The text submitted for analysis is a critique of a message from Pope Leo XIV, who celebrates an inter-religious meeting and promotes a "culture of harmony" based on the idea that all human beings are "children of God and, therefore, brothers and sisters." The author of the text vehemently refutes this premise, arguing that divine sonship is not a natural condition but a supernatural gift granted through faith and adoption in Christ. He maintains that all men are creatures, but only those who welcome Christ become children of God. The author identifies the theological origin of this "confusion between the natural and the supernatural" in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, specifically in the ambiguity of the statement from Gaudium et Spes 22, which affirms that "by His Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man." The central critique is that this conciliar view empties the necessity of evangelization and the Church, promoting a naturalistic universal fraternity at the expense of supernatural sonship.
The promotion of a universal fraternity, based on a common human dignity supposedly revealed and confirmed by the Incarnation of Christ, has become a cornerstone of contemporary ecclesial discourse. However, this emphasis raises crucial theological questions about the distinction between the natural order of creation and the supernatural order of redemption. A thorough analysis, in light of a critical hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council, reveals that this notion of fraternity may represent an anthropological shift that redefines the very nature of salvation and the Church's mission in the world.🧬The Fundamental Distinction: Creature versus Son by Adoption
Perennial Catholic doctrine establishes a clear and insurmountable distinction between being a creature of God and being a child of God. All men, without exception, are creatures, made "in the image and likeness of God" (Gen 1:26). This condition confers an intrinsic natural dignity upon every person. However, divine sonship is of a completely different order: it is a supernatural gift, a participation in the unique and eternal Sonship of the Word. As the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John teaches, it is to those who received Him that Christ "gave power to become the sons of God" (Jn 1:12).
This sonship is not, therefore, a birthright of human nature, but the fruit of redemptive grace. It is an adoption that inserts us into the Mystical Body of Christ, making us sons in the Son. To confuse the plane of creation with that of redemption by asserting that all men are "children of God" by nature is to dissolve the gratuitous and supernatural character of grace and, consequently, the necessity of faith and Baptism for salvation.
📖The New Conciliar Humanism and the Reinterpretation of the Incarnation
The source of this modern ambiguity can be traced to a new anthropology promoted during the Second Vatican Council, the epicenter of which is found in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes. The statement that "by His Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man" (Gaudium et Spes, 22) became the cornerstone of a new humanism (Calderón, 2010, p. 19). Although this phrase can admit an orthodox interpretation—in the sense that the Incarnation made salvation objectively possible for all—it was instrumentalized to ground a new theology.
In this new perspective, the Incarnation is not primarily the act by which God assumes a human nature to redeem those who believe, but the event that reveals to every man his own dignity and intrinsic worth. Christ becomes the revealer of man to man himself. The consequence is a radical inversion: the focus shifts from the need for man to convert to Christ to the idea that Christ, by becoming incarnate, has already confirmed and elevated the condition of every man. Thus, the "union in some fashion" moves from a possibility of salvation to an accomplished fact that confers upon all a kind of immanent divinization (Calderón, 2010, p. 122-124).
🕊️From the Evangelizing Mission to Dialogue for Human Harmony
This anthropological shift entails a profound redefinition of the Church's mission. If dignity and a certain union with Christ are already a given for all humanity, the missionary imperative to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them" (Mt 28:19) loses its soteriological urgency. The Church's mission ceases to be primarily that of calling men out of the darkness of sin and unbelief into the admirable light of divine sonship in Christ.
In its place, a new paradigm emerges: inter-religious dialogue and collaboration with all men of "good will" for the construction of a more just and fraternal world. The Church comes to see itself as "a sacrament or sign of intimate union with God and of the unity of all mankind" (Lumen Gentium, 1). The main objective becomes the promotion of a "culture of harmony," where the values common to all religions and philosophies are exalted. Evangelization, in this context, is often demoted to the category of unwanted "proselytism," and the unique truth of Christ is obscured in favor of a unity founded on natural fraternity rather than on common faith (Calderón, 2010, p. 75).
🏛️Conclusion: The Religion of Man and the New Fraternity
The insistence on a universal fraternity that presupposes a natural divine sonship for all men represents the pastoral expression of what can be defined as the "religion of man" (Calderón, 2010, p. 128). It is a humanism that, while cloaked in Christian language, subordinates the supernatural to the natural and revealed truth to human conscience. In this view, the importance of Jesus Christ lies less in being the sole Savior whose grace is necessary for sonship, and more in being the model of the "perfect man" who reveals the greatness of humanity itself. The fraternity being celebrated is not the communion of saints, united by the same faith and grace in the Body of Christ, but an earthly solidarity that finds its own end and justification in itself.
📜References
Calderón, Álvaro. Prometeo: La Religión del Hombre. Ensayo de una hermenéutica del Concilio Vaticano II, 2010.