It is a traditional maxim that though Catholics are required to believe
in hell, they are not required to believe there is anybody in it. They are not required to believe that despite the doctrine that there is “no salvation outside the Church”, atheists and people with other varieties of non-Catholic belief will automatically be refused entry at the gates of Heaven.
In one sense, therefore, Pope Francis was not saying anything new when he told Vatican employees at their morning Mass that Christ had redeemed the whole of humankind.
He engaged in a conversation with himself, according to Vatican Radio, in which in the guise of a questioner he protested “Father? Even the atheists?” “Even them,” he said. “Everyone” – a word that appeared about 20 times in his informal homily. “The Lord has redeemed all of us, everyone, with the blood of Christ: everyone, not just Catholics. Everyone!”
In another sense, however, he was treading on controversial ground, for it may seem to be a short step from that to saying that being Catholic does not matter. He did not take that step, of course, but therein lies the heart of an issue that preoccupied his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Benedict repeatedly warned that one of the greatest dangers facing the Church lay in the area of interfaith dialogue, where it was easy to imply that other religions were somehow true and capable of bringing salvation. That way led to relativism – the idea that all religions were of equal merit – and syncretism, the idea that all religions were really saying the same thing.
Both as Pope and as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had reined in theologians who he felt had gone too far towards relativism and syncretism, including Jacques Dupuis, Tissa Balasuriya, Anthony de Mello, Roger Haight, Jon Sobrino and Peter Phan.
In a previous generation, Karl Rahner had promoted the idea that virtuous non-Catholics, whether of other faiths or of none, could be regarded as “anonymous Christians” – Christians, who did not know they were.
By virtue of that assumption, the doctrine “no salvation outside the Church” could still be true. These “saved” non-Catholics were implicitly inside the Church even if they did not want to be.
But his idea was widely criticised. The Vatican tried to clarify the position with the document Dominus Iesus signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, as Pope Emeritus Benedict then was, in 2000.
The document said that people outside Christianity are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation”, and that non-Catholic Christian communities – he withheld from them the status of “Churches” – had “defects”.
This dismissive tone was in contrast to the far warmer language the Second Vatican Council had adopted in its 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate.
This said that the Catholic Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions”, and added: “She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.”
All men – everyone.
That seems much closer to the attitude of Pope Francis than of Benedict.
Same faith, but a very different tone.