Religion is a Lot Like Bouillabaise

I've been doing most of my writing for a while over on Quora.com. However, it can be a sad, sad day on Quora when you write what you think is a really good answer, and then the whole question gets deleted. No one will see your answer again.

So, thank heaven I have a blog.

The question is "How do mainstream Catholics defend themselves when sedevacantists and other traditionalists say this?" And the details of the question are

Catholics are supposed to try to convert other people but John Paul II and others seem to be fine with other religions and even hail them as great religions.

Here is my answer.
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I’m not a Catholic, but I think I can answer the question anyway.

The Catholic Church is like a restaurant in Marseilles that makes the best Bouillabaise anywhere. Other places make fish-and-seafood soup, of course, and some of them come quite close the recipe—the one true and original recipe—that this restaurant uses. Maybe only a couple of ingredients are different, like in that Chez Lutheran place. Maybe it’s just in the seasoning, like in the Côte Anglicain. Or maybe it’s a whole different taste, like in that Mormon Place down the road, or in the Muslim Restaurant that leaves out the scorpion fish. You can’t call it bouillabaise without scorpion fish.

And this restaurant that has the best bouillabaise has the original recipe, passed down from hand to hand for time out of mind.

But here’s the thing: there’s good will among restauranteurs. Oh, a friendly rivalry, too. But come down to brass tacks and you’ll find that all of them are working their butts off for their customers every night, trying to fill them with something that is healthy and satisfying to the soul.

You don’t get on your high horse and dismiss your fellow chefs as worthless imitators, not if you have any honesty and decency in you. You might like to win some of their customers over, but if the choice is between the customers going to another restaurant and the customers going hungry, you’ll always want them to be fed.