So, on another forum, I've a got a VII Catholic asserting that saying Muslims worship the same God or the Church does not deny the truth in all of the religions can be supported by Paul's witness in Athens when he quotes Greek poets/writers in a positive light.  In other words, Paul evangelized by bringing up that these Greek pagans had some truth (even if they didn't know it).

How would you refute this?  I thought, pre-Vatican II, the Church didn't teach there was any truth to any other religion; that the Catholic Faith was the only true religion.  Am I wrong?  I thought that this was one of the fallacies of Vatican II.  When I read Mortalium Animos I see a much different reaction towards other religions.  And yet this biblical support does make some sort of sense.  But then why doesn't Church teaching pre-1960 teach this explicitly?

Hi 2Vermont.

I am sure someone here will come along that is better equipped to answer your question but I can add a couple of points.

1. I think the distinction they make with Muslims is false.  We cannot worship the same God.  Christians know through Divine revelation that God is triune, One God three divine persons, and the second person of the Blessed Trinity is God the Son.  The Muslims not only deny this but they say it is impossible and a blasphemy that God could have a Son.  I recently heard this distinction explained in a homily, I will try and paraphrase it.  

Lets say you and I are talking one day about a certain Mr Smith. We are trying to determine if we know the same Mr Smith.  We both agree he has certain attributes, say he has brown hair and blue eyes and is about 6' tall.  Then I say, "Well the Mr Smith I know has a son".  You say "No impossible, Mr Smith had an accident and is unable to have any children, he has no son".  Obviously we would conclude that the Mr Smiths we know are different men since it is impossible that the same man could have a son and not have a son. It would be ridiculous to say something like we know the same man in a mystical/spiritual sense.

2. I don't think St Paul's discourse to the Athenians has any bearing on this question.  St Thomas after all used the pagan philosopher Aristotle for his Summa Theologica.  Nobody has been bothered by this.  I think with non Catholic religions, the Catholic Church has always (until Vat II) made the distinction that any truths they happen to share with us are the inheritance of the Catholic Church by virtue of it being the one, true religion founded by Jesus Christ.  The modern error is to say that because other religions have some (more or less) truth in them, they offer the possibility of salvation (inherent in the false religion itself).  This notion the Church has always condemned as the heresy of pantheism or indifferentism.

Outside the Church there is no salvation.

Luke

or that Episcopalians believe that people go to Hell

Episcopalians believing in Hell?!?! lol

But seriously, thanks Mith.  You explained it better than I did.

Luke

But as far as salvation for others, I don't think the docuмents actually say that these religions provide salvation directly.  I think it reiterates invincible ignorance and that ultimately salvation is through the CC.

I tend to think that this docuмent (Nostra Aetate) may be the culprit:

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. 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.

Tell me if I'm reading this correctly.  Does this say that the Catholic Church post-1960 REVERES teachings that are DIFFERENT than the Catholic Church's teachings?  And that these false teachings somehow reflect the Truth of the CC?

So, on another forum, I've a got a VII Catholic asserting that saying Muslims worship the same God or the Church does not deny the truth in all of the religions can be supported by Paul's witness in Athens when he quotes Greek poets/writers in a positive light.  In other words, Paul evangelized by bringing up that these Greek pagans had some truth (even if they didn't know it).

This is a distortion on that person's part because the sermon that St. Paul delivered unto the Athenians was not principally based on what the Greek poets had written but preached the sacred Gospel with an exposition of those primal truths of reason that illuminated the classical poets and philosophers (who had earnestly striven for wisdom and the observance of the natural law) as a preamble.

He later on preaches the absolute necessity of penitence on account of their idolatry, so that the Poets and Philosophers alone could not keep the heathen from degrading themselves unto the idolatry that resulted from the spiritual blindness for which the transgression of natural law was both a logical consequence and a just punishment: "And the times truly of this ignorance whereas God despised, now He denounceth unto men that all everywhere do penance" (Act. cap. xvii. 30). He then preached upon the General Judgment Doomsday and the Resurrection of all flesh.

Rev. Fr. Cornelius à Lapide says in his Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles that St. Paul cited the poet Aratus (supra cap. xvii. 28). Traditionally, the verse "For of his kind also we are" ("ipsius enim et genus sumus" in the Sacred Vulgate) was understood as the rational principle that man was created by God as His masterpiece, and that the human soul had a kinship with its Creator in its rational and intellective faculties. Here reason, disciplined by self-abnegation and moderated by moral probity, in the heathen world coincided with what was divinely revealed unto the ancient Hebrews: "Let us make man to our image and likeness" (Gen. cap. i. 26). The celestial origin of the soul was taught not only by Aratus, but by Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, &c.

Rev. Fr. Cornelius à Lapide wrote (supra cap. xvii. 23) that the altar dedicated to the "unknown God" by the Athenians was made, according to some authors, by the Athenians at witnessing the marvels that occurred at the Death of Our Lord, and that this unknown God must be identified with God suffering in the flesh, with Christ Crucified. Other authors, says the same Jesuit exegete, wrote that the Athenians had learned of the future Incarnation of Christ from the Sybils and the Hebrews, and unto Him did they erect this altar, as to an "unknown God" who is to be understood as the Incarnate Word whom the Athenians whose advent the Athenians had not understood until the preaching of the Apostles.

Finally, Rev. Fr. Cornelius à Lapide plainly states that St. Paul makes known to the Athenians the infelicity of the ancient heathens and the unsurpassed felicity of the new economy established by Our Lord and Redeemer, for the which thing we are ever to be grateful to God: for we have been born in this refulgent epoch of the Gospel wherein eternal beatitude is more easily obtainable than it was for the heathen before the preaching of the Gospel, who had to labor without the aid of Divine Revelations and without Sacramental grace; Socrates can glory in his wisdom but we may glory all the more for having been born in the era of Christ and within the bosom of Holy Mother Church (supra cap. xvii. 30).

So, I do not understand how this sermon of St. Paul can be used to justify the novelty of religious syncretism that we see enshrined in so many professedly Catholic churches and schools.

St. Paul is actually the perfect example of the traditional Christian approach to evangelizing pagans, Mohammedans, Jєωs or heretics. If, like some pagans, they admit nothing, we begin with the first principles of reason and natural law, showing that the existence of God can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, as a necessary Cause from its contingent effects, as an intelligent Being deducible from the observed effects of intelligence in creation.

If, like Jєωs and Mohammedans, they recognize that God exists, then we show the necessity of believing in Christ, the divine proofs He offered of His mission, His absolute uniqueness, the fact of His Resurrection, His fulfilment of Messianic prophecy and the necessity for all to know and believe in Him.

And if, like heretics and schismatics, they profess to believe in Christ, but corrupt the dogmas of the faith or remain separated from Catholic communion, we prove to them, from Scripture and patristic Tradition the necessity of believing in the whole Faith and being subject to the See of Peter and the Roman Church.

But the reality of post-Vatican II ecuмenism was well summed by a person who even at the time observed something like, "To please the Orthodox, we deny or downplay the Papacy, to please the Protestants we derogate devotion to the Virgin Mother, to satisfy the Jєωs and Muslims we discard Christ ... and what is left?" This has been a complete inversion of right order, truly a diabolical disorientation. What should have been a proper approach oriented toward their conversion to the Faith or return to Catholic unity has been rather the path to indifferentism and apostasy.