A Journey of Hope, or a Road Away from Rome?

On September 16, 2026, the Feast of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, three Roman dicasteries published a Note titled A Journey of Hope, marking sixty years since the conciliar declaration Nostra Aetate.¹ The choice of date is ironic. Saint Cyprian gave the Church one of her plainest formulas: salus extra Ecclesiam non est, there is no salvation outside the Church.² The document published on his feast spends sixty paragraphs arguing, in effect, that the Church must stop acting as though she believed it.

The Note carries the signatures of Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Kurt Koch, and Cardinal George Koovakad, and it states that Pope Leo XIV approved it and ordered its publication.³ It must therefore be read as what it claims to be: an authoritative statement of the conciliar church's settled mind on the non-Christian religions. Read that way, it amounts to an admission that the novelties Catholics have resisted since 1970 are not misunderstandings of the Council. They are the Council, fully developed and on full display.

The Note Admits the Rupture

Defenders of the conciliar project have long insisted that Vatican II changed nothing essential, and that its critics simply misread it. The Note does not bother with this pretense. It says Nostra Aetate marked a profound change in how the Church understands her relationship with other religions (§1). In its conclusion, it boasts that this "brief yet bold text" has radically transformed interreligious relations, moving the Church away from her former reserve (§57). It praises a new ethic of dialogue marked by complexity and flexibility (§55), and declares that the "monolithic" models of the past are becoming inadequate and even sources of violence (§54).

A doctrine that has been radically transformed has not been developed, but replaced. Saint Vincent of Lérins taught that true progress in doctrine is growth "in the same dogma, the same sense, the same meaning," like a child growing into a man who is still the same person.⁴ The Note does not claim that kind of continuity, but rather celebrates a different Church, one that no longer sees her mission as bringing all men into the one Ark of salvation, but as walking alongside the religions as a fellow traveler. It borrows Pope Leo XIV's own words for this: the followers of other religions are companions on the path of truth, and every sincere religious search reflects the one divine Mystery (§33).

The Old Covenant: From "Abrogated" to "Irrevocable"

The Note's treatment of Judaism (§§10–15) shows clearly how far it has moved from the Faith. To be clear, the Church has always condemned hatred of the Jewish people. The Note itself cites the Holy Office decree of March 25, 1928, which condemned antisemitism in the strongest terms.⁵ Ten years later, Pius XI told Belgian pilgrims that "spiritually, we are Semites."⁶ No Catholic may hate any people for whom Christ died. That was never the question.

The question is whether the Mosaic covenant retains saving force after Calvary. On this, the Church spoke with one voice for nineteen centuries. The Epistle to the Hebrews teaches that in calling the covenant "new," God "hath made the former old," and what grows old "is near its end."⁷ The Council of Florence, in the Bull Cantate Domino (1442), defined that the ceremonies, sacrifices, and sacraments of the Mosaic law ceased with the coming of Christ. It taught that anyone who places hope in them after the promulgation of the Gospel, as though necessary for salvation, sins mortally.⁸ Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that after the Passion, the legal ceremonies became mortua et mortifera: not only dead, but deadly to those who observe them.⁹ As recently as 1943, Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis that at the death of the Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law, which had been abolished.¹⁰

Now, let’s compare the Note. It declares God's covenant with the Jewish people irrevocable (§13) without distinguishing between God's enduring love for Israel, which Saint Paul affirms in Romans 11:29, and the Mosaic covenant as a present means of grace, which the Church has always denied. It goes further, calling the religious life of contemporary Jews "an effect of the revealed Word" (§13). It says that this post-Temple religious life has a present, living value that can enrich Christians, and that Christians and Jews "cannot do without one another" (§13, §34).

What is that religious life? It is the rabbinic Judaism formed after A.D. 70, which was built in large part around the rejection of Jesus as Messiah. Calling that rejection an effect of revelation, with value to enrich the Church, is not a development of the Council of Florence, but a flat-out contradiction. The Note tries to protect itself with a single sentence by denying that there are “two paths to salvation” (§13). But if the Old Covenant remains unrevoked, and if the religious life built on refusing Christ is a fruit of the living Word, then the denial is a formula without content. And one practical result follows logically, and that is that the Church no longer has a mission to the Jews. The prayer of Saint Paul, "my heart's desire and prayer to God is for them, that they may be saved," has been exchanged for "dialogue."¹¹

The Note even appeals to the Protestant theologian Karl Barth to explain the Incarnation (§5). One is left to ask why a Roman dicastery needs a Calvinist to explain the Word made flesh, when Athanasius, Cyril, Leo the Great, and Thomas are waiting in the wings to lend a faithful explanation.

Assisi and the Condemnation Pius XI Foresaw

The Note presents the 1986 gathering at Assisi as a historic achievement and celebrates the "spirit of Assisi" (§§19, 21, 36). Here, the Note not only diverges from pre-conciliar teaching but also embraces something the Church has explicitly condemned.

