Speaking with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on The World Over, Kazakhstan’s Bishop Athanasius Schneider responded to the controversial comment made by Pope Francis on his recent trip to Singapore.
“Every religion is a way to arrive at God,” the Pope said. “There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true? There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”
When asked by Arroyo about this, Schneider was clinical in his critique:
Such an affirmation of Pope Francis is clearly against the divine revelation, it contradicts directly the first Commandment of God which is ever valid – “You shall not have other gods beside me” – this is so clear, and such a statement contradicts the entire Gospel.
Continuing, Schneider reminded viewers that “Jesus Christ said, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
“He is the only way to God, there are no other ways or paths,” said the auxiliary bishop of Astana. “So in this statement sadly, regrettably Pope Francis plainly contradicts the first Commandment of God and the entire Gospel.”
Francis’ comments have caused widespread controversy and confusion among concerned Catholics, and consternation remains high even though he made the remarks now two weeks ago during an inter-religious meeting of young people in Singapore.
When Arroyo raised this issue of how a Pope could say such a statement, Schneider pointed back to the betrayal of Christ by St. Peter in the Gospels.
God permitted that the first pope, Simon Peter, he renounced [and] denied Christ three times, and he was appointed the vicar of Christ and nevertheless he denied Christ three times. So God permitted it that it could also happen in the future, that a successor of Simon Peter would speak some words which are contrary to the divine truth.
Such a scenario, commented Schneider, “is rare, but it happened with Peter and it happened in very rare cases in history. But Peter repented, and he again defended Christ and confessed Him and gave his life for Christ as a martyr.”
The auxiliary bishop urged Catholics “to simply pray for Pope Francis that he may receive this grace of the Lord as Peter received, to repent and to again clearly, courageously confess that there is no other name given to man in which they can be saved except Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the only redeemer of mankind.”
Though St. Peter was named “Peter” by Christ – and hence promised the papacy – before his denial of Christ and the Lord’s Resurrection, the Church teaches that Christ “confided the jurisdiction of Supreme Pastor” of the Church to him after the Resurrection. The First Vatican Council states: “it was to Peter alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, confided the jurisdiction of Supreme Pastor and ruler of his whole fold, saying: ‘Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.’”
The Catholic Church teaches that “[t]he one true Church established by Christ is the Catholic Church.” {Q. 152}. Additionally, the Church notes that all souls must “belong” to the Church to be saved: “All are obliged to belong to the Catholic Church in order to be saved.” {Baltimore Catechism Q 166.}
Pope Leo XII pronounced it clearly in his 1824 encyclical letter Ubi Primum:
It is impossible for the most true God, who is Truth Itself, the best, the wisest Provider, and the Rewarder of good men, to approve all sects who profess false teachings which are often inconsistent with one another and contradictory, and to confer eternal rewards on their members. For we have a surer word of the prophet, and in writing to you We speak wisdom among the perfect; not the wisdom of this world but the wisdom of God in a mystery.
By it we are taught, and by divine faith we hold one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and that no other name under heaven is given to men except the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in which we must be saved. This is why we profess that there is no salvation outside the Church.
Writing in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI also commented against the rising trend of “religious pluralism,” stipulating that only through the truth of the Catholic Church were the teachings of Christ to be found in full:
Furthermore, to justify the universality of Christian salvation as well as the fact of religious pluralism, it has been proposed that there is an economy of the eternal Word that is valid also outside the Church and is unrelated to her, in addition to an economy of the incarnate Word. The first would have a greater universal value than the second, which is limited to Christians, though God’s presence would be more full in the second.
These theses are in profound conflict with the Christian faith. The doctrine of faith must be firmly believed which proclaims that Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, and he alone, is the Son and the Word of the Father.
Schneider himself has already critiqued Francis’ 2019 Abu Dhabi declaration, which argued that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God.”
Issuing a public condemnation of the text, Schneider subsequently published another statement warning that “men in the Church today are in fact promoting the neglect of the first Commandment of the Decalogue and the betrayal of the core of the Gospel.”