Imagine a scenario where Jesus and his modern disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They say in reply, “Allah, others Brahma or Buddha, still others Confucius or one of the ethical teachers.” And he asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” Neo-Peter says to him in reply, “That depends on the language you are speaking.” Then he warns them not to tell anyone about him but to edit multilingual dictionaries so as not to be rigid or backwardist.

Indulging in one more “update” to Mark 8:27-33, imagine: After beginning to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly, be killed, and rise after three days, Neo-Peter took him to the side and began to rebuke him. “One language says suffering is redemptive while another says it is illusion. Who am I to judge?”

Let us finish with the true ending, from Scripture:

At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

I have hesitated to join in debates over interreligious questions because it is not really my specialty, I did not want to criticize the Holy Father directly, and I hesitate to revise Scripture to make a point. But the apposition between Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi in last Sunday’s Gospel and Pope Francis’s remarks two days earlier in his talk to young people in Singapore (see here) is too clear not to note.

I say interreligious dialogue is not my specialty because I have certainly never delved into the depths of its questions. I hold two principles in tension. One: God wishes all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the Truth (I Tm 2:4). Two: Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father but through Him (Jn 14:6).

I recognize that there are eight billion people in the world, of whom 1.1 billion are Catholic. That leaves seven billion of other Christian denominations, of non-Christian faiths, and of no faith. I am convinced in hope that God in some way offers every man the grace necessary to be saved, to which the recipient in the integrity of conscience must respond in ways known to him and God. At the same time, I am convinced that that grace in some way connects him to Jesus Christ, whose redemptive death on the cross makes that grace possible. Because if I do not accept that criterion, how do I explain that the Incarnation was necessary “for us and for our salvation” without negating the necessity of the expectation of a Messiah throughout the Old Testament or the definitive value of the New? I do not believe that God sent His Son into the world in order that His “Way” might be just one of several, one of the “languages” into which God’s redemptive plan is “translated.” I believe I have identified the main lines of the discussion.

And, for these reasons, I find Pope Francis’s soggy “interreligious dialogue” at minimum extremely problematic. There may be ways to try to present his argument as valid, but they require far more precision and detail than his 10-minute speech to non-theological college youth. The Triune God is not Allah. He is not Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva. Jesus is not Lao-Tze or Confucius, pedaling exclusively “moral wisdom” in a Chinese, Semitic, or American key. Indeed, if it’s all a “language issue,” then Francis needs also to tackle the various “sub-languages” — dialects, patois, idioms — that have emerged in the numerous “spiritualities” that consciously dissociate themselves from any “organized religion” in favor of do-it-yourself faith and morals. I hesitate to even use the term redemption because — honestly — I doubt whether many of these “spiritualities” consciously and consistently see anything they need to be saved from.

Whenever Francis finds himself in interreligious settings, he seems to feel a need to soft-pedal the primacy and uniqueness of the Christian message in order to maintain “peace.” That seems a bizarre position vis-à-vis Him whose Vicar he is supposed to be. It also seems a bizarre position vis-à-vis his namesake, as St. Francis wanted to go to the Holy Land on a mission of conversion. To look even within Francis’s own order, Pope Francis’s view would leave one wondering why St. Francis Xavier seemed so obsessed about his Far East missions.

No, Pope Francis, religions are not like “languages,” where you have “Latin (no, vernacular!) Catholic,” “Hebrew Jewish,” “Arabic Islamic,” “Farsi Islamic,” “Hindi Hindu,” “Chinese Confucian,” “Tibetan Buddhist,” and “Japanese Shinto” faiths. Yes, what we say about God is always analogical, because God surpasses the capacity of human language to capture Him. But my theological education under Jesuits convinced me that not only do they think God exceeds linguistic categories but that everything does, so that every language, like every religion, is merely an approximate expression of some ineffable, yet-to-be-discovered “truth.” Some might call this the journey towards the eschaton or Omega Point or whatever. I’d call it the collapse of reason and the triumph of the dictatorship of relativism, because if everything is variable, nothing is real.

While I know that many would complain that older generations see youth as especially endangered, the mass loss of faith in religion — including the departure of many Catholics from the Church — is particularly prominent among today’s young. Sociologists even coined a term for the cohort: “nones.” Neither is this generation marrying or forming families, i.e., domestic churches, and, even if they do, what will be the confessional faith of those churches? Set against such anti-signs of the times, one has to ask: Is Francis, saying the above to young people in Singapore, being the “rock” or the “millstone”?