In 1928, in Mortalium Animos, Pius XI described exactly this kind of event. He wrote of those who organize meetings where all without distinction are invited to take part, "both infidels of every kind, and Christians," in the hope of uniting all men in religious fellowship. His judgment was unequivocal in that Catholics can in no way approve such efforts. They are "founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy."¹² He added that the Apostolic See has never allowed its children to take part in such assemblies, because Christian unity can only be advanced by promoting the return of the separated to the one true Church.¹³

What we saw in Assisi was the fulfillment of what Pius XI had forbidden. Forty years later, the Note calls it a model for the future.

The Great Commission Declared Obsolete

Our Lord's last command before His Ascension was to "Go therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them."¹⁴ Saint Mark records the sanction attached: "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned."¹⁵ And Saint Peter proclaimed before the Sanhedrin that there is no other name under heaven by which men must be saved.¹⁶

The Note tells us that the view of proselytism as the way to engage other believers "no longer makes sense" in a world that resembles a global village (§54). Elsewhere, it insists that the dynamism of love "has nothing to do with proselytism," and that the true witness simply waits for others to ask (§46). Pope Francis summarized the new position in Evangelii Gaudium, saying that the Church grows not by proselytism but by "attraction," a phrase he borrowed from Benedict XVI at Aparecida.¹⁷ The fact that he borrows this statement means the problem did not begin with Francis. He simply brought to light what was already present in the conciliar framework. In Singapore in 2024, Francis finally said the quiet part out loud by stating that all religions are a path to reach God.¹⁸

Compare this with Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors, which condemns the proposition that "man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation."¹⁹ Compare it with the Fourth Lateran Council's definition that there is one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved.²⁰ Compare it with Boniface VIII's solemn declaration in Unam Sanctam that submission to the Roman Pontiff is altogether necessary for salvation.²¹

Traditional Catholics are often accused of teaching a crude and merciless version of this dogma, which is absolutely false. Pius IX himself taught that those who are invincibly ignorant of the true religion, who keep the natural law and are ready to obey God, can by the working of divine light and grace attain eternal life. In the same breath, he called it a "perfectly well known Catholic dogma" that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church.²² The traditional Church held both truths together: God's mercy toward the invincibly ignorant, and the absolute duty to bring the Gospel to every soul, because the religions of the pagans as such are not paths to God. Whatever truth they contain is a remnant, and error attached to it endangers souls. The conciliar church has kept the exception and discarded the rule. And a Church that no longer seeks to win converts has stopped loving souls in the way our Lord commanded.

The "Spirit" of the Religions

The Note's theology of other religions culminates in two claims. First, it says interreligious dialogue is a "theological locus" where the Holy Spirit wishes to be heard through the encounter with the other (§51). Second, it says the Spirit is at work within the diverse cultures and religions of peoples, kindling wisdom there (§59).

The Church has always taught that the Holy Spirit can move any soul toward the truth. She has never taught, however, that false religions, as systems of belief, are channels of the Spirit's voice to the Church. That idea turns the relationship between the Bride of Christ and the nations upside down. The Church is the teacher of nations. She doesn’t sit at the feet of the pagodas or pagan temples to hear what the Spirit is saying. Pius XII warned in Humani Generis against those who reduce the necessity of belonging to the true Church to a meaningless formula.²³ The Note does not openly deny that necessity, but leaves no room for it to operate.

The Note's own sources show where this leads. It repeatedly cites the 2019 Abu Dhabi Document on Human Fraternity(notes 55, 58, 75) as a model. That document states that the pluralism and diversity of religions are willed by God in His wisdom.²⁴ If God positively wills false religions, then the missions were an offense against Providence. Thousands of martyrs, from the North American Jesuits to the Ugandan martyrs, died for nothing.

Seven months after Abu Dhabi, the world saw what this theology looks like in practice. On October 4, 2019, in the Vatican Gardens, participants in the Amazon Synod bowed before carved wooden figures of a naked pregnant woman. Those figures were then carried into the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, near Saint Peter's. When a young Catholic threw them into the Tiber, Francis publicly asked forgiveness, and he himself called them statues of the Pachamama.²⁵ To our knowledge, the First Commandment has not been repealed, but a theology in which the Spirit kindles wisdom within the religion of the pagans will sooner or later bring their idols into God's house.

Fair Words and Foul Deeds

Some, however, will point to the Note's reassurances: it says Christ is the one Redeemer (§13), it rejects relativism and syncretism (§22), and it denies seeking a single world religion (§53). They will tell us to read the document in charity.

But the Church has always taught that we judge a tree by its fruits.²⁶ Lex orandi, lex credendi: what the Church does in her worship and governance reveals what she believes. The reassurances in this Note read like a disclaimer in fine print, contradicted by everything in the large type and by everything done in Rome over the past decade.

