In the season of Pentecost we are presented with sundry readings from Sacred Scripture on the role and activity of the Blessed Paracletos, third person of the Holy Trinity. This brief essay seeks to address Pope John Paul II's teaching that "the Holy Spirit ... is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.”
"It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.
In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).
It is absolutely true that Joel prophesied that
... it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Moreover upon my servants and handmaids in those days I will pour forth my spirit. (Joel 2, 28-29)
St. Peter quotes this passage on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came upon the Blessed Virgin and the disciples in the cenacle (Acts 2, 16-18).
But is the Spirit being poured upon all flesh the same as the Spirit being "mysteriously present in the heart of every person"?
The Gospel from the Vigil of Pentecost includes this passage from Christ Himself:
And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth him: but you shall know him; because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you. (St. John 14, 16-17, emphasis mine)
Finally, Saint Stephen rebukes the members of the Sanhedrin just before he is stoned,
You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do you also. 52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them who foretold of the coming of the Just One; of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers: (Acts 7, 51-52, emphasis mine)
Why then does Pope John Paul II insist that the Holy Ghost is "mysteriously present in the heart of every person"?
Pope John Paul II established his pontificate on the premise that by His incarnation Christ united Himself with each man:
...Accordingly, what is in question here is man in all his truth, in his full magnitude. We are not dealing with the "abstract" man, but the real, "concrete", "historical" man. We are dealing with "each" man, for each one is included in the mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has united himself for ever through this mystery.
...this is "each" man, "the most concrete" man, "the most real"; this is man in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ, the mystery in which each one of the four thousand million human beings living on our planet has become a sharer from the moment he is conceived beneath the heart of his mother."
Pope John Paul II, Redemptor hominis, 1979
For John Paul II, the incarnation accomplished the ontological unification of each man with the second person of the blessed Trinity forever. He teaches here every single human being "has become a sharer in Jesus Christ..." Not a word about the necessity of faith and baptism -- which explains the quote from L’Osservatore Romano above.
The reason this clarification has become so necessary today is that two heresies entrenched and toxifying the faith of the Church are receiving support from the Pope's doctrine: universalism and the so-called 'fundamental option' theory.
Universalism has been condemned in various forms throughout the Church epoch. In the East, apocatastsis holds that all creatures, even the fallen angels will be saved. St. Augustine condemns this position aggressively for its opposition to the necessity of grace. In the West, universalism has taken hold among many Catholics via the skepticism of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's book Dare We Hope for Universal Salvation which has found resonance with both Bishop Robert Barron and even Pope Francis.
This type of audacious 'hope' is usually dismissed by anyone with even a cursory understanding of the catechism or a fairly traditional formation. The more prevalent (and pernicious) version of the error of universalism today is known by a little used title, 'fundamental option' theory. This heresy holds that
...specific sins do not bear on the status of one’s soul, or on the destination of one’s soul after death. All that matters for salvation, in this view, is that one “fundamentally” lives for God rather than evil.
One theological casualty of fundamental option theory is mortal sin, which has long been defined by the Church as a grave wrong committed with full knowledge of the attendant evil and deliberate consent of the will. Instead, the theory holds that mortal sin is not a specific action, but an orientation that lies at the deepest level of freedom within an individual who rejects God. But given the gravity of such a rejection, the theory holds that such an orientation is nearly impossible for those of sound mind. If an individual makes the fundamental option for God, then his actions, no matter how grave, cannot be mortal sins – or damnable offenses – because, at root, the person means well. (The Catholic Thing, 27 July 2014)
If you were wondering why 100% of Novus Ordo “service of Christian burial” Masses are celebrated in white liturgical vestments, this heresy might explain it.
Pope John Paul II's spectacle of Assisi Prayer of all religions in 1986 and 2002 certainly illustrates quite dramatically the opinion that God is at work in each person regardless of faith, works, or knowledge of the Church:
Assisi Prayer is a "visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the interreligious dialogue which was recommended and provided by the Second Vatican Council." (Christmas address of the Pope to the Cardinals and members of the Curia on 22 December, 1986, L'Osservatore Romano, 5 January 1987, page 7)
"Look at Assisi in the light of the Council!" (Papal address in the General Audience of 22 October, 1986)
The new ecclesiology explained by Lumen gentium (Vatican II document on the church) countenances the idea that the 'People of God' actually encompasses the entire human race.
So, why all the concern about these ideas? In the Apocalypse the beast and the false prophet seem to be fomenting a deception that all must belong to a one-world religion and universal government in which citizens must succumb to the mark of the beast. It is doubtful that John Paul II would have deliberately propelled the Church in this direction with his theory of a Christ united to each man, but that is the inescapable conclusion when such a theory is templated on human history and current events.
