Source: newsmax.com
"Whether theistic or atheistic, any ultimate faith is in fact a belief system regarding a same ultimate reality of the universe and human life, usually with ample doctrinal principles and compliant practices. While manifesting their different approaches and distinguishing features, all such systems may also share certain beliefs and ways of practice or partially accommodate each other. Hence the possibility of viewing their different symbols of faith such as “God”, “Allah”, “佛” (Buddha), “道” and “天道” (The Heavenly Dao/Way) as referring to the same thing and then, by comparing the different narratives and practices related to each faith and adopting the merits from each system to offset what is short in others, the possibility of integrating them in a mutually complementary and consistent way into a comprehensive and organic belief system. And it would be no big deal which symbol (image or word) to use for it. Such a system might be called “integrated faith”. The key lies in the integration being able to embrace everything in the universe and human life, including the symbol itself and thus commanding from the topmost height of the ultimate without any binary separation, apparent or hidden, such as between existence and consciousness. Otherwise, it could not pass as an ultimate faith but an ideology."
-- Sherwin Lu: A Critique of Rationalism in Modern World Ideologies(II): Ultimate Faith (1-3)
Pope Benedict XVI warns that the Catholic Church is facing a "deep crisis" following reforms of the Second Vatican Council that was held in the 1960s, the website LifeSite reports.
LifeSite reported on an interview granted to Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, in which the retired Pontiff refers to a "two-sided deep crisis" in the Church.
Among Benedict’s concerns are the belief that other religions are equal to Christianity in obtaining salvation and the change in dogma that lessens fears that one’s eternal salvation can be lost.
"The missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that the unbaptized person is lost forever," Benedict said. "After the [Second Vatican] Council, this conviction was definitely abandoned. The result was a two-sided, deep crisis. Without this attentiveness to the salvation, the Faith loses its foundation."
As for the universalist view that all those outside the Catholic Church can be saved, which was adopted after Vatican II, Benedict asks, "Why should you try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?"
The view also prevents Catholics themselves from seeing a need to practice their faith, he said.
"[W]hy should the Christian be bound to the necessity of the Christian Faith and its morality?" he asked. "But if Faith and Salvation are not any more interdependent, even Faith becomes less motivating."
Even less acceptable, Benedict said, "is the solution proposed by the pluralistic theories of religion, for which all religions, each in its own way, would be ways of salvation and, in this sense, must be considered equivalent in their effects."
He also says that hope for salvation is even more needed in an age where technology is driving people apart.
"In the harshness of the world of technology – in which feelings do not count anymore – the hope for a saving love grows, a love which would be given freely and generously," he said.
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