Evidently, the University of North Carolina requires all incoming freshmen to study the basic teachings of Islam, or at least a sanitized version of the Koran. Probably the University of Cairo or the University of Beijing does not require every incoming freshman to study even a sanitized version of the Bible. Indeed, a student in such universities may well be arrested for even possessing a Bible. Christianity can be “studied” in our universities if it is not “advocated.” I know of no university that requires students to know something of the Hebrew or Christian Bible as a summer assignment before entering freshman year or for graduation, for that matter.
In our universities we can talk about Christianity provided we do not maintain it is true—which may be the only reason it is worth talking about at all. That is, Christianity is dangerous if one really holds that it is true and would propose it as such and would hold that there are solid arguments in its favor. We can “study” Islam—in fact, it is a fad in academia. We can “study” Hinduism. We can “study” Buddhism. We can “study” Judaism. We should “study” the widespread decline of population in Western European nations and wonder why. We have invented a form of “objective” study that eschews the question of truth. It is not unlike studying that two and two are four but denying any probative value to the equation on the grounds that we would not want to impose our numerical values on anyone.
Both for geopolitical and domestic purposes, we take for granted that knowledge of Islam is required to understand what goes on in about a fifth of the world. If we are going to do business with Muslims, we ought to know how they operate. The Koran is a clue. We should likewise study the widespread but little talked-of civil disabilities of Christians in Islamic countries. It is difficult to call what goes on in the Sudan anything but a Muslim persecution of Christians. Islam is the most aggressive of the political religions. A majority of military hot spots in the world have a Muslim component. We are at war with Islam, give or take some distinctions that claim, on unclear grounds, to separate terrorists from non-terrorists.
We should know what other religions teach, provided that what we study is not some politically correct version that makes it seem that no issues of importance arise because of the diversity of religious positions and doctrines. We should know other religions’ practices also. Why is it that mosques can be built in the West but not churches in Islamic countries? Is it sufficient to say that these are different cultures, with different ways of doing things? Is there no standard?
All of this effort to “understand” other religions or ideologies (Chinese Marxism still exists with power) is made doubly difficult for Catholics who are, at the moment, in an ecumenical mode with regard to all other religions and philosophies. At its best, this approach means that we should seek to find some correspondence in our own doctrinal heritage with what is taught or done in other religions or philosophies. We should seek areas of cooperation. Unfortunately, we sometimes seem to act as if “understanding” is the only thing we need to do, as if there are no other forces at work in the human soul but brains. Aristotle long ago suspected the adequacy of the Socratic notion that all turmoil was a problem of ignorance, a lack of education or knowledge.
Logically, an adequate understanding of other religions or ideologies should mean that we identify clearly those things that we do not hold in common, those things with which we do not agree. While it may be true that a religious.aspiration exists in all men at all places and at all times in history, it is not true that all religions and philosophies are identical, their differences merely incidental matters. That about which they differ usually is what causes clashes in ways of living.
It is dangerous to act as if religious or philosophical differences have no impact. We have been adept at finding and emphasizing ways in which we are alike, though I suspect this is not a two-way street. Little study of Christianity goes on in Islam, in China, or even in India. In that regard Western culture is different: It is a universal culture on both its philosophical and its religious side. It addresses all men in all times and places with a claim of precisely truth.
The idea of a universal mission to all men is Christian in origin, though it also has philosophical roots in the Greek natural law tradition. Islam seems to have acquired its world-conquering.aspirations from a worldly interpretation of Christian sources. Even in the modern Western culture’s understanding of itself we find a reluctance to admit the degree to which the culture is now based on propositions and acts that are not in agreement either with Christianity or with the classic philosophical tradition. No culture, including our own, is neutral. All cultures embody positions and practices that are at odds with reason or revelation, things that ought not to be praised or accepted simply because the culture does them.
Moreover, a reasonable opposition to “fanaticism” is now proposed as a reason for not taking seriously claims to truth. Stated in terms of the prevailing multicultural theory, a fanatic—with all the word’s implications of unreasoning extremism—is anyone who holds a religion or philosophy to be true. Fanaticism no longer refers to an unbalanced or distorted way of holding what is in fact true but to any claim of truth as such. Someone identified as a fanatic is therefore dangerous to the public order of any society.
“Universality” of peace is thus said to be built on a certain and firm denial of truth or even its possibility. Historicism or multiculturalism itself becomes an ideology about the structure of reality. There is no truth. Any claim that truth exists is politically dangerous. In this sense, all current violence in the world is caused by Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Communist, or Buddhist fanatics. The civil agenda as a result becomes one of increasing civil penalties in all.aspects of public life—including schools—on such fanatics. The theory is that the more we reduce the degree or intensity with which someone holds that something is true the more peaceful he will be. Such a position is contrary to the idea that it is truth that makes us free, that we should love and live for what is true.
