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From the Associate&
Relativism
I met a woman once, Katherine, who inspired my faith journey tremendously. She was in love with God, as a nun, when I met her, and radiated joy in each moment. She desired to serve the poor, and prayed daily, with ardent devotion. She is still a very bright woman, having obtained a Masters degree in theology, and a certificate for spiritual direction. One of her closest friends describes her as "possessing a great depth of soul." However, her journey, as of late, has not been without its dark days and confusion. Over time she became disillusioned with the Catholic Church, and found herself pondering the ultimate question of truth, as it relates to all religions, peoples, and cultures. "Does the Catholic Church really possess the fullness of truth?" "Could we even say that Christianity was the clearest path to heaven?" In her search, she gave her reason unlimited freedom to speculate and discern.
There are many churchgoers today, who feel that it would be wrong to judge another religion or denomination as "less than," in relation to the Catholic Church. It's not politically correct, no, actually it's even described as "triumphalistic," "ultramontanist," "arrogant," and "narrow minded," to hold that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of divinely revealed truth. Many would prefer to say that there are many roads to salvation, and a number of these equally as secure. God cannot be limited to our prejudices, and certainly, we should not place upon anyone else, our worldview. What's good for me is good for me, and what's good for you is good for you. This vision is terribly naïve, and undifferentiated. It proclaims diversity to be a god, and elevates subjectivity to objectivity. It foolishly declares, "There are absolutely no absolutes," a self-contradiction. But all faiths are not equal.
As one parishioner said recently, "If I didn't think the Catholic faith was the best, I wouldn't be Catholic." Toleration and ecumenism are to be fostered around the globe, and certainly in the Church, but relativism is not. There are objective truths to which we adhere: e.g., that God exists and governs the world; that murder, as the taking of innocent human life, is always and everywhere wrong; that all human beings are created good and possess dignity and inalienable rights ("to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"). If there were no absolutes in the universe, we would be subject to anarchy. When you get right down to it, the legal code in the United States, finds its ultimate footing not in prior case decisions, but in the Ten Commandments: in the natural law.
Katherine's fatal experiment led her to lose
faith. At first she was convinced that many religions
possessed equal opportunity for grace and truth in their own
rightful way, and she judged this view to be a loftier, wiser, more
learned position to hold. But now she doesn't know what to
believe about God. Maybe God is the energy source permeating
the universe? Maybe God is the goddess of humanity?
Maybe God is in the end unknowable? Maybe God is everything
postulated by all religions and more? For Katherine, God has
been relegated to the realm of her own creative ideas. But faith is a gift
from God, which places us not in the presence of ideas, but Persons
(Father, Son and Holy Spirit), Who have revealed Themselves to
us! Faith enables us to experience God's love personally, and
this is a matter not of the mind only, but also the heart. As
Pascal said, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not
know." The Christian faith is not a myopic, small-minded
approach to a God Who refuses to be limited by denominational
structures; it is rather the deepest and truest way of entrance into
an eternal love-dialogue, with a personal God.
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