with his language because it can lead to different understandings and the idea that he believes in universalism, it may be that it's not the case that he believes that all religions really are the same but it's true that all religions are a way to try to understand God or get to God, (but there is only one correct way to achieve this). For example all methods of audio recording are a way to preserve music for posterity, but we know that wax disks, phono records, magentic tapes and digital media vary in the detail captured. We know also that all philosophical systems are attempts at understanding reality but it's not the case that all are actually correct. We know that there are many ways of interpreting Quantum Theory but it may be that there really is only one correct interpretation. It may that the Pope is just not using the language correctly here and may only mean that all religions are man's attempt to reach God, and he just said it in short-hand which sadly can be interpreted as heresy. This could be the starting point for further dialogue with other faiths. We all want one thing. We're all trying to know God. And God wants us to know Him. Thoughts?
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