Did Pope Francis intentionally poke Protestants in the eye?
Did Pope Francis intentionally poke Protestants in the eye?
In a recent column, Presbyterian Bill Tammeus appeared to accuse Pope Francis of “intentionally offering a poke in the eye to people outside your faith tradition.”
He asks if Pope Francis is “saying that I, as a Presbyterian, cannot follow Jesus outside of Catholicism? That’s what he appears to be claiming, and I think it’s a dicey position to highlight so early in his papacy.”
Did Pope Francis “intentionally“ poke Protestants in the eye? Did he say that Presbyterians cannot follow Jesus?
Ever since the start of the Protestant Reformation nearly 500 years ago, Protestants have been understandably dismissive of the idea that the Roman Catholic church is the only true Christian church.
I hope that Tammeus realizes that this is not what the Catholic Church claims. That’s too simplistic (see below).
And yet the leaders of the Catholic church have made that claim persistently over time in various ways.
Oops. Maybe not. Well, I certainly hope he at least understands that this is not the way the Magisterium articulates the issue.
The [way leaders of the Catholic Church have made that claim] that stirred up the most resentment under Pope John Paul II was contained in Dominus Iesus, issued in August 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.
The declaration said churches outside the Catholic church “are not Churches in the proper sense.”
Okay.
Mr. Tammeus: It is my great pleasure to inform you that your concerns are to a substantial degree misplaced.
If Jesus died on the cross in A.D. 33 and made forgiveness possible, how does that apply to people who lived before or after this event? (Like us!)
Jesus died on the Cross so that people could be forgiven their sins.
But if he died in A.D. 33, what about all the people who lived and died before that time? Were their sins forgiven?
And if their sins were forgiven, does that mean Jesus’ sacrifice applies to all of history?
If so, does that mean that we’ve been forgiven for all of our sins—past, present, and future—so that we don’t need to go to confession?
How does this all work?
Here’s the story . . .
The Bottom Line
It may seem unusual to put the bottom line at the top of a post, but I generally find it better to state things in a straightforward, literal manner and only then (if necessary) use analogies to help clarify them.
So here’s are the literal facts:
1) Jesus’ death on the Cross made it possible for all human beings to be forgiven of their sins, regardless of whether they lived before, during, or after his time.
2) In order to appropriate that forgiveness, people have to repent and turn to God. When they do so, God forgives them, regardless of when in history they lived.
3) During this life, people have free will, so if they un-repent (backslide, fall from grace, commit mortal sin) then they have committed new sins that are not (at that moment) forgiven.
4) In order to be forgiven of these new sins, they need to once more repent and turn to God. Then they will be forgiven of the new sins they committed.
Forgiveness B.C.
Suppose there is a person living in 800 B.C. Let’s call him King Bob.
The Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian Faith. Here are 12 things to know and share . . .
The Church teaches that the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian Faith.
But how much do you know about this mystery?
What is its history?
What does it mean?
And how can it be proved?
Here are 12 things to know and share . . .
1. Where does the word “Trinity” come from?
It comes from the Latin word trinitas, which means “three” or “triad.” The Greek equivalent is triados.
2. When was it first used?
The first surviving use of the term (there may have been earlier uses that are now lost) was around A.D. 170 by Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote:
In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man [To Autolycus 2:15].
3. What is the Trinity?
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way:
The Church expresses her trinitarian faith by professing a belief in the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The three divine Persons are only one God because each of them equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature.
They are really distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other.
The Father generates the Son; the Son is generated by the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son [CCCC 48].
4. Is the Trinity the central mystery of the Christian Faith?
Yes. The Compendium explains:
The central mystery of Christian faith and life is the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity.
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [CCCC 44].
Did Pope Francis recently say that atheists can get to heaven by "good works"? Or was he talking about something else entirely?
Color me annoyed.
The press has been going nuts about remarks concerning atheists that Pope Francis made at one of his daily homilies.
As usual, the press is hyping the remarks as if they are earthshaking, unprecedented, and in contrast to mean ol’ Pope Emeritus Benedict.
I know this will come as a shock, but . . . they’re getting the story wrong.
Here’s the story . . .
Daily Homilies
Let’s start with the context in which Pope Francis made the remarks: One of his homilies at daily Mass, celebrated in St. Martha’s House (where he lives).
Pope Francis is in the habit of saying daily Mass for the people at St. Martha’s House and invited guests, and when he does so he gives an off-the-cuff homily (rather than reading from a prepared text).
