Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. Luke 23:31-32

Jesus Said I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, No One Comes to the Father except through me.

Sift as wheat…could also be expressed as “shake someone apart” or “break a person down …Satan’s goal was to crush them and wreck their faith. In truth, the adversary wants to destroy the faith of every believer (John 10:10). But Jesus assured Peter, “I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32, NLT). https://www.gotquestions.org/sift-you-as-wheat.html Our Lord gave the mission to St. Peter and his successors to strengthen the brethren not confuse them. Luke 23:31-32

Addressing an inter-religious meeting of young people in Singapore just before departing for his return flight to Rome, Pope Francis turned to one of the central themes of his pontificate – inter-religious dialogue. He stated: If we start to fight amongst ourselves and say “my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true, yours is not,” where will that lead us? Where? Every religion is a way to arrive at God. 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. He also reiterated something that was in a document called Abu Dhabi that God wills the diversity of religion, which on its face contradicts the Gospels. God’s permissive will tolerates the various religions but He sent His Son to preach the Gospel to all peoples and unite them. This cannot be simply glossed over as if religious truth does not exist.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, the emeritus--Archbishop of Philadelphia reacted to these words of the Pope assuming his good will in an essay on the website of the magazine First Things. He commented: Pope Francis has the habit, by now well established, of saying things that leave listeners confused and hoping he meant something other than what he actually said… Francis …added a call to enter into interreligious dialogue. He spoke about dialogue as if it were an end in itself. “Interreligious dialogue,” he said, “is something that creates a path.” The question then is: a path to where? That all religions have equal weight is an extraordinarily flawed idea for the Successor of Peter to appear to support. It is true that all of the great religions express a human yearning—often with beauty and wisdom—for something more than this life. Humans have a need to worship. That desire seems to be hardwired into our DNA. But not all religions are equal in their content or consequences. Substantial differences exist among the religions the pope named. They have very different notions of who God is and what that implies for the nature of the human person and society. As St. Paul preached two thousand years ago, the search for God can take many imperfect forms, but they are each an imperfect search for the one, true, triune God of Sacred Scripture. Paul condemns false religions and preaches Jesus Christ as the reality and fulfillment of the unknown God whom the Greeks worship (Acts 17:22–31). Simply put: Not all religions seek the same God, and some religions are both wrong and potentially dangerous, materially and spiritually. Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, once and forever, revealed to all humanity who God is.

He redeemed us by his death and resurrection, and he gave us the commission to bring all humanity to him. As our faith teaches very clearly, it is only Jesus Christ who saves. Christ is not merely one among other great teachers or prophets. To borrow a thought from C. S. Lewis, if Jesus were just one among many, he’d also be a liar, because he emphatically claimed that, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). A loving God may accept the worship of any sincere and charitable heart—but salvation comes only through his only son, Jesus Christ. Which is why Jesus did not say, “Stay on your path, and let’s talk about it.”…The bishop of Rome is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide. This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically. Loose comments can only confuse. Yet, too often, confusion infects and undermines the good will of this pontificate. See https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/09/the-pope-and-otherreligions

Pope Pius XI in Mortalium animos rejected years ago(1928) …that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. (emphasis added) Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.

Pope Paul VI whom the current Pope expressed special admiration for taught in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, the following: Obviously we cannot agree with these various forms of religion, nor can we adopt an indifferent or uncritical attitude toward them on the assumption that they are all to be regarded as on an equal footing, and that there is no need for those who profess them to enquire whether or not God has Himself revealed definitively and infallibly how He wishes to be known, loved, and served. Indeed, honesty compels us to declare openly our conviction that the Christian religion is the one and only true religion, and it is our hope that it will be acknowledged as such by all who look for God and worship Him. (emphasis added)

The document Dominus Iesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,in 2000 issued a declaration from the Catholic Church that clarifies Christian beliefs and the Church's role in salvation. The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience of June 16, 2000,…ratified and confirmed this Declaration, adopted in Plenary Session and ordered its publication. Some of the main points of the document include:

• Salvation - The Catholic Church is the instrument of God's salvation for all people, and salvation comes only through Jesus Christ.
• The Church - The Church is unique and necessary for salvation, and Jesus Christ continues his work of salvation through the Church.
• The Bible - The canonical books of the Old and New Testaments are inspired by the Holy Spirit and contain infallible truth about God and salvation.
• Other religions - The Church respects other religions, but it does not believe that other religions are equally salvific.
• Relativism - The document rejects religious relativism, which is the belief that all religions are equally good.
• Dialogue - The document states that the Church's beliefs do not hinder dialogue with other religions, but that dialogue must be based on Christian beliefs.

Dialogue had become a “magic bullet” in the years after the Vatican Council, as if it were a word with one meaning, and is the solution to all difficulties. Dialogue does NOT mean that Jesus Christ is negotiable. Archbishop Chaput pointed to St. Paul as an example of real dialogue in the Acts of the Apostles Chapter 17 where St Paul in Athens speaks to people in the market place as well as to Jews and God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue about Jesus. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. They also said “You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said:

“People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

-God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ [ Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Jesus from the dead.” When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed.

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