Throughout the campuswide discussions last week regarding religion, several side discussions emerged, reflecting basic misunderstandings among groups. Admittedly, it is easier to fall back onto clich‚d stereotypes about other groups than to actually make critical comparisons; it is much easier to couch arguments in terms of incomplete or biased information.

While the neon green campaign is over, a campus discussion on faith is still important, in the weeks and months A.D. (After Dave). Last week, many students bravely spoke to their convictions, supporting, questioning, criticizing and celebrating the ideas brought to the fore. This is a good and necessary step, but future campus discussions on religion should focus on substantial and enlightening facets of the entire spectrum of beliefs held on campus rather than degenerating into a “we/they” debate, only satisfying vindication on both sides and cementing ideas of how backward the other side can be. Ideally, an ongoing campuswide discussion on faith would spill into other issues, with people using their moral code as a perspective for discussing foreign policy and domestic issues.

A specific point of contention last week was the Catholic view of salvation. For many, a blanket definition of Christianity sufficed and the specific differences between denominations were swept aside. However, because Catholic salvific beliefs are sufficiently different from those of some of their Protestant counterparts, the point bears discussion not only as a benefit for the average Catholic, who is left agog at confrontations involving apologetics, but for non-Catholics who may have received incomplete information about Catholic teachings.

To preface this discussion, I must admit I am among the first to make self-deprecating jokes about Catholic guilt and other idiosyncratic characteristics we Catholics seem to display. When a wary Protestant roommate asked to tag along to Mass to meet a religion class requirement, I comforted her with the knowledge we were not sacrificing goats that week. While I’m happy to spar and joke about these things because so many expect Catholics to be uptight or secretive about their beliefs, I do not think the Catholic faith is well served by silence on beliefs central to salvation.

The history of the Catholic faith is one in which tradition and scripture evolved side by side. During the first four centuries of the Church, the Bible did not exist in the form it does today. One hundred years of meetings among the bishops of the early church were the basis for selecting the writings which comprise the Canon, or the form the Bible takes today. With the exception of the Deuterocanonical (apocrophyal) books, Christian groups formed during the Reformation and afterward adopted the same holy writings adopted by early church. Thus, the Catholic traditions of liturgy and sacraments were already firmly in place and the Bible was in symbiosis with religious practices, while many Protestant groups used the Bible as the sole source of guidance for developing religious practices.

In addition to the Bible not being the sole source for religious beliefs and practices within the Catholic church, the centralized, hierarchical nature of the church lends itself to continually revealed beliefs and teachings absorbed into the body of belief embraced by Catholics. In the past half-century, new church teachings have made worship more accessible by holding Mass in the vernacular, rather than in Latin. New attention to matters of social justice produced a proliferation of teachings addressing a preferential option for the poor and positions on very contemporary issues, like abortion, food production and nuclear weapons.

Among the central tenets of Catholic beliefs are the beliefs related to salvation. For Catholics, salvation is a process or a journey, rather than something achieved once and for all through a profession of faith. It is seen as something not in the realm of human control, but a promise of an afterlife extended through mercy. As to those for whom salvation is available, the catechism describes how those who live a moral and just life, even without any knowledge of God, Jesus or Christianity, can be saved. Those in an unrepentant state of mortal sin (i.e. those who have not sought forgiveness for committing a grave sin, like murder) are believed to go to hell. Even Purgatory – the ultimate Catholic waiting room – serves a function of purification believed to be necessary for total unity with God.

Thus, the Catholic view of salvation is not exclusive, but an inclusive view allowing for all the sheep, regardless of their religious beliefs, to come to the fold. While the current Catholic understanding of salvation thankfully does not reflect Inquisition-era ideals about the need to convert the masses for their eternal well-being, today’s understanding of salvation is coupled with the idea of perfecting the kingdom on Earth through feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and housing the homeless.

With all the recent discussion about matters of mercy and grace, it would be a welcome change to start exhibiting them to one another, rather than just focusing on the hereafter.

Rachel

Faber

Machacha

is a graduate student in international development studies. She is the opinion editor of the Daily.