My Response to Salvation of Non-Catholics

Hey Alex, I’ve been meaning to respond to you about this last email you sent to Jan but I haven’t had a chance to until right now. You brought up some good points and I wanted to address them, so here goes.

You state ‘Ultimately the question of salvation regards the individual that dies with grace on their soul. The non-Catholic who may be saved through invincible ignorance, and who has TRULY striven to seek God and to do the will of God, dies with sanctifying grace on their soul. Once again though their salvation somehow unites them with the Catholic Church…the salvation of a soul depends on their cooperation with the actual graces (graces that God gives to help the individual avoid evil and do good which is distinguished from sanctifying grace which refers to the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in the soul of the just) and their final perseverance.’ It seems to you have made a distinction as far as grace goes, between ‘actual’ graces and ‘sanctifying’ grace. Please elaborate on this more and clarify exactly what you mean by this if you would. If I understand you correctly, it sounds like the only criteria for salvation is to die ‘with sanctifying grace on their soul’ which is defined as ‘the indwelling of the holy trinity in the soul of the just’. Is this correct? Please elaborate.

You also state that ‘As for the axiom that "Outside the Church there is no salvation" there is no esoteric meaning to it.’ Are you sure about that? Do you know what esoteric means and if you do know, how can you be so certain that there is no esoteric meaning behind it? What does the church have to say about the distinction between exotericism and esotericism?

You also say ‘Please do forgive my ignorance but what exactly do you mean by the "patriarchy"?…I don't quite understand how you say "it suits the patriarchy by holding the Us versus Them in place".’ Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines patriarchy as ‘1: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly: control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.’ I think that the way Jan uses this term when she speaks about it is in the italicized portion, the power of society that is controlled by men.

The argument basically goes that exclusivist religion benefits the patriarchy, [the men in society who have all the power] by keeping these men in power because exclusivist religion gets the ‘masses’ to focus on demonizing and ostracizing the ‘other’ instead of focusing their attention on the real problem, the patriarchal power elite who really control society. Instead of uniting across religious, cultural, racial, etc. boundaries to fight the power elite’s, we are kept fighting each other to the benefit of the power elite’s. In Alex Jones terms, instead of the people uniting and going after the real problem, the secret government, the secret government uses exclusivist religion as one of it’s tools to demonize the ‘other’ (Muslims in this case) in order to detract attention from what they are really doing. By saying Muslims are going to hell and are terrorists we must convert them to Christianity, the masses miss the real problem which is the power elite’s demonizing the other in order to solidify their power and position in society.

This works religiously as well without any reference to a secret government. The priest/imam/minister/rabbi/etc. says ‘my religion is the only true religion, all others are destined to the hellfire, so we must convert the heathens’ is actually the priest/imam/rabbi solidifying his own power and influence over the masses. The more converts, the greater his power to manipulate and influence those converts to do what he wills. That is the main problem that Jan sees with exclusivist and I would even say institutionalized religion, is that it is used to gain and maintain power by those elite’s within the religion itself with no regard for truth or salvation. Do you understand what I’m trying to say by this? Let me know what you think about this.

I would also like to point out that this dynamic could be proven using catholic history as an example. Example 1: the systematic termination of Gnosticism and paganism by the Catholic Church from the years 400-600 AD. If the church was really concerned about truth and the salvation of souls by the use of that truth, why would they systematically eliminate it’s major competitor by criminal means instead of just using debate, dialogue, etc. Because as long as there is competition, the church loses some of its power. Example 2: the inquisition. Specifically, the elimination of the Cathars. I’ve read about this and they said the Cathars were a peaceful, even pacifist group of people, even if their theology was very Manichean and did not conform to catholic dogma. Again, if the church was really concerned about truth and not about power and control (keeping the patriarchy in place, at the top of society, controlling society) why would they use such harsh and murderous means to eliminate their competition. They would do this because the people at the top are a part of the patriarchy and are only concerned with keeping and aggrandizing their power and control and one of the ways they do this is through exclusivist religion which, one could argue, leads directly to the aforementioned events in western history. Jan said at the get-together that more people have been killed in the name of exclusivist religion than all the wars combined in human history. I don’t know if this is accurate or not and it is not only Catholics who are guilty of this (all religions are) but you see her point and why she believes the way that she does. Thus, exclusivist religion is a tool of the patriarchy to solidify their grasp on the power and control they have to rule society according to their will.

This is also another thing I don’t understand about you, I think you are totally in denial about these two ‘facts’ of history. Whenever I bring up either one of these two instances, your response is always ‘well, I’ll have to look into that’ and you brush it off like 1) it’s no big deal or 2) you don’t want to face the truth of it. Do you think that by you looking into these things that you will somehow be able to justify the systematic murder and extermination by the Catholic Church of whole groups of people? I think you should either do two things. #1) actually look into these things and formulate a response that could somehow justify or make people like Jan and myself understand this or #2) just admit that the church f#cked up and that these are two black spots, if not the biggest black spots, in Christian history. The way you respond to these two issues does nothing but to solidify the positions of Jan and myself on the ‘evils’ of exclusivist religion. Please don’t take offense to this, but if you want to defend your faith (and I think that you do) you need to come up with a better argument or just admit defeat on these issues and move on. It would even strengthen your position, I think, to just say, yeah, these are two things that the church did that was wrong, but we’ve learned from them and are a stronger church and faith because of it. That’s what I would do anyways.

