Food for thought

“Catholic traditionalists, however, have never liked this tardy acceptance of religious difference: after all, how can you believe your Pope is infallible and that Catholicism holds the full content of truth if you grant that other religions, and other Christian denominations, are also an authentic path to salvation? (…) Pluralism, the idea that people should be allowed to follow their own beliefs and value systems, or none at all, became in John Paul’s view a recipe for cultural relativism: “a new form of totalitarianism”, he called it. The answer was the single infallible magisterial truth proposed by Catholicism. (…) In 1999 it was Ratzinger who wrote a document for the entire world, albeit signed by John Paul, stating that all religions were defective other than the Catholic faith. There was outrage, but there was no retraction. Whatever the Pope intended to impart to his audience at Regensburg, the effect has been to alienate rather than forge connections with Islam by pointing up what he sees to be a striking contrast between the two faiths.” John Cornwell, “Focus: Pope vs. Prophet.”