“TRADITIONALISTS . . . ARE always welcome back to the fullness of truth that resides, with all its pristine beauty and splendor, inside the Catholic Church,’’ writes Paul Kokoski, about the Vatican’s invitation to dissatisfied Anglicans, in his Oct. 30 letter “Not just any port in a storm.’’
If this statement were only pompous and preposterous, it would be risible, but it is self-serving and the results are quite lethal, as church history shows.
The trouble comes from a mentality that believes that there is only one way to worship one God. The cost of this “fullness of truth’’ and pristineness has been endless wrangling about doctrine, and exile, persecution, and death for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people (beginning in the fourth century).
Unable to prove their claims to truth, unwilling to humbly admit that theirs is a system of belief and not a fact, Christian (and non-Christian) monotheists will turn on and denigrate each other to be the number one true church or true way.
Secular religions such as communism and fascism are no better.
So, beware the so-called true believers of any stripe. Better, duck for cover, or find a Christian sect that doesn’t require you to leave your brain at the entrance to the church.
The Rev. L. Edward Alexander Franks
Boston
The writer is a retired Episcopal priest.
