By 8 am this morning, before this even made the Catholic media, someone was already circulating the Youtube online accusing the Pope of heresy. I simply saw him as an elderly man in poor health and probably exhausted from his travels, trying to express CCC 843. Not as some universalist trying to throw out EENS. People need to chill.
I remember a conversation-style interview (at least an hour long, if not two) that Scott Hahn did, in which he got a bit carried away and said something that, taken at face value, was rank heresy. Part of the Catholic interwebs promptly exploded, with... widely varying degrees of charity.
Scott Hahn put up a video in which he stated that it was in fact a heresy, apologized for getting it wrong, thanked *everyone*, including the uncharitable folks, for pointing it out as an important problem, spent about 20 minutes clarifying the correct doctrine (I expect considerably better than most of his critics could have) and left me in total awe of his capacity for acknowledging his mistakes, respect for the people who listen to him, and the high degree of importance he puts on getting the truth across correctly. By the end of it, I was delighted that he had messed up in the first place, just for joy in the retraction video.
If the Pope is exhausted from his long travels in a hot climate, he should have enough sense to stick to the speech which had been very carefully prepared for him. And if he lacks that sense, someone urgently needs to persuade him to quietly step down before the next faith destroying gaff. Which will be coming as inevitably as the next bus.
I find it exhausting that Pope Francis struggles so mightily to express himself with clarity. Why can't the vicar of Christ express CCC 843 without causing an uproar? BTW you also have to read this along with other things Pope Francis has said - especially when he talked about God willing a diversity of religions.
It's easy to get upset with people for jumping on Francis. I agree that we should have learned by now that he doesn't speak with clarity. However, that doesn't mean its not a problem - a big problem - that he seemingly can't speak without ambiguity.
While I agree with your assessment of the Holy Father at this point in his life and adventures, I think this would all hold true if only practicing catechized Catholics were to hear these things. However there are those who seriously seek to understand the faith (young, new, reverts, etc) that can and have been confused by this Pope's frequent remarks. This can't be helpful to them.
I appreciate this article for (pardon the ironic turn of phrase) clarifying that the Pope's remarks were ambiguous. When I first heard the news, I figured there was more context to his words. The English translation certainly makes much more sense in the context of Church teaching, and even the Italian phrasing can be seen from the perspective that members of other religions are seeking, however imperfectly, to obtain the highest good, and insofar as they conform themselves to charity and align with the Church (even without realizing it), they can make progress—even though only the Church possesses the fullness of the means of salvation, and should any of these people obtain salvation (as I earnestly hope they do), it will still only be through Christ's saving sacrifice and the grace of God.
Opening his mouth, he stirred controversy (sorry; we were practicing Greek participles yesterday.)
When I clicked on the headline, I had misread it as "irreligious remarks" which would have been a very different controversy. This one is less surprising but still awkward. There is one God. He has made all of us for himself and therefore all of us desire him and are searching for him, but often while not understanding what it is we desire and what it is that we should be searching for; as Yogi Berra famously allegedly said: if you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.
If virtue is in the middle, then one extreme is to tell everyone they're going to hell for not being Catholic (then they respond that they don't want to spend eternity with a God who is like that, and then you have lost your fish), and the other extreme is to tell everyone that the Catholic Church has nothing to offer them that they cannot find somewhere else, or, by omission, to fail to ever tell anyone that the Catholic Church has something to offer him/her that he/she cannot find anywhere else.
It is poetic to say that we humans are all children of God but to the best of my knowledge this could not possibly be correct in any technical sense, because words have meanings (what is it that happens when a person is baptized?) It would be correct to say that we humans are all created in the image and likeness of God (a very great dignity). It would be correct also to say that we humans are all brethren ("brothers and sisters" or "sisters and brothers" if we have to be modern in our English), since it is a simple truth that we are all descended from Adam and Eve; Jesus became our brother according to the flesh by taking on human nature, and so we could say that he is everyone's brother while being both poetic and true, but in these sorts of conversations I think any mention of Jesus is avoided. There are probably some other friendly things that a person could say to a mixed crowd that sound uplifting while still being true... maybe someone should put out a brochure "things to say to people of all faiths to help them get along together if you are the Pope", I don't know.
I don’t know that it’s incorrect to say that we are all children of God. St. Paul does as much in his Areopagus address, saying that both he and the unbaptized Greek pagans with whom he is speaking are “God’s offspring” (Acts 17:29).
