Primacy of the catholic faith

[lofrasso]

Hello, I asked this question recently in “Ask an apologist” but I didn’t get an answer or maybe I just don’t know how to look. It is a question that really bothers me and can find no answer: if according to Vatican Council II there are many ways to be saved and people from other religions even can be saved as much as Catholics (even agnostics or those who believe are atheists but are fundamentally just and good people), then what is the use of converting to catholicism? As a catholic, what answer can I give to someone who asks and says to me “your church is your church and mine is mine–leave me alone”; in fact, how can one justify missionary work? I realize I’m touching the core of today’s relativism, which Pope Benedict XVI is attacking with such intelligence, but this question is a real stumbling block for me. Could someone help?
Thanks
Lofrasso

 

[MerryAtheist]

I’m going to jump in here and convey what my understanding was about this when I was a Catholic…

The Catholic Church views itself as the original, most faithful version of what Jesus intended for his Church. Other Christian faiths, though they may share many common doctrines with Catholicism, do not have the full Truth. Therefore, they are not as close to the Truth of Christ as the Catholic Church.

That said, there is still hope for non-Catholic Christians, as they do possess a measure of the Truth that will allow them to enjoy Heaven, perhaps after a brief period of purgatory.

The belief is roughly akin to concentric circles, where Catholicism is the innermost, most closely aligned with Christ, and each concentric circle away from that center is less perfect, but still able to attain everlasting life after a period of purification.

This extends even to atheists/agnostics, who, though they may have rejected belief, did so perhaps with imperfect knowledge and can thereby receive a “Baptism of Desire” by living a good life according to the wisdom they possess.

Of course, I no longer believe any of this, but that’s generally the way I understood it when I did believe.

 

[lofrasso]

Thanks, Merry Atheist!

I am a returned Catholic, and interestingly enough, the questions are for me now an incentive to greater and better understanding, not to fall away again. There is a core of trust in God now that, when shaken, elicits from me the words of the Gospel: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief”

At any rate, your answer does help a great deal. I thought Vatican II spoke of a relative equality of all paths to salvation. Your words make perfect sense.

God bless you, even if you don’t believe.

Lofrasso

 

[MerryAtheist]

No problem. Just don’t tell anyone that you got the information from an atheist!

 

[lofrasso]

why not? Imagine someone asks me for the answer to a 2nd degree equation and after consulting with an ex-mathematician friend I am able to produce it. Just because my friend decided that poetry is more in tune with what makes humans who we are and therefore abandoned the study of mathematics… does that make his answer invalid?

 

[joeybaggz]

No problem. Just don’t tell anyone that you got the information from an atheist!

Which reminds me of the comdian George Carlin’s question: “Do you think God consideres an atheist, simply the loyal opposition?”

It is refreshing to see a reply on this forum by someone who rejects the Catholic faith, not dripping with condescension, ridicule, or arrogance.

Thanks

Shalom MerryAtheist

 

[MerryAtheist]

It is refreshing to see a reply on this forum by someone who rejects the Catholic faith, not dripping with condescension, ridicule, or arrogance.

Thanks! I have no problems with understanding and appreciating Catholic/Christian doctrines and/or faith; if one accepts the underlying assumptions, then Catholicism/Christianity (with a few exceptions) makes relatively good sense. The problem lies in those darn pesky assumptions - which I reject.

ciao,
the MerryAtheist

 

[lofrasso]

All the pesky assumptions boil down to this, Merry Atheist: Love, love and love.
When you have been loved as much as I have (and I’m obviously not speaking here of erotic “love,” better called “desire”), there is no way you cannot project love into infinity and eternity. When you’ve been loved as much as I have, then you want to love back an infinitesimal part as much. When you have been loved as much as I have, there is no way you cannot trust into infinity. And when that happens, all pesky assumptions go down the drain–or better, acquire their full meaning: there IS a trusting Person whose love, unmerited, you, and me, and everybody else, receive as a rushing stream whose only barrier is the one our soul puts up in order to try to “understand or reject the pesky assumptions”…
I am sorry, I don’t mean to sound holier-than-thou, or to sound like I try to elicit envy on anybody’s part (“when you have been loved as much as I have…” sounds as if, automatically, nobody else has known such love, and as if I were trying to place myself above the hoi polloi, which is not the case at all.)
I’m at the other end of the world, in Europe, now it’s midnight here and I’m going to bed. God bless.

 

[rwoehmke]

To carry the metaphor a little further. Imagine the Catholic Church as the Barque of Peter afloat in the sea of life which is full of sharks, stinging jelly fish, etc. Jesus on the Barque has throw lines with life rings to drag in anyone who gets in trouble while swimming in the sea. Those who swim closest to the barque can more easily catch the line to be hauled to safety (salvation) when things go sour. Other Christians swim a little further out and take a greater risk of being savagely attacked before being pulled aboard and so forth on out to the greatest distance where those Merry Atheists swim. Obviously any one can be saved, but some are taking more risks. One also recognizes as recent Popes have emphasized that anyone who is saved, whether Catholic, Christian, Jew , Muslim, or Atheist is never the less only saved through the merits of Jesus Christ mediated through his body, the Church, the Barque of Peter.

 

[lofrasso]

Thanks, rwoehmke, this is a magnificent metaphor/addition to Merry Atheist’s response, and does help see more clearly the idea of the “concentric circles.”

Lofrasso
God bless