The content of belief.

While I generally agree with Peter C. Phan's "Praying to the Buddha" (January 26) and Paul Lakeland's "Not So Heterodox" (January 26), I am dissatisfied with their conclusions. Both authors examine their topics from a subjective point of view; they are concerned with the religious experience of non-Christians but not with their actual beliefs. When Dominus lesus states that "objectively speaking they [non-Christians] are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means to salvation," it is referring to the content of belief. Both articles overlook this.

When Lumen gentium states that God desires the salvation of all people and has provided for it since the time of Adam, it does not say that that provision involves religions per se. The same is true of Gaudium et spes: God can save people outside the church, but we do not know how.

What Phan and Lakeland need to show is how actual religious beliefs and practices help people know God. Both authors establish that it might be so, but not that it is so. Phan's example of feeling holy in a Buddhist shrine doesn't do it and I found it jarring when Lakeland, speaking of faith convictions, grouped Protestants together with Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. Protestants join us in believing in Christ; Jews are the chosen people and a special case. But, to my knowledge, Buddhists don't have faith convictions and Muslims have some faith convictions that contradict Christian ones.

This needs to be unraveled and studied, not just admired as mysterious and paradoxical. God may deal with his creation in ways that have nothing to do with religion, at least as moderns understand it. But if religion is significant, then all its forms should reveal some universal characteristics. I wish Lakeland and Phan had shown what they are.

(REV.) PAUL A. HOTTINGER

Downers Grove, Ill.