The Glorious Multiplicity of Creation

Two weeks ago I looked at paragraphs 48 and 49 of Lumen Fidei, and talked about the Glorious Multiplicity of the Magisterium. The truth of the faith is too large, I said, (using rather more words) for one bishop to encompass it all; thus, we have many, so that nothing may be lost.

In that post I was speaking of revelation; but the same thing is true of all of creation. God is vast, unbounded; and everything that was, and is, and will be in all of creation exists to show forth some perfection of God. The universe is vast because God is vast; it takes a lot to glorify Him properly.

And the same is true of each culture here on Earth. So says Pope Francis:

The unity of faith, then, is the unity of a living body; this was clearly brought out by Blessed John Henry Newman when he listed among the characteristic notes for distinguishing the continuity of doctrine over time its power to assimilate everything that it meets in the various settings in which it becomes present and in the diverse cultures which it encounters, purifying all things and bringing them to their finest expression. Faith is thus shown to be universal, catholic, because its light expands in order to illumine the entire cosmos and all of history.

(My emphasis.)

All cultures are different; all have their own idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes and besetting sins and presenting virtues; and each, in its own way (and possibly despite itself) glorifies its Creator. And so it is natural, the most natural thing in the world, that when a culture discovers Catholicism and embraces it, it sheds its pagan ways but retains all it had that was good and true and beautiful.

Scripture says that Christ will draw all things to Himself; and that includes all of the glories of creation; and all of the glories of all the nations. Not one bit of glory will be lost.