Dr. Ed Mazza via 1P5:
…This brings us back to the issue of whether proselytism is incompatible with tolerance.
In a Roman address on June 17, 2013, Pope Francis related the following exchange: “‘Father, now I understand: it is a question of convincing others, of proselytizing!’ ‘No: it is nothing of the kind. The Gospel is like seed: you scatter it, you scatter it with your words and with your witness. And then it is not you who calculate the statistics of the results; it is God who does.’”
And let us not forget Bergoglio’s “Top 10 Tips” for bringing greater happiness to one’s life (from an interview published in part in the Argentine weekly Viv, July 27, 2014). Number Nine was instructive: “Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs. We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: ‘I am talking with you in order to persuade you,’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing.”
Against this backdrop, it came as a surprise to no one when on December 10, 2015, Cardinal Koch and the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews issued a document commemorating the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, calling for the “principled rejection” of “institutional” proselytization of Jews.[11]
Both Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty have been viewed by many inside and outside the Church as breakthroughs in her relations with non-Catholic religions. Together they have led to much scholarly debate and divergent opinion as to whether the Council’s teaching that individuals have a right to immunity from coercion in religious matters represents a rupture with traditional Catholic teaching on truth and tolerance or merely a natural development of doctrine, and the inevitable consequence of the Church’s experience of modernity.
Furthermore, in the wake of the Council’s call for Catholic ecumenical outreach to other faiths, the last half-century has seen the starkest drop in conversions to Catholicism in Western history and, more importantly, in efforts to actively facilitate those conversions. Indeed, tens of millions of Catholics have either left the Faith altogether or no longer actively participate in the Church’s liturgical life. And with statements from Francis like those cited above—not the least of them: “proselytism is solemn nonsense”—many faithful Catholics are wondering whether the Church has left its former teachings—not to mention its senses—behind.
We may conclude, therefore, that not only academia, but the Bergoglian church and contemporary society have much to gain from a reappraisal of St. Raymond’s scholastic approach to tolerance and dialogue.
As Benedict XVI expressed it at Regensburg:
The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.
Scholar István Bejczy expresses well the danger inherent in the West’s Enlightenment (i.e. anti-medieval) view of tolerance: “Admitting the relativity of our truths, we should be reluctant to condemn the acts of our fellow human beings that differ from our own—that is the basic idea of our so-called tolerance. An idea that makes us morally defenseless if outright evil shows up.”[12]
Ironically, by condemning medieval Catholic belief in universally recognizable moral truths, today’s intelligentsia could be throwing away the only true remedy to the escalating sectarianism (i.e. sectarian violence) they so fear:
Medieval authors never doubted that they possessed the absolute truth, but they developed the concept of tolerantia as a way of getting along with the untrue. Medieval authors were never morally defenseless against outright evil and condemned it wherever they believed to find it, but still they advocated not to interfere with it if this seemed to be opportune. Obviously, we do not have the same enemies as medieval people. Still, with regard to the question of how to handle the enemies we do have without going to the extremes of tyranny and inertia, the medieval doctrine of tolerance contains a lesson for our age as well.
What a different world it would be, for example, if the U.S. and its allies had adopted a “medieval” stance of tolerance toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and if Muslim zealots had long ago adopted the same posture toward the U.S. and Israel?
As for the putative Pope and his minions, they would do well to remember Pope Benedict’s words on tolerance and dialogue:
Christians of the nascent Church did not regard their missionary proclamation as propaganda, designed to enlarge their particular group, but as an inner necessity, consequent upon the nature of their faith: the God in whom they believed was the God of all people, the one, true God, who had revealed himself in the history of Israel and ultimately in his Son, thereby supplying the answer which was of concern to everyone and for which all people, in their innermost hearts, are waiting. The universality of God, and of reason open towards him, is what gave them the motivation—indeed, the obligation—to proclaim the message. They saw their faith as belonging, not to cultural custom that differs from one people to another, but to the domain of truth, which concerns all people equally.
Regrettably, Bergoglio directly contradicted this teaching at his Wednesday Audience of January 18, 2023, when he said:
To evangelize is not to proselytize. To proselytize is something pagan; it is neither religious nor evangelical. There is a good word for those who have left the flock and we have the honour and the burden of being the ones to speak that word. Because the Word, Jesus, asks this of us: to always draw near to everyone, with an open heart, because he is like that. Perhaps we have been following and loving Jesus for some time and have never wondered if we share his feelings, if we suffer and we take risks in harmony with Jesus’s heart, with this pastoral heart, close to Jesus’s pastoral heart! This is not about proselytism, as I said, so that others become “one of us”. No, this is not Christian. (bold emphasis mine)
If he does not recant his public declarations against the Gospel’s injunctions to proselytize (Mark 16:15, Luke 14:23, Matthew 28: 19-20), then let him be reminded of St. Raymond’s canonical teaching:
every heretic hidden, or manifest, excommunicates himself with the greater excommunication, and incurs deposition [of office], whether he be a cleric or a layman, pope or emperor.[13] (bold emphasis mine)