Religion: Offer in Error

“In a certain town the Baptist church was destroyed by fire on a Friday night. At once a Catholic fraternal organization offered the use of its hall to the Baptist congregation for Sunday services, and the offer was gratefully accepted. What is to be said of the procedure adopted by the Catholic organization?”

This question is typical of doctrinal questions submitted by Roman Catholic readers seeking guidance from the American Ecclesiastical Review, a monthly magazine for the clergy published by Washington’s Catholic University of America. The answer to this particular question, written by one of the church’s top U.S. experts in canon law, is a statement of a Catholic position that is puzzling to most Protestants and some Roman Catholics. Wrote the Very Rev. Francis J. Connell: “According to the ideas of ‘intercredal fellowship and brotherhood’ current in the United States, and accepted by many Catholics, the Catholic organization performed a commendable deed. [But] some scandal was surely present in the fostering of the erroneous belief that all religions are good and should be aided. I would say unhesitatingly that the Catholic organization should not have made the offer. However much we may esteem our non-Catholic brethren personally, and admire their sincerity and fervor in the practice of their religion, we must remember that their religion is false and that its practice is opposed to the commandment of Jesus Christ that all men profess the one religion which He established . . .

“It is well to add that if a Catholic church burns down and a non-Catholic congregation offers its hall for Sunday Mass (which many well-meaning non-Catholics in our land would readily do) it would be the best policy to decline the invitation, since in that way no obligations would be undertaken that might call for a similar service if the situation were reversed.”