Pentecost was the initial outpouring of the Holy Ghost "upon all flesh." The idea that man's will is not consequential for receiving the Spirit of God and cooperation with Him is not determinative of man's interior conversion cannot be supported from Scripture or Tradition. St. Paul states it matter-of-factly: not all men have faith (II Thessalonians 3,2).
There is no universal salvation. There is no apocatastasis. It is impossible that Christ is united to each man forever when so many are in hell. The Blessed Paracletos cannot be "mysteriously present in the heart of every person" when so many hate Him and millions more are simply ignorant. And the idea that only the decisively wicked are lost (fundamental option theory) is likewise incongruent with both faith and reason. While I do not wish to discuss here the soteriological pessimism that some of the Saints upheld, we do know from the Bible that only eight were saved from the Deluge; only three from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and that a tiny remnant was all that survived the sacking of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.
Facing these realities has always been an integral motive for the Church's missionary activity in the world: most men are in darkness and need the Gospel, the Church, and the Sacraments to be saved.
For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. 18 He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. 20 For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. (St. John 3, 16-20
The Second Vatican Council teaches
...since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery. (Gaudium et Spes 22)
This may be safely professed by any Catholic, but basing such a belief on this text from the council is tenuous at best. The doctrine of predestination can also be embraced without any qualms of conscience in opposition to it. We do profess with St. John that Christ's passion is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2,2). We do hope for the salvation of every person still living to receive the truth of the Gospel. But nowhere in the traditional teaching of the Church do we find a Christ united to each man forever and a Holy Spirit "mysteriously present in the heart of every person." These beliefs -- according to John Paul II -- were actuated and demonstrated at the Assisi Prayer meetings which for him is the fulfillment of what is taught by Vatican II to attain a temporal peace on earth.
Editor's note: to be fair to Pope John Paul II, he does discuss the 'fundamental option' theory in his encyclical Veritatis splendor and comes down decisively on the side of orthodox morality based on the teaching of the Council of Trent:
68. Here an important pastoral consideration must be added. According to the logic of the positions mentioned above, an individual could, by virtue of a fundamental option, remain faithful to God independently of whether or not certain of his choices and his acts are in conformity with specific moral norms or rules. By virtue of a primordial option for charity, that individual could continue to be morally good, persevere in God's grace and attain salvation, even if certain of his specific kinds of behaviour were deliberately and gravely contrary to God's commandments as set forth by the Church.
In point of fact, man does not suffer perdition only by being unfaithful to that fundamental option whereby he has made "a free self-commitment to God".113 With every freely committed mortal sin, he offends God as the giver of the law and as a result becomes guilty with regard to the entire law (cf. Jas 2:8-11); even if he perseveres in faith, he loses "sanctifying grace", "charity" and "eternal happiness".114 As the Council of Trent teaches, "the grace of justification once received is lost not only by apostasy, by which faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin".115
Unfortunately, this distinction cannot overcome the appearance of John Paul II endorsing at least a pseudo-universalism. Very few theologians have studied the late Pope's theology more deeply and comprehensively than Fr. Johannes Dormann, S.T.D., who concludes
A comparison of the principles of knowledge in Cardinal Wojtyla's [Pope John Paul II] New Theology with those of classical theology makes the fundamental differences clearly come to light. In classical theology, God is the material and formal object of theology. In the New Theology of Cardinal Wojtyla, the object is man. The diametrical opposition is manifest. Through the confusion of nature and grace in the axiom of universal salvation, the traditional "dualism" is entirely eliminated. The traditional distinctions of the natural and supernatural knowledge of God, of natural and supernatural revelation, of natural reason and supernatural faith, of natural and supernatural theology, no longer apply. The virtue of faith, which is constitutive for the process of justification, is no longer required for salvation since all men are a priori redeemed and justified.
...The Cardinal's New Theology provides an extensive foundation for interreligious dialogue: the "Church of the living God" (p. 17) unites all men. Universal salvation is the common basis. The concepts of revelation and faith are not proper to the Catholic religion. All religions contain genuine revelation. The faith encompasses all "believers" in all religions. Genuine faith is faith in humanity. But "revelation," which is offered to man in Christ," thus the Christian faith is for Cardinal Wojtyla the faith, in which the "mystery of man," "existence in Christ," is "enlightened" once and for all. This "offer" is thus by no means necessary for salvation, nor is it exclusive or binding. There is also revelation, faith and the experience of God in other religions. On the basis of religious liberty, interreligious dialogue as a brotherly exchange of religious experiences for the sake of mutual enrichment is the primrose path towards universal religious harmony.
- Father Johannes Dormann, Sacred Theology Doctor, Director, of the Institute for Missionwork and the Study of Religions at Wilhelms-University, Munster, Westphalen, Germany. Quote taken from Pope John Paul II's Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi, Part 1, pages 121-123, (c) 1994 by Angelus Press
The true Pentecost is the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh. Men are bound to cooperate with Him, and are free to reject His mysterious work. Blessed be God for His divine patience with us sinners.
