[Question:]{.underline} Are there two different kinds of pluralism?
[Answer]{.underline}: Pluralism is the acceptation of others’ teachings, doctrines, and opinions, even though they may be in contradiction with one’s own. It is a characteristic of modern society that it is pluralistic, meaning that, embracing the principle of liberty of speech and religion, it allows the expression of all beliefs, convictions, philosophies, and ideas on an equal level, provided that they do not harm the common good. Pluralism entered into the Catholic Church as a consequence of the embracing of the principle of Dialogue among the different religions. It is the practical expression of Religious Liberty as taught by Dignitatis humanae and of Ecumenism as taught by Unitatis redintegratio (Vatican II documents). This new kind of Dialogue is specifically required to be pluralistic, that is, accepting of all opinions and ideas. In fact, it was already stated in 1968 that it is not considered permissible to refute errors or to convert one’s interlocutor in such dialogue (“Instruction for Dialogue” of the Secretariat for Non-Believers quoted in Romano Amerio’s Iota Unum, p. 352).
The danger of subjectivism and relativism escapes no-one. If everybody’s ideas have equal rights of expression, then they must be equally true. This means that truth is purely in the eye of the beholder and not founded on any objective reality. This is subjectivism. The other consequence is that everybody can have his own convictions and consider that they are true for him, regardless of what others think. Truth is, then, by nature relative to the individual and not the same for different persons. This is relativism. This in turn leads to agnosticism, the belief that we cannot know in fact if God exists outside of ourselves. All that we can know is our inner feeling about him. These ideas are all major features of modernism, as condemned by Saint Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi of 1907.
In his 1998 encyclical on Faith and Reason, Pope John Paul II admitted this danger, when speaking of modern philosophy, that abandons “the investigation of being” (§5). He explains the consequence: “This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism, which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread skepticism” (ibid.). One would have expected the Pope to draw the conclusion that one ought to avoid all kinds of dialogue with false philosophies and false religions. Not so. His conclusion was to make a distinction between two kinds of pluralism, one that is legitimate, supposedly avoiding relativism, and one that is not legitimate and that he called “undifferentiated,” meaning that it treated all opinions as equal: “A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth…assuming that truth reveals itself in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another” (ibid.).
On December 14, 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization, attempting to reconcile the novelties of religious liberty, ecumenism, and dialogue with the Church’s mission to teach all nations. It quotes the above-mentioned text of Pope John Paul II, applying it to all forms of dialogue and claiming to find there the key to the resolution of the contradiction between dialogue and the mission to teach. The contradiction is said to exist only when pluralism is “undifferentiated,” that is, when it admits that all religions are equally true. Otherwise the principle of pluralism in society and pluralism in contacts with other religions is still to be retained. In other words, there is a mitigated form of pluralism, and there is a real dialogue that is not subjectivist, and that these can both be consequently called Catholic.
However, the difference between these two kinds of pluralism is really only in the mind of the Catholic, not in reality. In the mitigated or “legitimate” form of pluralism and dialogue, the Catholic does not personally, subjectively, admit that all positions are equally valid. However, he must act as if he does if there is to be any true dialogue and any real pluralism. In the “undifferentiated” form, he actually personally believes according to his outward words and actions, namely that all religions are equal. There is this in favor of the “undifferentiated” form of dialogue and pluralism: that it is not a lie that thus a man acts outwardly as he believes inwardly. The man who engages in dialogue and allows equal expression and rights to opinions that he believes to be erroneous (as is essential to dialogue) is dissimulating what he really thinks. Is this a way for dialogue to become “Catholic”? Hardly.
If you pardon the length of this passage, I would like to quote from Romano Amerio’s conclusion in Iota Unum on whether or not dialogue can be Catholic (p. 356; emphasis added):
We may conclude by saying that the new sort of dialogue (i.e. not for conversion of the interlocutor) is not Catholic.
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Firstly, because it has a purely heuristic [= each person in the
dialogue seeking truth by his own trial and error] function, as if the Church in dialogue did not possess the truth and were looking for it…
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*Secondly, because it does not recognize the superior authority of
revealed truth…*
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*Thirdly, because it imagines the parties to dialogue are on an
equal footing, albeit a [merely methodological equality]{.underline}, as if it were not a sin to waive the advantages that comes from divine truth, even as a dialectical ploy.*
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*Fourthly, because it postulates that every human philosophical
position is unendingly debatable, as if there were not fundamental points of contradiction sufficient to stop a dialogue and leave room only for refutation.*
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*Fifthly, because it supposes that dialogue is always fruitful and
that “nobody has to sacrifice anything,” as if dialogue could never be corrupting and lead to the uprooting of truth and the implanting of error.*
These objections apply to all dialogue, whether mitigated or undifferentiated, whether the person personally believes in the equality of opinions that his discussion expresses or not. You might wonder why a person would want to indulge in dialogue in which he dissimulates the fact that he does not believe that all religions and all opinions are equally valid (so-called “legitimate” dialogue). There is a very simple theological principle and it is contained in the texts of Vatican II. Here it is: “Truth can impose itself on the mind of man only in virtue of its own truth” (Dignitatis Humanae, §1 & 3). It is the word “only” which is the problem in this statement, for it denies that religious truth is known by divine revelation, taught to us on the authority of the Church. It is the Church that obliges us to believe revealed truth and not the truth itself. The Faith is adhering to the teachings of the Church on the authority of God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Faith consequently excludes dialogue on all things that concern Faith, that are divinely revealed; that is, unless one has a modernist and subjectivist notion of faith. The very concept of a “legitimate,” mitigated dialogue is consequently a part of modernism.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.