All Religions Are on the Path to the Same God - Pope Francis

But when the Pope insists we shouldn’t claim our religion is true, isn’t he making a truth claim?

Is the Pope Catholic?

It’s a rhetorical question you put to someone after they’ve asked you the blinding obvious.

For instance, if you asked me whether I’m passionate about AFL football, I’d look at you like you were stupid and reply: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Of course the Pope is Catholic. And in like fashion, of course I love AFL.

But after the Pontiff’s latest remarks in Singapore, ‘is the Pope Catholic’ is no longer rhetorical.

Speaking at an interfaith dialogue, the leader of the world’s 1.39 billion Catholics said:

“One of the things that struck me about all of you here is your ability to engage in inter-religious dialogue and this is very important.

“Because if we start to fight among ourselves and say my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true and yours is not, where will that lead us?

“Yes, it’s okay to discuss because every religion is a way to arrive at God.

“Sort of a comparison and an example would be there are different languages to arrive at God but God is God for all.

“And if God is God for all then we’re all sons and daughters of God.

“But my God is more important than your God. Is that true? There’s only one God and each of us has a language - so to speak - in order to arrive at God - Sikh, Muslim, Hindi, Christian. They’re different paths. Understood.”

This is why vows of silence are not always such a bad thing. How much better off we’d all be had Pope Francis taken one.

Clearly the Pope is concerned about unity and social cohesion. But unity must be built around something. Unity for unity’s is a fool’s errand.

Christians can unite around the person of Jesus. But Christians who try to unite around unity, as the Pope insists, are fools professing to be wise.

In order to be inclusive - which is the only thing our culture agrees is worth being these days - the Pope ventured that we must not say that “my God is more important than your God”.

Which begs the question, if Jesus is not better than Krishna, why bother with Jesus at all?

Jesus said a lot of hard stuff. ‘Deny yourself and take up your cross’ isn’t exactly appealing.

And if Jesus is no more important than any of the other gods, then why wouldn’t I choose a wider path? Surely there’s a Hindu god who requires less of me than Christ?

The Pope also said that we shouldn’t claim that our particular religion is true …