Sometimes I feel tempted away from the RCC and tempted to say things like ‘hey Mormonism isn’t bad. They could be right’ and the same with Islam. Or Protestantism.
There are many good and true things to be discovered in non-Christian religions and among non-Catholic Christians. The Apostles, Fathers, and Doctors of the Church have long affirmed this in various ways. St. Paul appealed to good elements in pagan thought when preaching Christ in Athens (Acts 17). St. Augustine said in his
Confessions “Look where he [God] is-- wherever there is a taste of truth.” St. Thomas used the terms of Aristotelian philosophy to express Catholic faith just as many Fathers who preceded him employed the language of Platonism.
As early as the 2nd century, St. Justin Martyr wrote about the ancient Greek philosophers: “Those who lived in accordance with the Logos are Christians, even though they were called godless, such as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus and others like them.” And “[Each of these ancient philosophers] spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the Logos disseminated among people, seeing what was related to it… For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted Logos that was in them.” And “Christ was partially known even by Socrates, for He was and is the Logos Who is in every person.” And
"Whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Logos. But since they did not know the whole of the Logos, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves…
Whatever things were truly said among people belong to us Christians."
Much later, when the Jesuits made the first Western translation of the
Tao Te Ching, the classic text of Taoist religion and philosophy, they said that the purpose of the translation was to show that “the Mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Incarnate God were anciently known to the Chinese nation.”
Similarly, the Vatican II
Declaration on Non-Christian Religions (
Nostra Aetate) says: “The Catholic Church
rejects nothing that is true and holy in [non-Christian] religions. She regards with sincere
reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often
reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ, ‘the Way the Truth, and the Life’ (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.
The Church therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they
recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.”
Of course this recognition, preservation, and promotion must be done with great and careful discernment, but it should be done. And it is. The great 20th century convert and Catholic theologian
Louis Bouyer has written beautifully in books like
The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism about the Catholic truths to be found in European Protestantism (Protestantism is, of course, already Christian). Fr. Jacques Jomier, a Dominican missionary who worked in the Middle East, has written some excellent books about Islam that are both sympathetic and critical:
The Bible and the Qur’an and
How to Understand Islam. An anonymous Catholic monk with a solid background in Thomistic theological philosophy has written an excellent book comparing it with Advaita Vedanta, the non-dualist Hindu philosophical school of Sankara:
Christianity and the Doctrine of Non-Dualism (this latter book, though quite short, requires greater depth of philosophical knowledge to understand than do the books of Bouyer and Jomier mentioned above). The better you understand your Catholic faith, the better you will be equipped to do this sort of work.
The real truths and goods found in other religions need not “tempt you away” from the Catholic faith you know to be true. Just remember the words of St. Justin: “Whatever things were truly said among people belong to us Christians.”
Explore this more deeply. Is there something in other religions that is attracting you? Maybe it’s something we could help you find in Catholicism.
