9. Are All Religions Good?

According to Vatican News on October 20, 2023, the number of Catholics worldwide is 1,375,852,000 people.

According to 2015 statistics, the number of Christians worldwide is 2 billion 400 million (Wikipedia), of which:

■ 50% Roman Catholic.

■ 37% ​​Protestant, Anglican.

■ 12% Orthodox.

■ 1% other Christian sects.

The world population in 2020 is 7 billion 8 (Wikipedia).

So, less than 1/3 of the global population is Christian, meaning they know Christ. The remaining 2/3 have never heard of Him. Moreover, Jesus came to earth at the beginning of the Christian era, that is, 2000 years ago. What about before that?

Salvation is universal, that is, for everyone, for all times.

• Law of Conscience

Conscience, according to common conception, is the voice that urges each person to do good and avoid evil. As a human being, even in ancient times, everyone has a natural conscience that God has placed in their heart, so that everyone knows how to live a good life according to their human identity.

Writer Victor Hugo said, “Conscience is God in man.” Catholic doctrine says, “Conscience is present in the human heart and commands people to do good and avoid evil at the right time” (CCC 1777).

Saint Paul said in his letter to the Romans:

“The Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, but they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts” (Rm 2, 14-15).

Indeed, salvation is not only for the Jews and those who lived after the death of Christ, but for all people since Adam, the first man to sin.

God has inscribed in the heart of every person the law of conscience from the beginning, so that anyone can live morally.

Philosopher Kant: “A human being carries within himself the feeling of conscience from birth. Conscience is like God’s witness to judge us.”

The Second Vatican Council in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church Today wrote: “In the depths of his conscience, man discovers a law which he himself has not laid upon himself, but which he must obey, and the voice of his conscience constantly calls him to love and do good and to avoid evil… Obeying this law is the dignity of man, and he himself is judged by it. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of man, where he is alone with God” (4).

Confucius said: “In the beginning, man’s nature is good.” From the beginning, everyone has a good heart.

Living and practicing Christianity is, in the final analysis, just living the human way.

Jesus came to earth as a human, so everyone was redeemed. He taught us morality and established the church to concretize that human morality. That morality is:

■ Respect and gratitude to our Creator.

■ Love our fellow human beings as our brothers.

In the Constitution Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council said: those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ and his Church can still be saved, because they “seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, strive to do his will in their own actions as their conscience dictates.”

• Distortion of conscience

However, conscience is often severely distorted, accepted in one place, or in one time, but not in others; one person’s conscience is narrow, another person’s is broad; some consciences are confused; some others are distorted, calloused…

Conscience fundamentally has different judgments depending on circumstances, times, localities… In general, conscience has many variations and cannot be a common standard denominator for everyone and every time.

In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II said, “In the judgments of conscience, we can always hide a possibility of error. Conscience is not an infallible judge: conscience can be wrong” (8)

Therefore, there needs to be an authority of assessment, based on the teachings of God, the Bible, which is the church that God himself established and empowered.

Pope Francis: “Religions are seen as paths of effort to approach God” (September 13, 2024, address to young people at the Catholic College in Singapore).

Religions are all efforts to seek what is good, and God is the absolute perfection.

• People of God

The Church is the People of God (Lumen gentium 9, CCC 782). However, God does not want to save each individual separately. He wants to save the whole community by choosing a people, from which to come to all peoples.

God chose the Jewish people to sign a covenant, which we call the old covenant on Mount Sinai with Moses and gave them a law. The Jewish people were called God’s chosen people among others to worship Him.

To prepare for the Savior to come to everyone, He established the Church. This covenant was established by the blood of Christ on the cross. We call it the new covenant.

He calls the Jews and all peoples to gather together in one people called the people of God, not according to the flesh but the Spirit: “by water and Spirit” (Jn 3, 5).

God is for all people, not for any one people. God “wants all to be saved” (1 Ti 2, 4).

The people of God are not by blood, by ethnicity, or by nationality. St. Paul said: “There is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Ga 3, 28).

The Church is the people of God not in the sense of being isolated, a separate people, but in the sense that all “citizens” have the following duties:

– Priest: worshiping one God as Father.

– Prophet: bearing witness to the world about Him and proclaiming salvation.

– King: serving the less fortunate in society.

And obey the law of love: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another” (Jn 13, 34).

The law of the People of God is to practice the law of love because according to St. Paul: “Love is the fulfillment of the law” (Ro 13, 10).

However, St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death” (Ro 8, 1-2).

That is, meeting Christ ensures that we live in truth, grace and life, as He once said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14, 1).

In short:

Catholicism, in a sense, is the religion of all rational people with true thinking, who know that they do not come from a hole, who know that God is their father and that the duty of a child is to be filial to the Creator.

He made us human, so we must be human. That is:

– Know how to control our desires, master ourselves.

– Know how to be altruistic: love others, all things.

– Know how to aim upward: always seek the way up, seek the beautiful, the right, the good.

That’s it, all the other fancy stuff is secondary.

With other religions, people strive to find God. In Christianity, from the very beginning, it is God who seeks us. God is with us (Emmanuel) and shows us the way to Him.