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The Vatican, Ecumenism, and Tolerance | Dr. James Hitchcock | IgnatiusInsight.com  Print-friendly
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The phrase "Vatican II" has long been a mantra that shuts off real thinking, used to imply that somehow that Council negated almost everything in the Catholic past and uncritically embraced everything modern. As usual with such slogans, those who use it don't really care whether it reflects reality, so that when they encounter the real Vatican II they are often offended. Their most recent offense has been caused by a Vatican document stating that the fullness of divine truth is found only in the Catholic Church and that other groups possess truth in proportion to how close they are to Catholicism, something that implies that other groups are partly in error. Pope Benedict is therefore accused of leading the Church back into the Dark Ages, by repudiating the Church's commitment to ecumenism. Where does the commitment to ecumenism come from? From Vatican II of course, specifically from its decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (The Restoration of Unity). But then where does the idea that the Catholic Church alone possess the fullness of divine truth come from? From the same Vatican Council, from the same decree on ecumenism. Thus those who reject the latest Vatican statement must logically also reject the very document that committed the Church to ecumenism in the first place. One of the main criticisms of the recent statement is that it offends some people. But although it may be heresy to say so, offending people is not the worst of all possible sins - it depends on why they are offended. It is necessary to speak the truth, no matter how much it offends.  
The people who accuse the Vatican of being intolerant cannot themselves avoid being intolerant, since they demand that everyone share their own view of the matter. Increasingly the fetish of "tolerance" (a much over-rated virtue to begin with) is itself a cloak for intolerance. Those who condemn the Church's claim to posses the fullness of truth are in effect charging that the Church teaches pernicious error, which, whatever else it is, is a peculiar manifestation of "tolerance." Such people do not seem to recognize that they are simply pushing their own theological agenda, which is the assumption that all religions merely represent human opinion, that no one can claim real divine truth. Is there one God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or many (Hinduism)? It doesn't really matter. Significantly, a leading Protestant, Albert Mohler, has said that he is not offended by the controversial Vatican statement, a fact that is especially significant because Dr. Mohler is a Southern Baptist, which is America's largest Protestant group and one that is hardly soft on Catholicism. He observes that the Catholic Church is only being true to itself when it states that other faiths are partly in error and that the appropriate Protestant response is not indignation but for Protestants to assert their own claims to truth. "I appreciate the Roman Catholic Church's candor on this issue, and I believe that Evangelical Christians, with equal candor and clarity, should respond in kind," he concludes. This is real ecumenism, of the kind Vatican II originally envisioned--the ecumenism of those who take their own faith very seriously and do not feel threatened when adherents of other faiths confess their own beliefs. (This article originally appeared on August 4, 2007, on the Women for Faith and Family website. It is reprinted by the kind permission of the author.) Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links/Articles: • Excerpts from Truth and Tolerance | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger • Is Tolerance Intolerant? | James Hitchcock • Are Christians Intolerant? | Michael O'Brien • Our Enslavement to "Freedom" | James Hitchcock • Conscience and Chaos | James Hitchcock • Secularity: On Benedict XVI and the Role of Religion in Society | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. • What Is Catholic Social Teaching? | Mark Brumley • Personally Opposed--To What? | Dr. James Hitchcock 
Dr. James Hitchcock, (e-mail)
professor of history at St. Louis University, writes and lectures on contemporary
Church matters. His column appears in the diocesan press, in the Adoremus
Bulletin, and on the Women
for Faith and Family website. He is the author of several books, including
The Recovery of the Sacred, What is Secular Humanism?, and Years
of Crisis: Collected Essays, 1970-1983. Princeton University Press just published his two-volume history of the Supreme Court, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life: The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses (Vol. 1) and From "Higher Law" to "Sectarian Scruples" (Vol. 2). He is also a regular contributor to many Catholic periodicals, including Catholic World Report. If you'd like to receive the FREE IgnatiusInsight.com e-letter (about every 1 to 2 weeks), which includes regular updates about IgnatiusInsight.com articles, reviews, excerpts, and author appearances, please click here to sign-up today! |
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G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the finest Christian authors and apologists
of the past two hundred years. Raised as an agnostic, he embraced Christianity as a young man, ultimately entering the Catholic Church
in 1922. He wrote hundreds of essays, as well as novels, short stories, poetry, apologetics, literary
criticism, and nearly everything else imaginable. Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American
Chesterton Society and author of 