A fanatic version of this secularist proposition also can be identified. Its basic proposition is that nothing can be true. The human mind is not made for such a thing. All is relative. It must be so. This doctrine must be established as the public philosophy. What is called cultural relativism is but a refined expression of this position. No question can arise from outside a culture about its own adequacy or truth. We are not freed but imprisoned by such a thought or thesis about truth.
Whether some middle ground exists between “fanaticism” and relativism is an ancient question. Are there things that are true but also things that can change? This was generally the view of Thomas Aquinas. If we insist that nothing can be true and that those who claim that truth is worth striving for are fanatics, we are striking at something very basic in human nature. We are denying to ourselves the very purpose of our intellects.
Moreover, we have, sometimes grudgingly, long acknowledged the valor of those who are persecuted and die for what they hold to be true. The reality of martyrdom exists in our time. We have had more martyrs in the past century than in the rest of history combined. The death of a martyr is not foolish. It prevents relativism. It states that some things are to be upheld. The death of the martyr upholds the truth for which he was killed.
Several years ago the Catholic Church thought it wise to set down in the clearest and most coherent terms possible just what it held about itself. This effort resulted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Church proposes what it understands about itself to be true. It claims to hand down what was taught to it. This is its mission. But it wants to be sure that what it proposes is stated accurately with enough clarification to limit itself to what is essential. The longer arguments or the broader background are left to others, to books, discussions, or schools.
Catholicism is an intellectual religion that intends to state in clear and adequate terms what it understands about God, man, and the world. Catholics are expected both to understand what is to be believed and to live accordingly. However, it is part of the faith itself that most people are not sinless. All are tempted; many fall. On one hand, the credibility of the Church depends on whether Christians live as they believe. On the other hand, the reason Christ took on a redemptive role was because God knew that all men, including believers, sin and fail. The procedure within the Church to deal with this.aspect of human reality is ancient and part of the essential structure of the Church. A good part of the sacramental life of the Church, in one way or another, is designed to define and deal with actual sins.
So it is both an intellectual Church and a Church of sinners. But it is not a Church that is free to decide on its own what is or is not a truth or a sin. It can identify and promulgate the Commandments, but it cannot make what is a sin be a virtue or vice versa. It can through Christ forgive sin, but it cannot change what is a sin. The fact that there are acknowledged sinners in the Church, including in the episcopacy and clergy, is not an argument against the truth of Catholicism. It is an argument in its favor. That is, at one level, why the Church exists. One of the first things that Christ said to us was, “Repent,” as if to inform us what was immediately necessary before we did anything else.
This attention to what the Church teaches about herself brings us back to the question of the real diversity of religion and philosophy. Those who reject Christianity or its right to exist will often seek to prevent its teachings from being made known. At times Christians will be threatened with civil sanctions or even with death if they continue to hold or practice what is handed down to be believed. From their own sources, Christians are not to be surprised at this. They are to do everything they can to be patient and reasonable, but they are not free to deny what they hold. What is surprising today is how little Christians themselves seem concerned when other Christians are persecuted and civilly disabled in other countries. It makes one wonder if there is an operative universal Church.
This background brings us to an obvious but seldom asked question: Why does the Gospel insist that the Church is to make itself known to “all nations”? Why cannot we let others be? Why cannot we say, as many—even Catholics—now say, that we should cease missionary work, that God will provide? The Gospel says that when someone rejects those sent by the Lord, they should brush the dust of the local streets off their feet and proceed to a more hospitable town.
Modern man finds the truth upsetting that there are things that should be held or believed—things that can be precisely stated, things that ought or ought not to be done. There is an urgency about this need to know what is revealed and handed down. While we may tolerate or even ignore those who refuse to consider what the Church teaches, people who (either by their own fault or as the result of cultural or historical movements) do not have the faith should have it. Indeed, we would say they implicitly want it, not forgetting that the faith is often explicitly rejected because of what it is: a claim to truth.
Something even more sinister seems to be at work here. We are told that our struggles are not so much against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. The Church is built on a Rock, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This “not prevailing” does not mean that no hostility, hatred, or bitterness will occur because of the truth that is contained in revelation. We are not engaged simply in a calm intellectual exercise, reasonably working things out among ourselves (though we are engaged in this enterprise too). Often every effort is made to prevent from being known any fair or reasonable presentation of the faith and what it holds. We can “study” the faith but not present it as true. But if we cannot present it as true it is not really worth holding or even explaining.
What I conclude is the countercultural position that we have reached a time in history where the most essential thing the Church must do is to explain—not what it has in common with other religions and philosophies but how it is different and why. In the end, in these differences is found what mankind most needs to know about itself and its destiny. It is still true that we all need to know the truth.