If I am going to make an effort to not take the Pope out of context and instead to be very careful to understand what his intentions are, I ought also to extend the same consideration to St. Paul; in Acts 17:29, evidently, he is quoting part of a line in a Greek poem which up to that point had been talking about the omnipotence and omnipresence of "Zeus" (immediately before that, he quoted something else that we don't have the original of), and he goes on to say that therefore, as a logical conclusion from the writings of the Greeks' own authors, we ought not to think that the divinity has any resemblance to an inanimate idol made by human hands, I.e., we ought to reject idol worship as nonsensical. The philosophers listening to him were probably on board with that idea (of course! we don't really believe in idols either! so old-fashioned!), but not on board with the rest of what he said (i.e. that God is not something like the Force in Star Wars, and that God demands repentance.)
So. Nothing to worry about here. Just him being him. Although that nagging Vatican stamp from 2017 celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant revolution still bothers me. I just can’t put my finger on it, ….but maybe it is nothing.
If the pope believed the faith, and taught it, he wouldn't need to sear the consciences of the Vatican communications team that are constantly having to lie for him.
Pray that he repents and believes the Gospel before his Particular Judgment. Trying to come up with excuses for someone in his position, with the weight of responsibililty he carries, with all the opportunities to actually receive the faith he has had, is simply hateful.
Pope Francis needs Jesus, the real thing, not some mealy-mouthed substitute he's made in the image of his own preoccupations and vexations. And surely not excuses that will do him no good before the Righteous Judge.
I don't think that Pope Francis "needs Jesus" or has some false conception of Him. The literal day before these comments, Pope Francis spoke of how God the Father "has willed and desired to bring us into existence in an utterly gratuitous way" and that He has likewise "redeemed us and freed us from sin and death, through the death and resurrection of his only Son," and affirmed that it "is in Jesus that all that we are and can become have their origin and fulfilment.”
Any Unitarian Universalist can mouth those lines. It is precisely insofar as he does "know his lines" that his danger is so real. An ignorant poor person from the Delhi slums is in far less spiritual danger than an unbeliever in Peter's chair.
Your claim of what a Unitarian Universalist can mouth doesn’t track with my experience of Unitarian Universalists. And I think it might be a little overblown to imply that the occupant of Peter’s chair is an “unbeliever.”
From my read on the man as a whole, I don’t think that Pope Francis has to “know his lines,” rather, he has a deep and personal relationship and love for the Lord.
The evidence is plain enough for all to see. I can't force you to draw the obvious conclusion. I just urge you not to dwell in the self-delusion of wishful thinking rather than pray for his salvation.
I hesitate to plunge into this mire again. We have been through all this already with that Document on Human Fraternity which Pope Francis signed on 4th Feb 2019. All religions are willed by God.....whatever.
I have already been through the comboxes and round the block three times with the spin doctors insisting that His Holiness was merely speaking of the permissive will of God, which permits every disaster in history. The problem is that his cosignatory, Grand Imam al-Tayyeb, obviously does not regard Islam as one of the great disasters of history. Oh, and the Grand Imam, as a good Muslim, had previously declared that unrepentant apostates should be executed.
At least in 2019 the English translation corresponded to the other languages.
Once the spin doctors have stopped rotating like my washing machine, they urgently need to start spinning again on this new mortal sin which Pope Francis just invented at 35,000 feet. Apparently keeping migrants out is like abortion. Though I am sure it reads slightly different in French or Spanish or Polish....
I doubt that Grand Imam al-Tayyeb will be happy about that new mortal sin. You can't get into Mecca unless you are Muslim. I suspect that it might also be a hard sell in my parish, seeing that we had an undeported migrant nutter murder three blokes 100 yards from the church doors.
Pope Francis may have misspoken or, in an unguarded moment, he may have spoken about his genuine private belief in the heresy of indifferentism. Given many previous comments and incidents along these lines, I'm inclined to believe the latter. This is quite sad, but by no means unprecedented. Pope John XXII believed and preached on numerous occasions that the faithful departed will not enjoy the Beatific Vision until the Last Judgement. Popes are defended from publicly and formally teaching error as truth, but they are not protected holding heretical views as part of their private judgement and when teaching informally. Even a master theologian like Pope Benedict XVI began his Jesus of Nazareth series by emphasizing that he was writing as a private theologian and that the books might well contain numerous errors.
I don't know enough to come to any conclusions on Pope Francis' genuine private beliefs. Certainly, given that he's human, formal and material heresy and misstatements are all possible.
Even private theologians, subject to error, do well to publicly correct their public errors and misstatements when they discover them. (really, any expert/professional/influencer ought to). It's the respectful, honest, and charitable thing to do for those who read/listen to you, and the natural thing to do if you are more focused on communicating your subject matter (and think that subject matter has some degree of importance) than on making yourself look authoritative/smart/knowledgeable. I think St. Augustine's last work was actually a collection of errata for all his prior works, which I think is an absolutely epic thing to do (especially given how much he wrote).
