Pope Francis: 'There Is No Hell' / Vatican denies
http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/does-the-pope-believe-in-hell/
Did the soul of Judas, and those of the monstrous evildoers of history, “just fade away,” as Gen. Douglas MacArthur said of old soldiers? If there is no hell, is not the greatest deterrent to the worst of sins removed?
What did Christ die on the cross to save us from?
If Francis made such a statement, it would be rank heresy.
Had the pope been speaking ex cathedra, as the vicar of Christ on earth, he would be contradicting 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine, rooted in the teachings of Christ himself. He would be calling into question papal infallibility, as defined in 1870 by the Vatican Council of Pius IX.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/does-the-pope-believe-in-hell/#QygHu2wkdTLd3…
Will the RCC offer refunds to the descendants of all those who bought indulgences? Or is purgatory still real?
….of why Sola Scriptura and the First Fundamental are so, so important.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
The Pope’s statement reminds of Billy Graham, and the Vatican response reminds me of the BGEA.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/vatican-scrambles-to-clar…
The Vatican has scrambled to clarify comments made by Pope Francis to a well-known Italian journalist that appeared to deny the existence of hell.
The Holy See issued a terse statement saying a lengthy article published in La Repubblica on Wednesday by Eugenio Scalfari, 93, the newspaper’s founder, was “the fruit of his reconstruction” and not “a faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words”.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2018/03/30/unpacking-a-non-interview-…
one has to wonder why, since the pope was quoted saying something that so clearly distorts a core matter of Catholic teaching, and that also seems blatantly at odds with his personal thinking, didn’t the Vatican issue a stronger denial? …. the real question is why Francis keeps putting himself in this position at all.
Per Darrell’s comment: “If you’re explaining yourself, you’re losing.”
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2018/03/30/why-on-earth…
To call this latest one a head-scratcher is to put oneself in the running for understatement of the year. The facts are that Eugenio Scalfari, the 93-year-old atheist founder of Italy’s centre-left daily, La Repubblica, had a conversation with Pope Francis at the Domus Sanctae Marthae on Tuesday, on the basis of which he wrote a story that ran two days later in the pages of the paper Scalfari founded. Titled, “Pope: ‘It is an honour to be called a revolutionary’,” the piece contains direct reports of speech in which the Holy Father is quoted as saying many things that, did he say them, would be newsworthy to say the least.
Beyond that, it is nigh on impossible to be morally certain about anything regarding this affair.
According to Scalfari’s report, the “colloquy” Pope Francis entertained with him ran the gamut: from the things like cosmogenesis — the origin and fate of the created order — to the social, political, and cultural complex and worldview we catch under the rubric of “Modernity”, to the present and future of Europe. Right in the middle of the conversation — one that reads like that, which could be carried on by any pair of intelligent and cultured old men at a pensioners’ club over wine and cards — there is discussion of the eternal fate of those who die in sin.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/catastrophic-for-the-catholic-church-…
Journalist Tara Isabella Burton wrote, “If the Pope indeed said those words [attributed to him by Scalfari] , the consequences would be catastrophic for the Catholic Church, which — according to its own catechism — ‘affirms the teaching of hell and its eternity,’ including eternal fire,’ although it stresses that ‘The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God’.”
Remarking on Francis’ relationship with Scalfari, Burton said that the question of whether or not Francis denied the existence of hell was “subordinate to another question”: “Why does Francis repeatedly engage in interviews with Scalfari, only to later say Scalfari misquotes his words?”
If the answer is that he’s trying to change doctrine by stealth, then Pope Francis risks appearing insincere.
“By participating in a kind of bait and switch — putting forth potentially heretical ideas, then formally denying them — Francis leaves himself open to the charge of disingenuousness,” Barton wrote.
Gwynne Dyer of Canada’s Hamilton Spectator asserted that “of course” Pope Francis had denied the existence of hell, and that “the reason why is obvious.”
“It is very hard for a well-educated person of modern sensibilities to believe that a loving god would condemn any of the human beings he created to an eternity of physical torture and mental anguish,” Dyer wrote “That is not what loving human fathers do, even to children who disobey them, so the traditional notion of Hell is a permanent problem for many Catholic theologians.”
But acknowledging that that Annihilationism is a heresy in the Catholic Church, Dyer believes that Pope Francis has found a “practical” way of communicating his true beliefs without wasting the time he wants to direct to “other, more urgent changes”:
“Pope Francis is a practical man, and he chooses his battles carefully,” Dyer wrote. “Changing Catholic doctrine on Hell would be a long battle that consumed most of the energy within the Church that he would like to devote to other, more urgent changes. Yet he still cannot resist making his true views known (in a deniable way) by having these occasional conversations with Eugenio Scalfari.
In the United Kingdom, the Catholic Herald demanded, “Why on earth does Pope Francis still trust Eugenio Scalfari?” Journalist Christopher Altieri called upon Francis to “disown not only the precise verbiage Scalfari reported in his piece, but the ideas foisted upon him therein—at least the ones that are manifestly heretical.”
“The longer he does not,” Altieri continued, “the stronger the case becomes for believing he cannot.”
Deploring all previous episodes of “Scalfarism”, Altieri acknowledged that Francis’s continued conversation with the elderly journalist may stem from the pontiff’s wish to save the atheist’s soul. But even this charitable motive suggests that the Pope’s judgement is “appalling”.
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