Take into consideration Rome’s current record. The prefect who signed this Note is the same prefect who signed Fiducia Supplicans in December 2023, which authorized blessings for couples in same-sex unions, something the same dicastery had declared impossible only two years earlier. Fr. James Martin, S.J., who has spent years campaigning to change the Church's pastoral approach to homosexual acts, was made a consultor to the Dicastery for Communication in 2017. The late Francis personally named him a voting member of the Synod on Synodality. That same Francis publicly praised Emma Bonino, a woman who admits to having procured thousands of abortions and who led the campaign to legalize abortion in Italy, as one of the country's forgotten greats. In 2017, the Pontifical Academies invited Paul Ehrlich, one of the world's most prominent advocates of population control, to speak at a Vatican workshop.

None of these facts is a secret or a conspiracy theory. One only needs eyes to look and see for themselves. But these actions from Rome do form a pattern. The same authorities who assure us in carefully worded paragraphs that Christ is the only Redeemer have spent years honoring the enemies of His law, silencing His Great Commission and effacing His Bride. When words and deeds consistently diverge, the deeds reveal the mind. The "conciliar church" offers a new religious outlook that occupies the structures of the Catholic Church while preaching another gospel. Each novelty prepares the way for the next, and this Note is just one more step.

The Lens They Ask Us to Wear

Defenders of the Note will answer all of this by telling us to read the Council "in continuity" with Tradition. In his address to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005, Benedict XVI contrasted a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" with a "hermeneutic of reform," which he described as renewal in continuity with the one Church.²⁷ For twenty years since, the "hermeneutic of continuity" has been offered as the answer to every traditional objection.

It answers nothing, and is itself an admission. The Church never needed a special hermeneutic for Nicaea, Trent, or the First Vatican Council. Their canons state what must be believed and condemn what must be rejected. Our Lord commanded, "Let your speech be yea, yea: no, no."²⁸ When a council's documents need a new interpretive lens, forty years after the fact, to keep them from contradicting what came before, the fault does not lie with the reader. The texts are ambiguous. In matters of faith, ambiguity is not a pastoral style, but is a real defect and a danger to souls.

Someone will object that every council has always been read in light of earlier ones, as Chalcedon was read with Ephesus. That is true, and it proves our point. The Church has only ever had one hermeneutic, and it is Tradition itself. The First Vatican Council taught that the meaning of sacred dogmas once declared by Holy Mother Church must be perpetually retained. That meaning may never be abandoned under the pretext of a deeper understanding.²⁹ Saint Pius X required every priest to swear that he held the faith handed down from the Apostles "in the same meaning and the same judgment."³⁰

This is not a lens applied to make a confused text make sense. It is the standard against which every text is judged. Where a recent document can be read in harmony with the perennial teaching, it may be accepted in that sense and no other. Where it cannot, it must be rejected, whatever its date or its signatures.

Measured against that standard, the Note condemns itself. Its own heading in Part II speaks of "a continuity enriched by successive popes." But this continuity begins at the Council and runs forward from Paul VI. It is a tradition sixty years old, measured against itself. The nineteen centuries before 1965 appear in the Note only as an attitude that was "often reserved or distant," which the Church has now happily left behind (§57). A continuity that starts at the moment of rupture is not continuity with the Church of all time.

What the Church Actually Teaches

Against the new religion of dialogue, there is one true Church, founded by Jesus Christ on Peter, and she alone is the Ark of salvation. Christ is not one path among many. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him. The Old Covenant was fulfilled and superseded at Calvary, when the veil of the Temple was torn in two. The Church prays for the conversion of the Jewish people, trusting in Saint Paul's promise that "all Israel should be saved" when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.³¹ She condemns every form of hatred against them, but she does not condemn them to the absence of Christ.

The other religions contain fragments of natural truth, but as systems they are not willed by God and do not save. Whoever is saved outside the visible bounds of the Church is saved by the grace of Christ working through her, never through the false religion as such. Charity does not mean affirming people in their errors. The greatest charity is to give them the truth. Christ is King not only of Catholic nations, as Pius XI taught, repeating Leo XIII, but of all mankind, including those who have not yet received the Faith.³² His reign is not advanced by treating His rivals as partners.

The Church, therefore, owes every soul on earth the Gospel. She owes it to the Jew, the Muslim, the Hindu, and the Buddhist, not as a threat but as a gift, the one gift without which every other gift is worthless. That is what the missionaries understood when they crossed oceans and gave their lives. It is what Saint Cyprian understood when he died for Christ rather than burn incense to Caesar's gods.

The Note ends by saying the journey remains open and invites all to walk it together. We respectfully decline that invitation. There is only one journey of hope, and it leads to the Cross and through the Cross to the Church, outside of which, as the martyr-bishop whose feast this document profanes taught, no one can have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his Mother.³³