Dear Deacon:

Your daughter brings up two issues. the first is about humans created in the image of God and how that related to the existence of other religions. The second is about the Catholic Church vs. other religions.

The common denominator here is that she is confused about how the God of Christianity relates to other religions.

In reading the letter from your daughter, she is in very serious trouble. Her overall confusion about Church teaching is leading her into outright heresy with what she is saying: "In my belief, God is not just is Catholicism or Christianity or one religion or the other." Whether or not she realizes it, she is referring to universalism, which is a heresy. Because of this I would suggest that she stop receiving Communion until she has things straightened out in her mind, because until then, she is not in Communion with the Church holding such belief.

On humans created in the image of God: For some reason your daughter seems to be suggesting that if we are created in the image of God that we ought to all believe the same thing, be in total unity of faith. Because human beings do not have that unity, in her mind that must mean that the Catholic Church, or even Christianity, cannot hold the exclusive Truth.

I am reminded of an Opera show. She was talking about religion with a small audience. The audience most all agreed that Jesus was the only way to heaven. Opera, with desperation in her voice pleaded, "That just can't be the case; it can't be." She looked and sounded so pathetic. This woman was disparately trying to hold on to a universalist position and thus to reject that Jesus is the only way.

I am sure your daughter was taught the Faith properly, but she has been confused by the false logic of her friends or professors with this false notion that it is not fair to other religions for God to be revealed definitively through Jesus Christ and His Church, the Catholic Church.

I think she is experiencing what is called cognitive dissonance. She is holding two diametrically opposite notions in her mind, that which she has been taught by you, and that which has been taught or influenced by friends and/or professors. This causes confusion and thus she is reaching out to you (as she should).

Thus, to answer her question about humans created in the image of God yet holding to a wide-range of incompatible religions beliefs. 

We are made in the image of God, but what does that mean. It certainly does not refer to our bodies, and God has no body. He is pure spirit. Thus, all material and bodily aspects of our existence is not the "image" of God. 

God is love, St. John tells us. To be created in the image of God means that God has graced us with the ability to love. Since love cannot be forced, but must be chosen, He has given us the gift of Free Will so that we can choose to love Him, ourselves, and our neighbor.

In addition, God has given other aspects of Himself to us. He has given us the gift of self-awareness of our existence and our relationship with God, the gift of awareness of our own morality. We are given the gift of immortality. How we spend our immortality is up to us—in heaven if we choose Him, in hell if we don't. He has given us creativity, compassion, empathy, a moral conscience, etc.

All these things are the "image of God."

Because God love us so much he gives us Free Will. While God have us this gift in order to love Him and others, we can, if we choose, abuse our Free Will and reject God and thus become enslaved. As Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." If we reject truth, then we enslave ourselves as only truth frees us.

As man has free will, he can choose to invent religions. The ability to invent new religions is because we are made in the image of God. Animals do not invent religions because they are not made in the image of God.

The fact that many religions exist, even though there is only one true religion (Christianity), proves that we are made in the image of God. For without that image, that is, without that gift of Free Will, we could not choose to be Christian or Hindu, a saint or a sinner, a believer or an unbeliever.

The logic your daughter is deeply flawed:

1. human beings are made in the image of God;
2. human beings have many ideas about the nature and identity of God;
3. therefore, God cannot possibly be the god of just one religion; all religions are of God.

This logic is so flawed it is hard to know where to begin.

First, she believe that if the God of Christianity is the true any only correct concept of God that the good works of people of other religions falls on "deaf ears." She is correct, that does not make sense. She apparently does not know that the Bible tells us that all good that man may perform, regardless of who he is, comes from God because we ourselves are not capable of good:

(Roman 3:10-12)  ...as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one.

(James 1:17)  Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  

The Church teaches that goodness can be found anywhere and wherever it is found we can rejoice and commune with that goodness. The Catechism states:

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."

844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:

Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair. (cf. Rom 1:21, 25)

Your daughter needs to read and study this entire section of the Catachism (nos 811-870).

While there can be grains of truth in other religions among the "shadows" those shadows and grains are not the true and full image of God, which is found only in Christianity, and in its fullest measure only in the Catholic Church.

It is not God's fault that people lost their way to Him. He created man in a perfect state. Man decided on his own to rebel against God thus bringing Original Sin into the world. That Original Sin damaged human DNA and thus we inherit concupiscence, which is the tendency and desire to sin.

Differing religions, and all the various Christian denominations, are a result of sin, not of God. (The Catholic Church is not a denomination as it was the original).

Sin is not an attribute of God. Sin is not part of the image of God to which we are created. Sin comes from the abuse of Free Will. It is Free Will that is part of the image of God. It is sin that invents all the myriad expressions of religion. Only the Jewish and Christian religions were ever authorized by God.

The only religion today not founded to sin is the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church alone.

The Christian religion, in fact, is the Jewish Religion, part 2. Had the Jews accepted the Messiah as they should have, the Jewish religion would not exist today. God's religion is the Christian religion alone, to which was born out of the Jewish Faith. Thus, the post-Christ Jewish Religion was actually born out of sin, the sin of rejecting the Messiah.

Now, with all this said, this does not mean that all non-Christians, or all non-Catholics, can never be blessed by God, receive graces from God, never given credit for good and godly works, or will go to hell. Your daughter is correct that such a thing is not fair. God says that salvation is in the Catholic Church alone. This is what God ordained and thus it is fair because it is not possible for God to be unfair.

Thus, the Church teaches:

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5).

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men" (cf. Heb 11:6; 1 Cor 9:16).

God can and does save whomever he wishes. That fact that He can do this He still does it through Christ and His Church. They fact that God may save people in other religions does not mean that those other religions are legitimate. For example, if God chooses to save a Hindu because of that Hindu's sincere heart to do the will of God as best as he knows it, the Hindu is not saved through Hinduism. That Hindu is saved by Christ and His Church, even though the Hindu doesn't realize that.

Finally, God is a God of Truth. Truth is absolute. One cannot have differing truths among religions. There is only one Truth. 

For example, Islam reject the notion that Jesus is God. Christianity not only believes the Jesus is God, but this doctrine forms the very foundation of Christianity.

Jesus cannot be God and not God. Either Islam is right or Christianity is right; both cannot be right. God, however, in his mercy and love, does not ignore those in error. He ministers to all, to the righteous and the unrighteous, the believer and the unbeliever, to the Christian and to the non-Christian 

While God gives graces and blessings, and even may save some Muslims, all those graces and blessings, and the Muslim's salvation comes not from Islam, but from Jesus, who is God. Those Muslims who do make it to heaven will have a mighty surprise when they meet the God Jesus.

Truth is truth. 

I hope this has helped you to prepare to speak to your daughter. We will be in prayer for her and you that she will have conscience informed and walk away from the brink of heresy.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary