And under which category would the people to whom the Bible refers to as “Heathen Nations” fall under, would it be unbaptized infants or non-Christians who seek God? I am having trouble with that last category. It seems to me to say that anyone who is following their conscience (with the notable exceptions mentioned) can be saved without baptism but that’s a pretty broad category.
Cardinal Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican, offered reflections on how the Church sees herself and other religions, and “whether a friendly attitude towards other religions undermines the necessity of preaching Jesus Christ or puts Catholic identity at risk.”
“With reference to other religions, the Church sees a great difference between them and herself,” Cardinal Arinze said. “The other religions are expressions of the
human soul seeking God, with some beautiful spiritual insights, but also not without errors. Christianity is rather
God seeking humanity.” Noting that “Vatican II declares the Church … as necessary for salvation,” the former bishop of Onitsha, Nigeria, added that people who do not know Christ are nevertheless included in God’s plan of salvation.
“There are, however, conditions. They must be sincere in their seeking of God. They must be open to the secret but real action of the
Holy Spirit in them. They should follow their conscience in all matters of right and wrong.” A human’s religious response to God should be free, he said, a principle the Church has not always respected. But he also said, “To say that every individual has the right to religious freedom is not to condone religious indifferentism or irresponsibility, nor is it to promote the installation of a supermarket of religions.”
To say that there is no salvation outside the Catholic faith should not be interpretted so strictly as to be limited to the visible institution. Rather, to the extent that the Holy Spirit works invisibly throughout the whole world to bring people to faith in Christ through Catholicism, the Church should be understood to extend much farther into the world than most non-Catholics would be willing to admit-- or even perceive for that matter.
In short, it must be stressed that the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in other religions. The church has a high regard for their conduct in so far as she believes the Spirit is moving them according to the Lord’s will and calling them back to the Catholic faith.
For example, theologians have noted similarities in primitive beliefs in an All-Powerful God. On the subject of human religion, some scholars have claimed that human history exhibits an evolution in religion – from tribal gods to monotheism. These results, however, have been largely turned on their head.
Contrary to this ‘evolutionary’ position, the lifetime work of Wilhelm Schmidt (published in his Origin and Growth of Religion: English Ed. 1931) found that, thoughout the world, primitive cultures have a notion of a supreme god. This god has the following characteristics - remarkably uniformly across the world:
He lives in, or above, the sky – anthropologists refer to him as the “Sky-God”, although the name the peoples have for him is more commonly one meaning “Father” or “Creator”.
He is like a man, or a father.
However his form cannot be physically represented, and so there are almost never idols of him.
He is the creator of everything.
He is eternal (i.e. He existed before anything else, and He will never cease to be).
All that is good ultimately comes from him.
He is the giver of moral law.
He is good, and abhors all evil.
He judges people after their death.
People are alienated from him due to some misdemeanor in the past.
In tracing human history, it is generally believed that the primal knowledge of the Lord was often supplanted in religions by concepts of gods which are “more accessible.” In doing such, the gradual monotheistic knowledge of a monotheistic God seems to deteriorate into a pantheon of divinities whose attirbutes seems to be defined more by nature and/or human characteristics…or else lost entirely within atheism.