This is actually something new.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not do this. They did not celebrate daily Mass as publicly as Pope Francis, and they did not have daily homilies published in this way. Instead, they occasionally delivered prepared homilies at public Masses on special occasions, and only these were published. As a result, if you look at the Vatican web site, there are surprisingly few homilies listed in their sections!
As a result, the Vatican web people aren’t scaled up for this volume of homilies, and–MADDENINGLY–you can’t find complete texts of Pope Francis’s daily ones on the site.
They, apparently, aren’t running these homilies through “the usual process,” which involves transcribing what the pope says in off-the-cuff remarks, showing him the transcript so that he can revise it if needed, and then translating and publishing them.
As a result, we’re not getting complete transcripts of these homilies, only partial ones, such as those carried by Vatican Radio.
And that, right there, is a problem. It drives me nuts, because these homilies contain interesting information, but I hesitate to comment on anything for which I don’t have a complete text.
As they say, a text without a context is a pretext. Without seeing the full text, we run the risk of misunderstanding.
The Homily in Question
On Wednesday, Pope Francis gave a homily based on the Gospel reading of the day (Mark 9:38-40), in which the disciples have told a man to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he doesn’t follow along with them.
The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.”
“This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.”
Pope Francis first applies this principle to non-Catholics in general, engaging in dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor:
“‘But, Father, this [person] is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. . . .
“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:
“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!
So far so good: Christ redeemed all of us, making it possible for every human to be saved.
What About Atheists?
Now we get to the subject of atheists, as the imaginary interlocutor asks:
“‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good.”
Here is where “the usual process” might be helpful in clarifying the pope’s thought. Everyone, when speaking off-the-cuff, encounters occasions where things could be further clarified, and this may be one of them.
We can be called children of God in several senses. One of them is merely be being created as rational beings made in God’s image. Another is by becoming Christian. Another sense (used in the Old Testament) is connected with righteous behavior. And there can be other senses as well.
Here Pope Francis may be envisioning a sense in which we can be called children of God because Christ redeemed us, even apart from embracing that redemption by becoming Christian.
This, however, was not what caught the press’s eye.
Pope Francis continued:
“And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.”
Nothing particularly controversial here.
But then comes this, as the imaginary interlocutor says:
“‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Where Is “There”?
The press latched onto this, taking the phrase “we will meet one another there” as a reference to heaven.
They then inferred that the pope was saying that if atheists merely “do good” then they will go to heaven.
This, in turn, alarmed some in the Protestant community, who thought that the pope was saying that atheists can get to heaven by “good works.”
We can deal with the possibility of salvation for atheists in another post, but first we need to ask a question . . .
Was Pope Francis Even Talking About Heaven?
If so, you wouldn’t know it from the transcript of what he said.
Let’s back up a bit. Remember, Pope Francis was just talking about the duty to do good:
“And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.”
So if everyone does good, we have a path toward peace. That’s the goal.
“If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.
Note the parallelism between the phrases. Pope Francis is talking about a path “toward peace” and wants us to “meet there” by doing our part and doing good so that we build “that culture of encounter” and “meet one another doing good.”
He’s not talking about heaven at all.
He’s talking about earth.
It’s in that context that he has the imaginary interlocutor say:
‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’
And he replies:
“But do good: we will meet one another there.”
What he’s saying is that even atheists need to do good on earth to build their part of the culture of encounter that promotes peace and allows people to “meet together” in harmony.
At least that’s what appears from a careful reading of the text.
Another translation, found in The Guardian (of all places), better conveys the idea:
“Even them, everyone,” the pope answered, according to Vatican Radio. “We all have the duty to do good,” he said.
“Just do good, and we’ll find a meeting point,” the pope said in a hypothetical reply to the hypothetical comment: “But I don’t believe. I’m an atheist.”
Text Without Context
Remember that saying I mentioned earlier, that a text without a context is a pretext for misunderstanding?
This is why.
This is exactly why.
And it is why I am so annoyed that we aren’t getting the full text of Pope Francis’s daily homilies.
Of course, even with the context we had at hand, which clearly suggests that Pope Francis wasn’t talking about meeting atheists in heaven but meeting with them in fraternity and peace here on earth, that didn’t stop the press from getting it wrong.
The divinity of the Holy Spirit was infallibly defined at the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, but not everyone accepts the fact that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person–one of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Holy Spirit is merely God’s “energy” or “active force.”
In this video, Jimmy Akin shows a simple and surprising way that you can use the Bible to show both that the Holy Spirit is a Person and that he is a divine Person, alongside the Father and the Son.
Dec. 8th is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. What is the Immaculate Conception and how do we celebrate it?
This Saturday, December 8th, is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates an important point of Catholic teaching, and it is a holy day of obligation.
Here are 8 things you need to know about the teaching and the way we celebrate it.
1. Who does the Immaculate Conception refer to?
There’s a popular idea that it refers to Jesus’ conception by the Virgin Mary.
It doesn’t.
Instead, it refers to the special way in which the Virgin Mary herself was conceived.
This conception was not virginal. (That is, she had a human father as well as a human mother.) But it was special and unique in another way. . . .
As someone who came to the Catholic faith from Evangelicalism, one of the doctrines that I had to deal with was purgatory.
Upon starting work as an apologist, I had to dig even deeper into the subject, and I discovered that over the course of time it has been understood in different ways.
One of my early helps in understanding the doctrine was the thought of St. Catherine of Genoa, whose thought on the subject as presented in the Treatise on Purgatory and the Dialogues Between the Body and the Soul have proved increasingly influential over time. In particular, elements of it have played a role in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger (back before he was pope) and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
I was therefore delighted when I read Pope Benedict’s general audience on St. Catherine of Genoa, in which he touches on her contribution to this subject.
He begins by noting that, although she did have a profound mystical experience connected with her conversion, she did not have revelations about the souls in purgatory. He states:
It is important to note that Catherine, in her mystical experience, never received specific revelations on purgatory or on the souls being purified there. Yet, in the writings inspired by our Saint, purgatory is a central element and the description of it has characteristics that were original in her time [General Audience, Jan. 12, 2011].
One of the original things about St. Catherine’s thought on purgatory concerned the way it tended to be envisioned as a place:
The first original passage concerns the “place” of the purification of souls. In her day it was depicted mainly using images linked to space: a certain space was conceived of in which purgatory was supposed to be located.
Catherine, however, did not see purgatory as a scene in the bowels of the earth: for her it is not an exterior but rather an interior fire. This is purgatory: an inner fire.
She also understood the fire of purgatory differently than some other:
The Saint speaks of the Soul’s journey of purification on the way to full communion with God, starting from her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in comparison with God’s infinite love (cf. Vita Mirabile, 171v).
We heard of the moment of conversion when Catherine suddenly became aware of God’s goodness, of the infinite distance of her own life from this goodness and of a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, the interior fire of purgatory. Here too is an original feature in comparison with the thought of her time.
Furthermore:
In fact, she does not start with the afterlife in order to recount the torments of purgatory — as was the custom in her time and perhaps still is today — and then to point out the way to purification or conversion. Rather our Saint begins with the inner experience of her own life on the way to Eternity.
“The soul”, Catherine says, “presents itself to God still bound to the desires and suffering that derive from sin and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the beatific vision of God”. Catherine asserts that God is so pure and holy that a soul stained by sin cannot be in the presence of the divine majesty (cf. Vita Mirabile, 177r).
Pope Benedict then makes an observation that goes straight to the heart:
We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin.
Pope Benedict has more to say about St. Catherine’s teaching on purgatory, and on her life in general, but I’ll let you read that for yourself.
In summary, he says:
With her life St Catherine teaches us that the more we love God and enter into intimacy with him in prayer the more he makes himself known to us, setting our hearts on fire with his love.
I’ve been working on a special mailing for the Secret Information Club where I “interview” John Paul II on the subject of purgatory. In the interview, I pose questions, and the answers are taken from his writing. Current Secret Club members will get it automatically.
Purgatory is a controversial subject that Catholics are often attacked over, so if you’d like to receive the special interview with John Paul II on purgatory, just sign up for the Secret Information Club by the end of Friday, June 29th, and you’ll have it in your inbox on Saturday morning.
There is a common argument used against the idea of purgatory in some circles which goes like this: “St. Paul says that ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord’ (2 Cor. 5:8). It’s that simple: If you’re a Christian and you aren’t in your body then you are with Jesus in heaven. There is no room for purgatory in St. Paul’s view. Purgatory is just a Catholic fable–a ‘man made tradition.'”
Is this true?
It turns out that if you examine what St. Paul really said, the whole argument is based on a misquotation. St. Paul said nothing of the kind.
Furthermore, if you look elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings–to the very same church he was addressing in his “absent from the body” passage–you find strong evidence for purgatory.
Far from being a Catholic fable, purgatory is rooted in the thought of the Apostle Paul himself–as I show in the following video.
I’ve also been working on a special mailing for the Secret Information Club where I “interview” John Paul II on the subject of purgatory. In the interview, I pose questions, and the answers are taken from his writing. Current Secret Club members will get it automatically.
Purgatory is a controversial subject that Catholics are often attacked over, so if you’d like to receive the special interview with John Paul II on purgatory, just sign up for the Secret Information Club by Friday, June 29th, and you’ll have it in your inbox on Saturday morning.
But the word “eternal” can also be understood to mean “everlasting”–as would apply to a being who comes into being at a certain point in time but who has no end.
That seems to be the case for us. We come into being at a certain point in time (when we are conceived), but because we are ultimately immortal, we have no end. Because of death, we may not be in our bodies for a period (of time), but eventually we will be reunited with them and experience the eternal (unending) order.
Both Scripture standard Catholic theology depict us as undergoing a sequence of states upon our death. First, we die. Then, we are judged at the particular judgment. Then, we are purified in purgatory if we need to be. Then, when our purification is finished, we have the unalloyed happiness of heaven. Then, we are reunited with our bodies. Then, we experience the general judgment, where we are judged in body and soul. Then, we experience the eternal order.
That’s a definite sequence–which begins with our death, implying a sequentiality that occurs after our deaths. For there to be a sequence, there must be something separating the elements of the sequence–something that keeps them from happening all at once.
That means that there is either time or something analogous to time in the afterlife.
What does the Church’s Magisterium have to say on the subject?
In one General Audience of John Paul II, the pope noted that:
Eternity [in the sense of being “beyond time”] is here the element which essentially distinguishes God from the world. While the latter is subject to change and passes away, God remains beyond the passing of the world. He is necessary and immutable: “you are the same” [General Audience of Sept. 4, 1985].
In the next week’s audience, John Paul II explained that
He [God] is Eternity, as the preceding catechesis explained, while all that is created is contingent and subject to time [General Audience of Sept. 11, 1985].
If eternity (in the beyond time sense) is distinguishes God from the world and if “all that is created” is “subject to time,” that would imply that our souls are subject to time. This would be the case even after our deaths, since our souls do not cease to be created entities.
However, we can go beyond this implicit acknowledgement of the sequentiality–and thus temporality. In 1992, the International Theological Commission (ITC) issued a document that bears on this point in a more explicit way.
The ITC is an advisory body headed by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who at the time was Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict). According to its bylaws, when the head of the ITC authorizes the publication of one of its documents, it signifies that the Magisterium does not have any difficulty with its teaching.
In this case, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authorized the publication of a document which held that:
[S]ome theologians . . . seek a solution in a so-called atemporalism: They say that after death time can in no way exist, and hold that the deaths of people are successive (viewed from the perspective of this world); whereas the resurrection of those people in the life after death, in which there would be no temporal distinctions, is (they think) simultaneous.
But this attempted atemporalism, according to which successive individual deaths would coincide with a simultaneous collective resurrection, implies recourse to a philosophy of time quite foreign to biblical thought.
The New Testament’s way of speaking about the souls of the martyrs does not seem to remove them either from all reality of succession or from all perception of succession (cf. Rev 6:9-11).
Similarly, if time should have no meaning after death, not even in some way merely analogous with its terrestrial meaning, it would be difficult to understand why Paul used formulas referring to the future (anastesontai)in speaking about their resurrection, when responding to the Thessalonians who were asking about the fate of the dead (cf. 1 Thess 4:13-18).
Moreover, a radical denial of any meaning for time in those resurrections, deemed both simultaneous and taking place in the moment of death, does not seem to take sufficiently into account the truly corporeal nature of the resurrection; for a true body cannot be said to exist devoid of all notion of temporality.
Even the souls of the blessed, since they are in communion with the Christ who has been raised in a bodily way, cannot be thought of without any connection with time [International Theological Commission, Some Current Questions on Eschatology (1992), “The Christian Hope of the Resurrection,” 2.2].
By their nature, the documents of the ITC express the common understanding of Catholic theology in accord with the teaching of the Magisterium, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s authorization of this document signals that the common understanding in Catholic theology is that some form of time “even in some way merely analogous to its terrestrial meaning” continues to apply to us in the afterlife, and that the Magisterium has no difficulty with this.
Joseph Ratzinger said the same in his own writings, such as his book Eschatology, when he was still a theology professor.
Catholic theology thus does not hold that we leave time upon our deaths. In fact, it would be difficult to hold that we do so, given the reasons that the ITC cites.
So while we do indeed have eternal souls, and while God is eternal in the sense of being completely beyond time, the Church does not understand our souls to be eternal or atemporal in the way that God is.
