A Bit More on REligion

I responded to Culture Wars Magazine's March 2011 issue with a letter to the editor mostly in praise but with a knock of sorts on a review of a book by a college professor named Kozinski. Here are the relevant paragraphs:

I was particularly interested in the review by David Wemhoff of Kozinski’s book, The Political Problem of Pluralism. The cultural scene here is profoundly confused: our ruling Judaic elite is pouring its antagonistic products—“entertainment” and “porn”—on top of the endless back and forth contests of the many “Christianities” already stressing the population. We are mammonite to a fare-thee-well and getting worse by the hour. I have no notion that a confessional nation is possible anywhere in this land lying between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Certainly not a Cathoiic one.

The crucial phrase for me in Wemhoff’s review is from the Vatican document Dignitatis Humanae: “God Himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve him and thus be saved in Christ and come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church and to embrace the truth they come to know. . . . Religious freedom has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion, and toward the one true Church of Christ.” (I assume this is an accurate translation.)

I certainly agree with all my heart that everybody should have “immunity from coercion in civil society” but what is one to make of the contention that “this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church”? I could argue of course that the reference does not really mean the politico-religious institution headquartered at Vatican City but rather the true church that is an entirely spiritual entity, but I doubt any Tamils or Sikhs or Malaysians or Chinese or Esquimos will be taken in by that. They will recognize that what is meant is just the famous old Roman Church.

The claim I have quoted is insupportable in this global world where the Europeans and their colonial diaspora are fast disappearing into insignificance. Not that that political shift invalidates any truth, but I insist that a just God has always spoken to his chlldren on earth equally. I can believe nothing contrary to that. The Lord Christ said to look within, not at earthly institutions.

It seems plain to me that no anthropomorphic religion can claim exclusive truth and try to brush everybody into their basket; rather that all of them partake of the one truth of the one God in different ways, adjusted for culture and especially language. I’d expect a certain  amount of static for that view from hard-nose Catholics, none at all from, say, Hindus, Buddhists, or Taoists. More and more that static seems to me something one just has to live with.

I’ll close with a quotation from Ibn Arabi, a 14^th century “Andaluisian Moorish Sufi philosopher,” who seems to me to have hit the nail on the head. Would the Lord Jesus Christ have disagreed?

“My heart has become capable of all forms. It is a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks, and a temple for idols, and the Kaabah of the pilgrim, and the table of the Torah, and the book of the Qoran. I am the religion of Love, whatever road his camels may take; my religion and my faith are the true religion.”