Thursday, January 24, 2008

Bam!

Diogenes hits the nail on the head when he quotes Danielou on the subject of pluralism and non-Christian religions:
For syncretism, those who are saved are the inward-looking souls, whatever the religion they profess. For Christianity, they are the believers, whatever level of inwardness they may have achieved. A little child, an overworked workman, if they believe, stand at a higher level than the greatest ascetics. "We are not great religious personalities", Guardini once said; "we are servants of the Word." Christ himself had said that St. John the Baptist might well be "the greatest among the children of men", but that "the least among the sons of the kingdom is greater than he." It is possible for there to be great religious personalities in the world even outside of Christianity; it is indeed very possible for the greatest religious personalities to be found outside Christianity; but that means nothing; what counts is obedience to the Word of Christ.

4 comments:

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Do you have a URL for the original post? What writing of Cardinal Danielou is this from?

This is a very important point, I think, that's not often made.

I wonder though: what is the relationship between obedience to the Word of Christ, the call to holiness and inwardness? Asceticism? Christianity -- like others, has prized both inwardness and asceticism. [The tendency, however, has been to relegate these qualities to professed religious and the clergy, while "ordinary" folk can get on without. ]

Zadok the Roman said...

Mea culpa, Gashwin! It's here : http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=4565

Diogenes takes the quotation from p 43 of the English translation of Ratzinger's Truth and Tolerance.

The reference given there is Danielou, Vom Geheimnis der Geschichte, p 133f.

Anonymous said...

Looks like the CDF are going to have plenty more problems woth Jesuit syncretism. Has the CDF ever given an opinion on the enneagram which is fundamentally syncretistic?

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Aha! It did look familiar! "Truth and Tolerance" is one of my Ratzinger favorites.