I know from experience all the dark sides of religions -- the Christian religion and others. Even today, religions have often had a disastrous effect on many conflicts all over the world. But I also know the bright side of religions: as doctrines and ways of salvation and liberation, they can make sense; they can promote peace and reconciliation; and today they can still give men and women ethical standards and personal guidelines.
People of all religions know far too little about one another; above all, they know far too little about what all religious and ethical traditions have in common.
I am evangelical and am for a continual reform of the Church, which was affirmed by the Second Vatican Council.
I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.
I like most that I belong to the whole universal comprehensive Catholic church and that it is not just a national church.
I remember the Curia said, that's up to the American bishops, not up to Rome.
I prefer everything that the Jews themselves call the Torah, the five books of Moses.
A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.
After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.
All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.
And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.
As a matter of fact, you have deficiencies in all religions, but you have truth in all religions
At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.
Because of the compromises made in the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Curia has done everything to get control of the Church again in a preconciliar way.
But from the point of view of the hierarchy, they do everything to hinder, for instance, Eucharistic Communion.
But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.
First, the importance of the Bible being valued highly in the liturgy, in theology, and in the whole life of the Church.
However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights.
Humanity today possesses sufficient economic, cultural and spiritual resources to introduce a better global order.
Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.
If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.
In the question of homosexuality, the Vatican was rather permissive or lenient, with regard to all these crimes of sexual abuse.
It is an absolutely unique success of the church community to have introduced such an epoch-making change, in just a few years, without having a serious division.
Popes going to Fatima and preaching there - the Gospel of Fatima is exaggerated.
Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.
Second, we also got a more authentic liturgy of the people of God, in the vernacular language.
That is an offense for all the other religions, and it's arrogance on the side of the Catholic Church to think that we are not at all deficient.
That is the Roman way: to give favors to the favorites.
That means that every human being - without distinction of sex, age, race, skin color, language, religion, political view, or national or social origin - possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity.
The Council's decree Nostra Aetate - On World Religions - is a very open decree which does not offend anybody but which estimates highly all the other religions.
The Gospel has to be the norm.
First, the importance of the Bible being valued highly in the liturgy, in theology, and in the whole life of the Church.
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