Faith & Spirit Quote by Pat Buckley

There is a quiet provocation in Buckley’s line: a clergyman using the language of inclusion to loosen the grip of religious gatekeeping. By pairing “a Buddhist” with “a good atheist,” he deliberately collapses the usual hierarchy of “almost-Christian” versus “outside the fold.” That’s the point. The sentence isn’t merely tolerant; it’s strategic. It smuggles a universalist theology into a single, neatly balanced comparison, making the Catholic benchmark feel less like a passport stamp and more like a moral standard anyone can meet.

The phrasing does most of the work. “Good” is the hinge word, repeated to shift the debate from creed to conduct. Buckley doesn’t argue doctrine; he reframes the scoreboard. And “acceptable to God” is carefully chosen: it keeps God at the center (important for a cleric speaking to believers) while stripping the Church of exclusive authority over who “counts.” It’s a rebuke to the idea that salvation is a membership benefit.

Contextually, the line reads like pastoral triage in a world where religious identity is porous: interfaith families, secular neighbors, lapsed Catholics who still care about ethics, not catechism. It also echoes a post-Vatican II instinct to recognize goodness beyond Catholic boundaries without openly trashing tradition. The subtext: if God’s grace isn’t fenced in by our labels, then the Church’s job is less border control, more moral formation. That’s both comforting and destabilizing, depending on whether you rely on certainty or mercy.