Intolerance of false teachings
"It seems that whoever is not a relativist is someone who is intolerant. To think that one can understand the essential truth is already seen as something intolerant," then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said on Nov. 30, 2002.
"However, in reality this exclusion of truth is a type of very grave intolerance and reduces essential things of human life to subjectivism. In this way, in essential things we no longer have a common view. Each one can and should decide as he can. So we lose the ethical foundations of our common life.
"Christ is totally different from all the founders of other religions, and he cannot be reduced to a Buddha, a Socrates or a Confucius. He is really the bridge between heaven and earth, the light of truth who has appeared to us.
"The gift of knowing Jesus does not mean that there are no important fragments of truth in other religions. In the light of Christ, we can establish a fruitful dialogue with a point of reference in which we can see how all these fragments of truth contribute to greater depth in our faith and to an authentic spiritual community of humanity."
Protection of the truth by the Pope
On May 8, 2005, the day that Pope Benedict XVI officially began his role as the Bishop of Rome in his cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, he described in his homily the teaching authority of Peter that had been passed to him. He said:
"Peter expressed in the first place, on behalf of the apostles, the profession of faith: 'You are the Christ, the son of the living God.' This is the task of all the Successors of Peter — to be the guide in the profession of faith in Christ, the son of the living God."
He said that this teaching authority of the pope "frightens many men within and outside the Church. They wonder if it is not a threat to the freedom of conscience, if it is not a presumption that is opposed to freedom of thought. It is not so.
"The power conferred by Christ to Peter and his Successors is, in the absolute sense, a mandate to serve. The authority to teach, in the Church, entails a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith. The Pope is not an absolute monarch, whose thought and will are law. On the contrary, the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his word.
"He must not proclaim his own ideas, but constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to the word of God, in face of attempts to adapt and water down, as well as of all opportunism.
"The Pope is conscious of being, in his important decisions, bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations developed through the Church's journey of pilgrimage."
