THE usual Francis-bashers as hysterical. Heresy! He has preached that the different religions are paths to the same God. He is right, and what he said during his recently concluded apostolic journey is nothing new. In fact, it should be familiar to all who have studied the documents of Vatican II — and that means, besides the clergy, the Catholic faithful as well.
In The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) No. 8, the Council teaches: "This Church (the unique Church of Jesus Christ) constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in union with that successor, although many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside of her visible structure." This is a piece of ecclesiology pregnant with implication. First, the Council does not say that the true Church is the Catholic Church, but that it "subsists" in the Catholic Church. When X is Y, the law of commutation in logic allows you to conclude with logical rigor that Y is X. Obviously, that is not the case when you say that X subsists in Y. What the Council is declaring is that while the fullness of Jesus' Church will be found in the Catholic Church, that does not exclude other ecclesial communities from being paths to sanctification and truth.
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