These comments of the Pope as an "elderly man in poor health" (something like the excuse some gave to explain the non-sensical ramblings of President Biden?) are reminscent of certain formerly doctrinally sound church figures who, later in life, lost their way in later life to "be all things to all people" by attempting to synchretize and equate the Catholic faith with Eastern philosophy and religion. I am not hereby declaring the Pope to be a heretic, but simply pointing out that this is not the first time someone has attempted to create a sort of "many paths to the mountain top" spiritual theology. Off the top, the two names that come to mind are:
1. Thomas Merton, OCSO and his creep into interreligious dialogue and proclaiming a certain "equality of spirituality" with Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Can we learn from Buddhists? Certainly! Are Christianity and Buddhism thereby equal in creed and practice and both "equal" ways to salvation? Certainly not. One is an Eastern philosophy with multiple deities that are as much principle as they are gods; the other is, well, put plainly and clearly, the revealed Truth of the Triune God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
2. Fr. Anthony De Mello, SJ, the Indian Jesuit priest whose writing and speaking in the form of often humerous short stories were ultimately deemded by the CDF to be "incompatible with the Roman Catholic faith."
While I value much of the insight of Merton and De Mello, they are not theologians nor does their work represent the best of Catholic spiritual theology.
I do not find the line "...are seen as paths trying to reach God" in the English translation on the Vatican website. Perhaps it was corrected to reflect the correct translation of what he said in Italian. That might need to be updated in this article now, unless I'm not seeing something?
By 8 am this morning, before this even made the Catholic media, someone was already circulating the Youtube online accusing the Pope of heresy. I simply saw him as an elderly man in poor health and probably exhausted from his travels, trying to express CCC 843. Not as some universalist trying to throw out EENS. People need to chill.
This was my take as well, and I applaud your charity. The spin is definitely getting tiring too.
I remember a conversation-style interview (at least an hour long, if not two) that Scott Hahn did, in which he got a bit carried away and said something that, taken at face value, was rank heresy. Part of the Catholic interwebs promptly exploded, with... widely varying degrees of charity.
Scott Hahn put up a video in which he stated that it was in fact a heresy, apologized for getting it wrong, thanked *everyone*, including the uncharitable folks, for pointing it out as an important problem, spent about 20 minutes clarifying the correct doctrine (I expect considerably better than most of his critics could have) and left me in total awe of his capacity for acknowledging his mistakes, respect for the people who listen to him, and the high degree of importance he puts on getting the truth across correctly. By the end of it, I was delighted that he had messed up in the first place, just for joy in the retraction video.
If the Pope is exhausted from his long travels in a hot climate, he should have enough sense to stick to the speech which had been very carefully prepared for him. And if he lacks that sense, someone urgently needs to persuade him to quietly step down before the next faith destroying gaff. Which will be coming as inevitably as the next bus.
I find it exhausting that Pope Francis struggles so mightily to express himself with clarity. Why can't the vicar of Christ express CCC 843 without causing an uproar? BTW you also have to read this along with other things Pope Francis has said - especially when he talked about God willing a diversity of religions.
It's easy to get upset with people for jumping on Francis. I agree that we should have learned by now that he doesn't speak with clarity. However, that doesn't mean its not a problem - a big problem - that he seemingly can't speak without ambiguity.
While I agree with your assessment of the Holy Father at this point in his life and adventures, I think this would all hold true if only practicing catechized Catholics were to hear these things. However there are those who seriously seek to understand the faith (young, new, reverts, etc) that can and have been confused by this Pope's frequent remarks. This can't be helpful to them.
I appreciate this article for (pardon the ironic turn of phrase) clarifying that the Pope's remarks were ambiguous. When I first heard the news, I figured there was more context to his words. The English translation certainly makes much more sense in the context of Church teaching, and even the Italian phrasing can be seen from the perspective that members of other religions are seeking, however imperfectly, to obtain the highest good, and insofar as they conform themselves to charity and align with the Church (even without realizing it), they can make progress—even though only the Church possesses the fullness of the means of salvation, and should any of these people obtain salvation (as I earnestly hope they do), it will still only be through Christ's saving sacrifice and the grace of God.
Opening his mouth, he stirred controversy (sorry; we were practicing Greek participles yesterday.)
When I clicked on the headline, I had misread it as "irreligious remarks" which would have been a very different controversy. This one is less surprising but still awkward. There is one God. He has made all of us for himself and therefore all of us desire him and are searching for him, but often while not understanding what it is we desire and what it is that we should be searching for; as Yogi Berra famously allegedly said: if you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.
If virtue is in the middle, then one extreme is to tell everyone they're going to hell for not being Catholic (then they respond that they don't want to spend eternity with a God who is like that, and then you have lost your fish), and the other extreme is to tell everyone that the Catholic Church has nothing to offer them that they cannot find somewhere else, or, by omission, to fail to ever tell anyone that the Catholic Church has something to offer him/her that he/she cannot find anywhere else.
It is poetic to say that we humans are all children of God but to the best of my knowledge this could not possibly be correct in any technical sense, because words have meanings (what is it that happens when a person is baptized?) It would be correct to say that we humans are all created in the image and likeness of God (a very great dignity). It would be correct also to say that we humans are all brethren ("brothers and sisters" or "sisters and brothers" if we have to be modern in our English), since it is a simple truth that we are all descended from Adam and Eve; Jesus became our brother according to the flesh by taking on human nature, and so we could say that he is everyone's brother while being both poetic and true, but in these sorts of conversations I think any mention of Jesus is avoided. There are probably some other friendly things that a person could say to a mixed crowd that sound uplifting while still being true... maybe someone should put out a brochure "things to say to people of all faiths to help them get along together if you are the Pope", I don't know.
I don’t know that it’s incorrect to say that we are all children of God. St. Paul does as much in his Areopagus address, saying that both he and the unbaptized Greek pagans with whom he is speaking are “God’s offspring” (Acts 17:29).
If I am going to make an effort to not take the Pope out of context and instead to be very careful to understand what his intentions are, I ought also to extend the same consideration to St. Paul; in Acts 17:29, evidently, he is quoting part of a line in a Greek poem which up to that point had been talking about the omnipotence and omnipresence of "Zeus" (immediately before that, he quoted something else that we don't have the original of), and he goes on to say that therefore, as a logical conclusion from the writings of the Greeks' own authors, we ought not to think that the divinity has any resemblance to an inanimate idol made by human hands, I.e., we ought to reject idol worship as nonsensical. The philosophers listening to him were probably on board with that idea (of course! we don't really believe in idols either! so old-fashioned!), but not on board with the rest of what he said (i.e. that God is not something like the Force in Star Wars, and that God demands repentance.)
Jesuits gonna Jesuit. I did not find this surprising, as a former longtime member of a Jesuit parish.
I agree, Rockville Mom, but Jesuits Jesuiting is not really a good thing.
So. Nothing to worry about here. Just him being him. Although that nagging Vatican stamp from 2017 celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant revolution still bothers me. I just can’t put my finger on it, ….but maybe it is nothing.
If the pope believed the faith, and taught it, he wouldn't need to sear the consciences of the Vatican communications team that are constantly having to lie for him.
Pray that he repents and believes the Gospel before his Particular Judgment. Trying to come up with excuses for someone in his position, with the weight of responsibililty he carries, with all the opportunities to actually receive the faith he has had, is simply hateful.
Pope Francis needs Jesus, the real thing, not some mealy-mouthed substitute he's made in the image of his own preoccupations and vexations. And surely not excuses that will do him no good before the Righteous Judge.
I don't think that Pope Francis "needs Jesus" or has some false conception of Him. The literal day before these comments, Pope Francis spoke of how God the Father "has willed and desired to bring us into existence in an utterly gratuitous way" and that He has likewise "redeemed us and freed us from sin and death, through the death and resurrection of his only Son," and affirmed that it "is in Jesus that all that we are and can become have their origin and fulfilment.”
Any Unitarian Universalist can mouth those lines. It is precisely insofar as he does "know his lines" that his danger is so real. An ignorant poor person from the Delhi slums is in far less spiritual danger than an unbeliever in Peter's chair.
Your claim of what a Unitarian Universalist can mouth doesn’t track with my experience of Unitarian Universalists. And I think it might be a little overblown to imply that the occupant of Peter’s chair is an “unbeliever.”
From my read on the man as a whole, I don’t think that Pope Francis has to “know his lines,” rather, he has a deep and personal relationship and love for the Lord.
The evidence is plain enough for all to see. I can't force you to draw the obvious conclusion. I just urge you not to dwell in the self-delusion of wishful thinking rather than pray for his salvation.
By “conclusion,” would you be referring to the conclusion of Pope Francis being an unbeliever? Because I don’t see that as obvious at all.
And I do regularly pray for the Pope, but not because I think he’s a heathen totally ignorant of the true religion.
