The Latest Vatican Statement on Christianity and Other Religions

Abstract

Last year the Vatican issued a document, Christianity and the World Religions, prepared by its International Theological Commission and approved by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document arises from a recognition that ‘The question of the relations among religions is becoming daily more important’, and that circumstances today ‘make interreligious dialogue necessary’. Accordingly, the Commission sets out to ‘clarify how religions are to be evaluated theologically’ by offering ‘some theological principles which may help in this evaluation’. And the Commission adds that ‘In proposing these principles we are clearly aware that many questions are still open and require further investigation and discussion’ (3-5).Although the Report’s title continues the traditional conceit that Christianity is not itself one of the world religions, these opening statements suggest a tentative and relatively undogmatic approach which contrasts with the 1996 address by Cardinal Ratzinger himself, in which in presenting the traditional absolutist position he attacked two theologians extensively by name, seriously misrepresenting their views as a result of not having read their writings for himself. His Eminence’s failure to check the accuracy of the tendentious secondary source on which he relied is all the more surprising in view of the accurate and up-to-date section on the state of the discussion, based on a wide knowledge of the existing literature, in this Report of his own Theological Commission. Here all the main competing schools of thought, both Catholic and Protestant, are included and discussed. The Report was first drafted in 1993 and its expertise must have been available to the Cardinal, had he wished to have more reliable information.