You also brought up a great point when you said that ‘I pose a question though...by holding that all religions are of equal value and God will save all no matter what their religion...isn't this also an "Us versus Them" position? For whoever does not believe in such a position is somehow outside of the truth of God.’ You bring up a good point and I do not know exactly how to respond to this question. I guess it depends on what version of the ‘unity religion’ as you call it you take. Defining this ‘unity’ religion as you define it above than I would have to say yes, it is just another type of exclusivist position and falls into the same pitfalls of that position that we have discussed previously. This also begs many questions, what is the definition of religion? Is what Jan is saying a complete Universalist position, everybody will be saved no matter what? I don’t’ know exactly what she believes as far as this is concerned and hopefully she will have some time to explain herself, but as far as what I believe, I will outline that below.

The way that Jan’s statement of "there is plenty of support that 'God has many mansion' which are ready for us after judgement day, and that there are supposedly seven heavens”’ supports the idea of her ‘unity’ type of position is basically interpreting that passage to mean that the many mansions somehow refers to the diversity of religions in the world. I guess that the seven heavens ideas also refer to the same type of thinking. She is trying to say that scripture supports her unity religion position. Of course, this interpretation falls into problems when looking at the ‘exclusivist’ portions of scripture, unless those ‘exclusivist’ portions of scripture are not interpreted correctly. I do not want to dig deeper into this at this point, but I think you understand what she is trying to say when she mentioned the whole many mansions seven heavens thing.

You also state that the unity religion is illogical because it breaks the law of non-contradiction by stating that contradictory things can both be correct. That is if you define logical by the law of non-contradiction. I will give this to you, but some possible ways out of this by a proponent of Jan’s position could be that 1) the contradictory passages are not really contradictory when understood on their esoteric levels, they each point to a deeper meaning which the religions share and have in common, I’m sure that the conversation we had at the rouge bar comes to mind when I mention this. Contradictory truths pointing to a deeper truth that the different religions share in common. That is one explanation. A second explanation is to state that god is not bound by the laws of logic and thus neither is his revelation. Thus, two contradictory things can both be true because the law of non-contradiction does not bind God. He can will both things to be true and even if this is a contradiction, they are both still true. God is a paradox as is his revelations. That is another route one can take.

You also say that ‘You are suspicious of any religion which holds to one particular viewpoint as the correct one but isn't the whole issue of the unity of all religions a "particular viewpoint" which claims to be the correct one as well?’ I would answer this question yes and no, depending upon which version of the unity religion you endorse. The version I endorse does not run into this problem I believe because each religion is just a different, watered down version of the same religion, despite their apparent contradictory elements. This does mean that they are all on the same playing field either, it just states that as much as religion X accords with the true religion Y, it is the true religion. It just so happens that most if not all of the major religions of the world accord in some way with the true religion Y. It is not saying that the religion X is not the true religion, but that it is not fully the true religion. Is this a type of exclusivism? I don’t know, what do you think?

You also ask ‘Why does the Church's sole claim to be the instrument of God's work in salvation become a stumbling block for so many?’ I think that for me at least, the church’s sole claim (or anybody’s for that matter) to be an instrument of God’s work in salvation is a form of idolatry. It is idolatry because the very nature of Truth prohibits any one party or person or group or whatever to have sole possession of it. I think that the Truth, with a capital T, is by it’s very nature unknowable on some level the same way that on some level God is unknowable. Of course, we can know attributes of both and versions of both, etc., etc., but to say once and for all that this is the final form and this is the whole truth is taking the lord’s name in vain (which I equate to saying you posses the whole Truth) and is a form of idolatry. I guess that it comes to certainty and to say that you have the whole Truth of God with Certainty is to me by definition idolatry because by definition the whole Truth of God is unknowable and uncertain. It’s that whole negative theology thing that Maimonides proposed applied to salvation. If you do not and can never know the whole Truth of God with Certainty how can you say that you know with this same amount of Certainty the path to this Truth of God. It’s like we can’t tell you for certain what this or where you are going for sure is but we can tell you for certain how to get there? This is, at least from my point of view, the stumbling block I have with exclusivist claims to truth (not just in religion but in any other field of knowledge), is that I see them as a form of idolatry and expressly prohibited by the very Truth they claim to represent, at least if you follow any of the Abrahamic monotheism’s. What do you think of this idea?

A few last things. I admire the faith you have in your catholic convictions. Maybe it’s because of my philosophical training, but I don’t know if I will ever have the faith that you have in what you believe. My training in some way, prohibits me from it and maybe all I am doing in the above paragraph is giving a justification for my lack of faith? I don’t know, I’ll have to define faith and certainty and salvation and truth definitely in order to know for sure. I will leave you with a quote here, since you always leave me with some of yours. It is from David Hume’s ‘an enquiry concerning human understanding’ from the ‘of miracles’ section and it has stuck with me ever since I have read it and maybe why you and Marie are in my life right now, so I can learn this lesson. Speaking of the Christian religion Hume says “Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason…And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.” Take that for what it’s worth, if anything. Maybe it’s not what creed or religion you believe in, but what most absurd paradox you believe in? Just a thought.