Retired Benedict XVI says relativism is lethal to faith

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has warned against relativistic ideas of religious truth as being “lethal to faith”.

The retired pontiff sent a written message of 1800 words to Rome’s Pontifical Urbanian University, where a lecture hall was recently dedicated to him.

“The risen Lord instructed his apostles, and through them his disciples in all ages, to take his word to the ends of the earth and to make disciples of all people,” Pope Benedict wrote.

“[But] many inside and outside the Church ask themselves today: ‘Is mission still something for today? Would it not be more appropriate to meet in dialogue among religions and serve together the cause of world peace?’,” he wrote.

“The counter-question is: ‘Can dialogue substitute for mission?’”

“In fact, many today think religions should respect each other and, in their dialogue, become a common force for peace.

“According to this way of thinking, it is usually taken for granted that different religions are variants of one and the same reality,” the retired Pope wrote.

“The question of truth, that which originally motivated Christians more than any other, is here put inside parentheses.

“It is assumed that the authentic truth about God is, in the last analysis, unreachable and that at best one can represent the ineffable with a variety of symbols.

“This renunciation of truth seems realistic and useful for peace among religions in the world.

“It is nevertheless lethal to faith,” Benedict warned.

“In fact, faith loses its binding character and its seriousness, everything is reduced to interchangeable symbols, capable of referring only distantly to the inaccessible mystery of the divine,” he wrote.

Pope Benedict wrote that some religions, particularly “tribal religions”, are “waiting for the encounter with Jesus Christ”.

But that this “encounter is always reciprocal. Christ is waiting for their history, their wisdom, their vision of the things,” Benedict wrote.

Benedict added: “We speak of him [Jesus] because we feel the duty to transmit that joy which has been given to us.”

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