When a plane crashes, God willed to allow this to happen, but we cannot say He took joy in the plane crash as such. We must say He took occasion to bring good out of that evil. He ended the life of a good man, before it went bad, so he could go to Heaven; He allowed a widow to dedicate the rest of her life to God; He allowed a surviver to thank Him and find Him, and so on. But the plane crash as such, while He decreed it, He did not will it for its own sake and probably left the execution of it to created, not only material causes. When He brought the Flood, whatever the mechanism, He probably made angels or even demons do the work, except where it was directly salvific, as in reducing the dinosaur population*, and He used His own activity for upholding the Ark.
I will bring in sth which appears unrelated. In 1666, the Russian Church received a Skirzhal, part of which was a more Greek rite on certain rituals (how fingers are held in the sign of the cross and so), part of which was also introducing a change in doctrine, by denying the Immaculate Conception (this has since spread to other parts of the Orthodox world, due to Russian preponderance).
Now, as you may have guessed from the title, I am writing on the words of "Pope Francis", that God wills religions other than Catholic Christianity. This new doctrine is pretty clearly a kind of doctrinal "Skirzhal", but there are other aspects of the 1666 event I will also use. But now, let's get to the text of Bergoglio. It seems he said as much in Evangelii Gaudium (section 254):
Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God,” and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.” But due to the sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace, God’s working in them tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God. While these lack the meaning and efficacy of the sacraments instituted by Christ, they can be channels which the Holy Spirit raises up in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism or from purely individual religious experiences. The same Spirit everywhere brings forth various forms of practical wisdom which help people to bear suffering and to live in greater peace and harmony. As Christians, we can also benefit from these treasures built up over many centuries, which can help us better to live our own beliefs.
Cited via Mark Shea, who himself cites Where Peter Is.
Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God,”
At least for a time, and when their access to information on Christianity is scarce, perhaps even to death. Feeneyites have argued, the miraculous events in which someone was given knowledge of Christianity by an angel years before a missionary came prove that if they had been living upright, they would have been granted such a miracle, but non-Feeneyites could argue these miracles are part of the praeparatio evangelica of that village or remote people (my favourite example would be the Yaquis, who already believed the Christian dogma when the Spaniards came and who therefore only had to be told the name of Jesus or the names of Jesus and Mary, the historic detail. As a result, they maintained their sovereignty, though as being a small people they were in effect a protectorate of the Spanish realm.
But the case considered here is when they are in a non-Christian religion. The Jesuit Father Busenbaum (cited by Cardinal Newman, in answer to some English lord) would agree so far.
and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.”
How associated is someone to the Paschal Mystery, who does not believe in Crucifixion and Resurrection?
In the case of a non-Christian not yet given the intellectual and sacramental means to become a Christian, but doing the most he can, there is a probability in relation to this theoretic case (by definition it cannot be observed by Catholics, since the presence of a Catholic would change the issue, would involve giving the non-Christian the means to become a Christian) that they have sanctifying grace. And sanctifying grace in its turn was won on Calvary.
This would suggest that what God would prefer to do would be to give that person access to the Paschal Mystery, by making him a Catholic.
But due to the sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace, God’s working in them tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God.
Here Bergoglio is seriously fuddled. The signs and rites of a non-Christian religion have very different origins, and God's grace does not have monopoly on inspiring a tendency to them. For instance, when St Thomas Aquinas discusses magic not made by conscious invocation of demons known as such, he considers the efficacy due to implicit compacts with demons, not necessarily known as such. That obviously also expresses itself as signs and rites of a magic practise or of a religion. A very well known example would be how the nymph Egeria (more probably witch than demon) gave Numa Pompilius the art of divination, an illicit art (as she thereupon married him, I'd not take incorporeal demon as being too probable, they were after all seen on the streets of Rome after that).
We also have the fact that some rites and signs are inherited from earlier true religion (from pre-Hebrew in Pagans, from pre-Temple Mosaic in Samaritans, from second Temple Judaism in Rabbinic Judaism, from Christianity in heresies) or plagiarised from various sources (like Islam takes over several Christian and Jewish practises with some variation).
While these lack the meaning and efficacy of the sacraments instituted by Christ,
True.
they can be channels which the Holy Spirit raises up
Uses, not raises up.
in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism or from purely individual religious experiences.
While Atheism or Deism is probably a very early temptation (more probably Nimrod's than occultism, on my view) it is also fairly élitist and impopular. Therefore that would not be the default state of a non-Christian.
And how "purely individual religious experiences" would be more likely to be demonic than the workings of a wrong and therefore at some point clearly demon dominated religion (like Calvinists on doctrine of salvation, moral theology and pastoral, and in sacramental rites, are objectively bowing down to demons, cutting them off from truth, that not being the case with other issues, like belief in a creator, or, when still there, in a recent creation), is not clear.
As the man who loyally practises all that is good in Islam or Judaism or Buddhism and somehow escapes culpability for what is evil in them, would be given graces by God, these would tend to raise him above what is evil in Islam or Judaism or Buddhism, and obviously same thing for any of the religions within Hinduism. And that would mean that up to perhaps becoming Catholic, he would owe more and more of the grace to individual religious experience, and less and less to the full extent of external teaching or doctrine of a false religion.
No, "atheistic immanentism" is indeed worse than the teachings of a false religion, but can in practise sometimes be safer than the practises of one. And "atheistic immanentism" is a positive error. On the other hand, "purely individual religious experiences" (how horribly psychologising that sounds!) are - while defined as such - problematic only because lacking the objective certitude of certain truths that Catholicism as a teaching Church going back to Christ can give.
It is not clear why someone would profit even from being liberated from them, except from those that happened to be false.
The same Spirit everywhere brings forth various forms of practical wisdom which help people to bear suffering and to live in greater peace and harmony.
Certainly, but sometimes through and as often against a given false religion.
As Christians, we can also benefit from these treasures built up over many centuries, which can help us better to live our own beliefs.
In certain cases, yes. St Paul was not against profiting from the wisdom of the Aeneid, or of the Georgics, as witnessed by his crying on Virgil's tomb. But remember, the Cumaean sybil in Song VI, if St Paul had met her, he would not have asked to make a nekyia, he would have driven a demon out of her.
Some ritual of non-Christians is innocuous, as far as it goes. Some Muslims do well when they fast (others who revel all night through do less well, but I met at least one who doesn't, or didn't - not sure if he is still both alive and Muslim). This doesn't mean Islamic doctrine is overall OK. And as a religion involves both doctrine and ritual, we cannot say what is wrong with Islamic doctrine is willed by God and we cannot say Islam is willed by God, except, as a plane crash is permitted by God.
And the Skirzhal of 1666 was also not willed by God, not for itself, while more Greek rites may be OK, denying the Immaculate Conception was not OK. This is obviously in some ways a parallel to Islam (in the way it involves denials, those of Islam more catastrophic, but the ritual is comparatively not so bad), and on the other hand not a parallel (the Greek rites of the Skirzhal are Christian rites, directly related to the Paschal mysterium, while the rites of Islam have at best or at least bad an only immanent value, like decencies of atheism, when it is decent, which is not always the case).
The upshot of a paragraph like this, would perhaps socially be to encourage concentrating on the "edifying" rituals of any given religion, ignoring its doctrine, and therefore feeling consternation at those who do not ignore doctrine, and who sometimes therefore also convert, including to Catholicism. I am trying this as my best to avert that result.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Onesimus
16.II.2019
* "Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters." [Psalms 73:13] Flood brought lots of mud since then solidified and we find lots of dino fossils or dino subfossils, many of which lack the head.
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