Rabbi David Rosen said that no religion 'can have a monopoly on truth or access to God' during an interview with Vatican
Rabbi David RosenBennett Raglin/Getty Images for The Suffering of the Innocents
(LifeSiteNews) — In an interview with Vatican News, a Jewish rabbi who spoke at an international ecumenical event at Assisi has shockingly claimed that God can be found outside the Catholic Church.
Rabbi David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and Special Adviser to the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, UAE, offered his remarks on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the interfaith “World Day of Prayer for Peace” convened by Pope John Paul II in 1986.
The Catholic Church teaches there is no salvation outside of the Church and that Catholicism is the one true religion as revealed by God.
Rosen’s statement was an echo of Nostra Aetate, Vatican II’s declaration on the Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions. Nostra Aetate has been criticized for its ambiguity regarding important concepts. It lacks a clear definition of “antisemitism.” It initiated a trajectory of religious indifferentism that was condemned by all the popes from Pius IX to Pius XII.
Rosen told Vatican News that Nostra Aetate, proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1965, “affirmed for the first time, for the Catholic Church formally, that God, that the divine, that religion, that truth [can] be found outside the confines of the Catholic Church.”
READ: SSPX bishop calls Assisi event ‘great scandal and offense to God’
No religion has a ‘monopoly on truth or access to God’
“That, I think, is very much the spirit of Assisi,” said Rosen, “to affirm that we have those values in common and that we each represent different ways to the transcendent and a recognition that nobody can have a monopoly on truth or access to God.”
He stressed the need for “theological humility” in order to “work together” not for the sake of salvation and to honor God, but “for peace in the world.”
He further praised, “the glory of diversity,” adding, “we don’t want a field just made of one kind of flowers,” and suggested that diversity of religion “adds to the beauty and it testifies to the glory of God.”
As reported last month by LifeSiteNews, a primary drafter of Nostra Aetate was Jewish convert Gregory Baum, who later admitted concealing his homosexual life while serving as a Catholic priest and Vatican II “theological expert.” Baum later left the Catholic priesthood.
Read LifeSiteNews’ four-part series by S.D. Wright examining the Assisi World Day of Prayer for Peace which ultimately led to the 1988 SSPX consecrations.