(urth) Wolfe Heretic?

[brunians at brunians.org]

>
> On Jul 16, 2008, at 1:06 PM, John Watkins wrote:
>
>> Oh, no, I don't think he's in the Mel Gibson camp.  Some of his non-
>> mainstream views seem to be, if anything, on the other side--he
>> apparently gives great salvific power to faith in non-Christian
>> religions, and even to faith in religions with explicitly false or
>> evil gods, and he believes (or says he believes, of course) that
>> pagan gods were real beings but not demons.  So I'd say he's on the
>> broad-minded side of orthodox Catholicism.
>
> Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Is it actually a permitted doctrine in Catholicism
> that faith in non-Christian religions can have salvific power?

Yes. It is the faith that saves, not the religion. Also, if someone is
being another religion, it is because that is what God wants them to do.
Nothing happens save by the will of God.

Vatican II explicitly states that the other guy's religion is right for
him. Judaism is only for Jews: the Jewish ideal is not that everyone
should be a Jew, but that everyone should be a good whatever-they-are.
Islam (incidentally) declares no coercion in religion, as well as
explicitly recognizing various 'religions of the Book' as valid. There are
actually a fair number of tolerant religions. Sikhism.....



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