TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT...from his national column, Amazing Grace

By David Yount

   Nothing so epitomized the pope's recent visit to America than the stirring hymn that concluded his White House appearance. It was Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," recalling our nation's tragic Civil War.

   The pope smiled at the verse: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," then beamed when he heard the words of the chorus:

   "Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!... His truth is marching on."

   Little wonder: If the Catholic Church is sure of anything, it is that it marches with the truth of Christ.

   In an attempt to reconcile peoples of different religious faiths, it has become fashionable in polite company to disregard the perennial Catholic claim to be the one true church. Over the centuries Rome has expressed that claim in formulas that appear arrogant and high-handed. For example:

   "Outside the church there is no salvation." "In matters of religion error has no rights." And, quoting Jesus, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

   Before he was raised to the chair of St. Peter, Benedict himself publicly pronounced the faith of other Christian denominations to be "defective." His church has always been militant in detecting and condemning heresies.

   Occasionally they have back-tracked. Pope John Paul II himself confessed that the Protestant principle of "justification by faith, not works" was condemned as heretical because its meaning was misunderstood by Catholics at the time of the Reformation.

   Still, despite its involvement in the worldwide ecumenical quest for Christian unity, the Catholic Church persists in its claim to be the one true church.

   In their remarks during the White House ceremony, the pope and the president independently decried relativism. Later that day, he told the American bishops, "Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted," because it rests on revealed truth that binds the human family as the people of God.

   He condemned not only flavor-of-the-month faiths, but religion that is sentimental, tentative, or speculative. Predictably, his Catholic claim to the whole truth will be dismissed by many as naive and arrogant, but that truth could not be more hopeful.

   Our nation's founding father actually claimed some truths to be self-evident -- that we are all endowed with inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By contrast, the pope does not claim any truths to be self-evident, but only that they are revealed to all of us by the same God.

          Although the pope came to America specifically to encourage Catholics to grow in their faith, we can all join him in song:

   "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

   With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:

   As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

   His truth is marching on."

     Permission to reprint from Scripps Howard News Service.   

David Yount is the author of several Rowman & Littlefield titles, including How The Quakers Invented America and is also the author of Growing in Faith: A Guide for the Reluctant Christian (Seabury) is in a new edition. He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount@erols.com.