I hesitate to plunge into this mire again. We have been through all this already with that Document on Human Fraternity which Pope Francis signed on 4th Feb 2019. All religions are willed by God.....whatever.
I have already been through the comboxes and round the block three times with the spin doctors insisting that His Holiness was merely speaking of the permissive will of God, which permits every disaster in history. The problem is that his cosignatory, Grand Imam al-Tayyeb, obviously does not regard Islam as one of the great disasters of history. Oh, and the Grand Imam, as a good Muslim, had previously declared that unrepentant apostates should be executed.
At least in 2019 the English translation corresponded to the other languages.
Once the spin doctors have stopped rotating like my washing machine, they urgently need to start spinning again on this new mortal sin which Pope Francis just invented at 35,000 feet. Apparently keeping migrants out is like abortion. Though I am sure it reads slightly different in French or Spanish or Polish....
https://catholicherald.co.uk/rejecting-migrants-is-as-bad-as-abortion-says-pope-on-papal-flight-to-rome/
I doubt that Grand Imam al-Tayyeb will be happy about that new mortal sin. You can't get into Mecca unless you are Muslim. I suspect that it might also be a hard sell in my parish, seeing that we had an undeported migrant nutter murder three blokes 100 yards from the church doors.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Reading_stabbings
Amazing how people take the Pope's remarks in the worst way.
Pope Francis may have misspoken or, in an unguarded moment, he may have spoken about his genuine private belief in the heresy of indifferentism. Given many previous comments and incidents along these lines, I'm inclined to believe the latter. This is quite sad, but by no means unprecedented. Pope John XXII believed and preached on numerous occasions that the faithful departed will not enjoy the Beatific Vision until the Last Judgement. Popes are defended from publicly and formally teaching error as truth, but they are not protected holding heretical views as part of their private judgement and when teaching informally. Even a master theologian like Pope Benedict XVI began his Jesus of Nazareth series by emphasizing that he was writing as a private theologian and that the books might well contain numerous errors.
I don't know enough to come to any conclusions on Pope Francis' genuine private beliefs. Certainly, given that he's human, formal and material heresy and misstatements are all possible.
Even private theologians, subject to error, do well to publicly correct their public errors and misstatements when they discover them. (really, any expert/professional/influencer ought to). It's the respectful, honest, and charitable thing to do for those who read/listen to you, and the natural thing to do if you are more focused on communicating your subject matter (and think that subject matter has some degree of importance) than on making yourself look authoritative/smart/knowledgeable. I think St. Augustine's last work was actually a collection of errata for all his prior works, which I think is an absolutely epic thing to do (especially given how much he wrote).
These comments of the Pope as an "elderly man in poor health" (something like the excuse some gave to explain the non-sensical ramblings of President Biden?) are reminscent of certain formerly doctrinally sound church figures who, later in life, lost their way in later life to "be all things to all people" by attempting to synchretize and equate the Catholic faith with Eastern philosophy and religion. I am not hereby declaring the Pope to be a heretic, but simply pointing out that this is not the first time someone has attempted to create a sort of "many paths to the mountain top" spiritual theology. Off the top, the two names that come to mind are:
1. Thomas Merton, OCSO and his creep into interreligious dialogue and proclaiming a certain "equality of spirituality" with Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Can we learn from Buddhists? Certainly! Are Christianity and Buddhism thereby equal in creed and practice and both "equal" ways to salvation? Certainly not. One is an Eastern philosophy with multiple deities that are as much principle as they are gods; the other is, well, put plainly and clearly, the revealed Truth of the Triune God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
2. Fr. Anthony De Mello, SJ, the Indian Jesuit priest whose writing and speaking in the form of often humerous short stories were ultimately deemded by the CDF to be "incompatible with the Roman Catholic faith."
While I value much of the insight of Merton and De Mello, they are not theologians nor does their work represent the best of Catholic spiritual theology.
Perhaps this article is a little strident, but it is not far from what happened on 13 Sept:
https://newdailycompass.com/en/pope-disconcerts-faithful-again-stating-all-religions-are-equivalent
I do not find the line "...are seen as paths trying to reach God" in the English translation on the Vatican website. Perhaps it was corrected to reflect the correct translation of what he said in Italian. That might need to be updated in this article now, unless I'm not seeing something?
They changed the English version, yes. The Wayback Machine caught the original upload though:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/september/documents/20240913-singapore-giovani.html
If I were going to update the article, I would say they changed the translation, and not just insert the updated line.
The ol' "we'll translate it differently outside the Italian" doesn't work so good nowadays in the age of the Internet.
Ugh!