Robert asked:

Is there any reason to assume one religion is "correct," and others "incorrect"?

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The Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu etc., would say 'Yes there is, ours.' Religion is that way of our
being in the world whereby we seek to develop and come to the fulness of human growth through our
involvement and encounter with our own concept and experience of the Divine.

But the concept and experience of the divine is also culturally and historically situated. That one
religion claims a veracity of its own existence and doctrines is part of the experience of being a
person who has a religious faith. With most religions go a value system, either a moral and ethical
value system, or a value system linked to and depending on its doctrinal and dogmatic system.

It is such values systems derived from their initial religious belief which assists the believer in their
way through the world and life. As a Christian I have a faith belief which I would claim demonstrates
the truth of its own belief claim. Yet, there must be a mutual and tolerant respect for all faiths and all
religions. In this way the value systems of any religious truth claim become not just claims, but lived
realities. It is the living reality of a person's religious faith that is most important rather than the
divisions or differences of doctrine, dogma, or faith.

I believe that Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God and Saviour of the world, others do not believe that.
On the one hand that is a subjective belief for me because it is mine and it is personal, on the other it
is also the belied of hundreds of millions of other people, so there is a community and corporate
element to it which unites me to others. Yet such subjectivity and such unity is true for every other
believer of every other faith.

So yes, there are reasons to assume that one religion is more 'correct' but only in so far as it is
correct for that body of believers. What is not correct is the imposition of that belief on others and the
methods used to impose that belief. This is what we learned, or at least, should have learned from the
Crusades; unfortunately as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and other parts of the world too
tragically testify, it seems that we have learned nothing — and most certainly not from our God(s).

Fr Seamus Mulholland OFM