Jimmy Akin addresses the Pope’s statement about all religions leading to God. Jimmy gives the context of the statements and comments on some crucial principles to keep in mind while reading about the Pope’s words.
Transcript:
Jimmy, I’m hoping you can unpack what the Pope said about after his Asia tour, that he said all religions lead to God and we all worship the one God.
Yeah, he didn’t say that.
Okay. Tell me what he said.
Okay. So this was, it is stopping Singapore and, you know, as normal when the Pope says something, people rip it out of context and blast it all over everywhere without the surrounding context to make it, to make it clear. Um, basically now the first thing you got to do is frame this in terms of who’s talking and one of the things we know about Pope Francis is he places a high priority on evangelization. The first document that he issued upon becoming Pope was all about evangelization and the need to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people. And he’s regularly hit that theme. When he reorganized the Vatican, he made the, um, congregation or now to castery for evangelization first, you know, above the one for the doctrine of the face. So evangelization and sharing the gospel of Christ is really important to this Pope. So you got to bear that in mind when you read the text. So what happens when you read the text?
Well, we find out that he sets aside, cause he mentions it, he set aside the prepared speech he had that he was going to give to these young people and just talk off the cuff because he wanted, you know, to make a connection with him. He had things he wanted to say that I guess weren’t in the speech and he wanted to make this connection with these young people. So you got to bear in mind, he’s not given a carefully phrased, pre-prepared text that’s been vetted. And when that happens with Francis, it’s often a bit imprecise. So you have to have some generosity and say, what’s he trying to say here? Well, when you read the actual paragraph in question, he starts by saying that I admire you young people for your ability to conduct inter-religious dialogue.
So that’s the topic, how to conduct inter-religious dialogue.
He’s not making a general statement in the abstract. He’s talking about the proper way to do inter-religious dialogue. And he then raises the idea of getting into fights as part of inter-religious dialogue, and he solicits an answer from the young people that if you get into fights about, oh, whose God is better than whose and whose, whose religion is more true and stuff, that’s going to lead to destruction. So what he’s doing is counseling people against having fights when they’re doing religious dialogue. He wants it to be respectful and low key. That doesn’t mean you deny your beliefs. It just means you’re respectful and peaceful in how you do religious dialogue. And he then says, he doesn’t say all religions lead to God. He said all religions are paths to God. Meaning there are ways that people try to pursue God. That doesn’t mean they’re all going to get you to a correct understanding of God. Much less does it mean that they’re all equal and it doesn’t matter what your religion you are. We already know this guy is big on evangelization and teaching people about Jesus Christ. What he’s not big on is getting into fights about that or other deities as part of inter-religious dialogue. So he’s acknowledging a truth that, you know, religions can be spoken of as paths to God in the sense that people walk these paths trying to get closer to God, but that doesn’t mean they’re all equal or that they’re all going to get you to an accurate understanding of God.