All religions are not the same!
The [Enlightenment] proposal that all religions are the same "...is already self-contradictory with respect to the religions themselves..."
"...[I]n the Indian religious cosmos ("Hinduism" is a rather misleading designation for a multiplicity of religions) there are very different forms: very high and pure ones that are marked by the idea of love, but also wholly gruesome ones that include ritual murder.
Witch burnings
"We know that human sacrifices shape a portion of the history of religion in a terrible way; we know that political religion has become an instrument of destruction and oppression; there are, as we know, pathologies in the Christian religion itself. Witch burning was a recrudescence of Germanic customs. It had, with difficulty, been overcome by the early medieval missionaries, and then it reemerged in the late Middle Ages as faith began to grow weak.
"In a word, even the gods are not all alike; there are decidedly negative divine figures, whether we think of the Greek or, for example, the Indian religious cosmos.
"The idea that all religions are equal is already disproved by the simple fact of the history of religion." Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 23.
Christ's purification
"...[I]n the figure of Christ the truly purifying power has appeared out of the Word of God...[This power] furnishes the criterion and the orientation for the purifications that are indispensable for keeping religion from becoming a system of oppression and alienation, so that it may really become a way for man to God and to himself." Ibid., p. 24.
