PODCAzT 169: Bp. Athanasius Schneider on “the only God-willed religion”

The terrific and courageous Bp. Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary in Astana, has sent out for wide distribution an essay entitled

The Gift of Filial Adoption
The Christian Faith: the only valid and the only God-willed religion

Clearly, from the title, this is a response to the poorly worded Catholic/Islamic document signed in the UAE by Francis and an imam. You will recall that that document, inter alia, so badly phrases a statement about God’s will that one could, were one to choose to, read it to mean that God willed a diversity of religions not just by His permissive will but by His active, positive will. That would be contrary to reason and the Catholic Faith.

Rather than simply reproduce it, you can download it.   This is the Word document that was sent around.

HERE

Also, to help you out, I’ve recording a reading of it to make it easier for some of you to benefit from it.

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9 Comments

  1. Grateful to be Catholic says:

    Thank you very much for the PODCAzT, Fr. Z.

  2. Gab says:

    An illuminating, edifying, reassuring and reaffirming essay. I cannot imagine this Pope would dare to have presented such a document to the moslems in the UAE. Or to any other head of another religion.

    And thank you, Father Z for reading it and providing the essay in print as well.

  3. teomatteo says:

    “some people in the Church of our so fickle, cowardly, sensationalist, and conformist time reinterpret this truth in a sense contrary to its evident wording, selling thereby this reinterpretation as continuity in the development of doctrine.”
    Fickle, cowardly, sensationalist, conformist. I would add obseqious, conniving, dishonest, obtuse, embarrassing, and sadly pathetic. Ok, I’m done.

  4. my6fish says:

    Bravo!

    I would send this to my 12th grade daughter’s theology teacher….but it would contradict too cogently and Biblically her teaching of World Religions.

  5. jameeka says:

    Thank you very very much, Bishop Schneider.
    Thank you Father Z for podcaZting this response.
    This is so excellent, a drink of Living Water amidst the drought.

    “The most urgent task of the Church in our time is to care about the change of the spiritual climate and about the spiritual migration, namely that the climate of non-belief in Jesus Christ, the climate of the rejection of the kingship of Christ, be changed into the climate of explicit faith in Jesus Christ, of the acceptance of His kingship, and that men may migrate from the misery of the spiritual slavery of unbelief into the happiness of being sons of God and from a life of sin into the state of sanctifying grace. These are the migrants about whom we must care urgently.”

  6. HvonBlumenthal says:

    I have regular discussions about religious matters with a devout Sunni Moslem woman. We agree that we disagree on matters which cannot be reconciled. We also agree that it is dishonest and ungodly to pretend otherwise and that to declare that different religions are equally valid is to declare that there is no God.

    She is as outraged that an influential Grand Imam should sign such a declaration as I am.

  7. Augustin56 says:

    HvonBlumenthal, next time you speak with your Sunni friend, if you haven’t already, you might point out that Mohammed is only mentioned twice int he Koran. Jesus is mentioned 25 times. You might also point out that the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Islam says that Jesus was a prophet. Yet, He claims to be God. Either He is God or He is not. If He is, he is far more than a prophet. If he is not, then he is far less than a prophet. You might ask her what she thinks about these things. :)

  8. Augustin56 says:

    Hvon Blumenthal, next time you speak with your Sunni friend, if you haven’t already, you might point out that Mohammed is only mentioned twice int he Koran. Jesus is mentioned 25 times. You might also point out that the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Islam says that Jesus was a prophet. Yet, He claims to be God. Either He is God or He is not. If He is, he is far more than a prophet. If he is not, then he is far less than a prophet. You might ask her what she thinks about these things. :)

  9. Lurker 59 says:

    Thank you for making this available, both text and spoken form.

    —-

    Bp. Schneider is quite appropriate in pointing people back to Dominus Iesus. This is a very important document and should be reread. If one does not have time, do a word search for “firmly” and read those paragraphs. Doing so really will help one to see how the document On Human Fraternity is flawed at the foundational presuppositions.

    Bp. Schneider’s work is very important in that it points out that human fraternity ONLY comes about through Christ and incorporation into Christ through baptism. Other humans share with Christians God as their creator, and as such, share in the imago dei, but lacking the imago Christi do not share a bound of fraternity with Christians, for as the Bp. says, “Consequently, by nature God is not in the proper sense the Father of all human beings. Only if someone consciously accepts Christ and is baptized, will he be able to cry in truth: “Abba, Father” “.

    If we truly wish for other people to be our brothers, we must share with them the Gospel, and bring them into the family of the Church, which one enters through baptism in Christ as through a door.

    If we wish our neighbors to be our brothers, then we must not refuse to share with them real mercy, which is the Gospel.

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