The first question about truth is answered relatively easily. Of course Catholics believe their church is the “fullest expression:” Why else be a Catholic? For that matter, if Methodists or Lutherans or atheists didn’t believe that they possessed the fullest expression of the truth, why else would they be as they are? From the time of Aristotle and Plato, moral human behavior has been intertwined with embracing truth. In human frailty, people will sometimes sin by choosing to lie over telling the truth. However, the proclivity to self-deception is found in all humanity and is not restricted to Catholics alone. It is annoying that the authors of this page have focused on Catholicism as if it were any different from other groups. Let’s not use a double standard.

Now there is a difference between BELIEVING that you are the “fullest expression” and actually BEING the fullest expression. Theology usually is employed to answer this thorny question about being and essence. On the one hand, Catholicism assumes it is the root while Protestantism is the branch. On the other, Protestants claim to have restored the original biblical church that had been abandoned by the Catholic Church. This last argument runs counter to the testimony of scripture. Christ said: “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. 20-21). To pretend that God abandoned the church after the death of St. Augustine and reentered world history only with Luther a thousand years later is poppycock. A less extreme interpretation is to invent a version of history in which closeted medieval proto-Protestants practiced the faith in secret dissent from the mainstream Christian Church. I have studied such intellectual attempts (as for instance in the case of the Waldensians), but I have concluded that such efforts will not broach the variables of a thousand years of Christian history. Those who try embark on a dead-end of history.

But I also reject the first argument of an enduring Catholic "root" because it smacks of triumphalism. In my opinion, before Luther the only church that existed in the feudal West was “the Christian Church.” With the Reformation, Christianity split apart. But the result was not only Lutheranism and Calvinism but also Roman Catholicism. In other words, in reacting to each other as competing denominations, each of the Christian expressions reshaped and redefined itself in rivalry with the other. No single denomination today contains within its history ALL the valid expressions of Christian faith that evolved from the time of Christ and the apostles. In varying degrees, both the reformers and the reformed carry on a part of the whole Christian truth.

So, as long as the pope is not claiming that Catholicism is 100% right all of the time or that other Christian churches are 100% wrong all of the time, his argument is defensible. Yes, it would seem that on a split of 60-40 or 70-30 or 80-20, one could say that Roman Catholicism has the “fullest expression” of Christ’s will. The discussion will not end there, but it is a valid premise to be examined and defended with empirical tools.

But does this aid ecumenical relations? My response if shaped by the observations of Jaime Balmes, who was a theologian of history addressing this question a century before John Courtney Murray, SJ and the II Vatican Council. A contemporary of Cardinal Newman, in some ways Balmes was a deeper thinker. His most famous book, El Protestantismo, did to Protestantism what Marx’s book, Das Kapital, did to Capitalism.

Balmes made a distinction between respecting another citizen’s RIGHTS to believe as they might in a democracy and the TRUTH behind their belief. Balmes went against the grain of many reactionary Catholics of his era to insist that the church could support religious tolerance without compromising its own integrity. For example, Catholicism does not believe in divorce, but it ought to accept legal divorce in the modern state. In such a case, ecumenism establishes lines of mutual respect for others but it is free to disagree with the substance of their belief. In other words, the truth of history or theology is accompanied by, but not replaced by, tolerance.

Those who say the papal pronouncements damage ecumenical relations may be defining ecumenism differently from the pope. It is not uncommon to hear people say things like: “In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter what you believe since we are all serving the same God.” That is relativism: in other words, the truth is considered to be indifferent to facts: only personal interpretation counts. Such relativism is useful in politics and marriages, but it is not an absolute value. There are quite a few matters in life that do not allow for a merely subjective definition. It is obvious that Pope Benedict XVI rejects the relativism that would have us believe that in substance all religions are equal. This ought not to be confused with the equal right of everyone to believe as they choose.

I do not know why the pope has chosen this time to assert such things. Even if everybody understands that an assertion of truth forms part of virtually every theological arsenal, there is no standing obligation of putting all your cards on the table all the time. If that is the way Benedict has chosen to play his hand, time will soon disclose if it is a winning strategy. I don’t think it is.