Transcript

I rarely talk about controversies involving Pope Francis because there's a lot of people who already do that, but I really felt called to say something about his recent comments given the different reactions I've seen to them on the internet.

First, let's look at the controversy.

According to the Catholic media outlet The Pillar, Pope Francis prompted controversy Friday with remarks at an interreligious meeting in Singapore that some have taken as a departure from Catholic doctrine on the role of Jesus Christ in salvation.

'All religions are a path to reach God.

They are, I make a comparison, like different languages, different idioms to get there, but God is God for everyone,' Pope Francis told a gathering of young people September 13th at an interreligious meeting at the Catholic Junior College of Singapore, according to a text of the speech published by the Vatican.

The pope continued, 'And since God is God for everyone, we are all children of God, but my God is more important than yours.

Is this true?

There is only one God and our religions are languages, paths to reach God.

Some are Sikh, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, some are Christian, but they are different paths.' Now, this sounds like the heresy of pluralism or religious indifferentism.

That's the idea that it doesn't matter what religion you belong to because all religions are just different paths that ascend the same mountain and get to the same place, God, but Christianity is different than any other religion.

While other manmade religions try to reach God by their own merits, Christianity teaches that God reached out or came down to us by becoming man and dying on the cross for our sins.

Indifferentism is especially insidious because it makes Christian martyrs fools because they could have gone to heaven anyways if they accepted the false religions being imposed upon them.

In Dominus Iesus, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the following, It would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological Kingdom of God.

I think it's important at the outset to say, it is not good the pope said these things.

It just isn't.

Refusing to admit that is a clear example of popesplaining.

It's confusing, and as the shepherd of Christ's Church, the pope shouldn't confuse his flock or the faithful.

Now, some people say statements like these don't matter because they aren't ex cathedra or they're not infallibly declared, but we still have to submit to the pope's ordinary teachings.

However, not only is the pope not teaching infallibly in this case, he's not even teaching at all, or if he is, it carries negligible magisterial weight.

The pope was giving an informal address to a group on an overseas trip.

The Second Vatican Council said, Submission to the pope's authentic magisterium, his official teaching, is given according to his manifest mind and will, and his mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

In other words, a one-off comment in an informal setting has no magisterial weight in comparison to many official statements that say the opposite.

In Francis' encyclical Joy of the Gospel, he said, No one is saved by himself or herself, individually or by his or her own efforts, and, Evangelization is first and foremost about preaching the gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ or who have always rejected him.

In a 2016 homily, the pope said, Thus it is all very clear.

One cannot enter into eternal life through another way that is not the door, that is, which is not Jesus.

I often speak off the cuff at conferences or on Catholic Answers Live, and I don't always phrase things the best way.

That kind of thing happens to everyone, but if I said something scandalous that was getting spread all over the internet, I would make a statement.

I would say, I apologize for any confusion I've caused.

I misspoke.

I meant to say this instead.

And Pope Francis should do the same thing for the good of the Church.

I mean, the pope's advisors knew a correction could be warranted because they briefly changed the official English translation of his remarks.

They added phrases like, Other religions are seen as paths trying to reach God, and languages that try to express and approach God.

Now, that is much more in harmony with the church's teaching that other non-Christian religions have some truth in them that can bring people closer to God but not salvation.

In Acts 17:23, Saint Paul told the Greeks, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

In other words, a person could be directing worship to the true God but not know it because they are ignorant of God's true nature beyond basic facts like there being one God who is the creator.

The catechism likewise says the following in paragraph 843.

The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search among shadows and images for the God who is unknown, yet near, since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved.

Thus, the church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as, quote, a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.

As for criticizing people for saying, My God is better than your god, hopefully what he means is that we shouldn't be obnoxious or triumphalistic towards non-Christians and treat them as if God doesn't love them yet or that they don't have any relationship with God, and say we should find sensible common ground with the aspects of God they do recognize and then lead those people to a fuller understanding of the triune God.

Hopefully the sensible message is what the pope meant.But the problem is that that's not clear at all from what the Pope actually said, which is why the translators changed his English response back to, All religions are paths to God.

And the Italian original actually means paths to arrive at God, which is really problematic.

Now, the Pope may have meant other religions are incomplete paths towards reaching God, and so Christians should build on those incomplete paths to help people fully know Jesus Christ, who is the path or way of salvation.

But that wasn't clear in the Pope's address, and the Pope should provide that additional clarity for those who are understandably confused by his words.

He's done that before on blessing people rather than same-sex unions, and even Pope Benedict XVI clarified comments he made that caused confusion about the morality of condom usage.

So, what does that mean for the rest of us?

When it comes to non-Catholics, saying the Pope is confusing, therefore Catholicism is false, is a terrible argument because the Bible is far more confusing than the Pope.

And unlike a living magisterium, the Bible cannot issue any clarifying statements about itself or what its authors meant.

Now, a Protestant might make a softer argument and say that the Pope's statements show Catholicism has no advantage over Protestantism because Catholics and Protestants both have to use private judgment when interpreting their teaching authority, be it the Bible or the church.

And I agree it's a bad argument to say Catholics don't rely on private judgments, but Protestants do have to rely on that.

I had to use private judgment to determine Catholicism was true before I converted to it 22 years ago.

But we can say Catholicism has an advantage in providing doctrinal clarity that relies the least on private judgments.

For example, Catholicism strongly teaches the existence of hell and its eternity, but Protestantism has no standard that can determine whether the error of universalism, or that everyone's going to end up in heaven, is just a divergent Christian belief like the Armenian Calvinist debate, whether it is a Christian heresy, or whether it represents a total rejection of the gospel.

It can't say that because the Bible does not say which doctrines it teaches are essential and which Christians can reasonably disagree about, which is a point I've addressed in previous episodes.

In fact, some of the bishops have a liberal streak, especially when they speak off the cuff.

But I've noticed that the Holy Spirit, if I may presume, ends up leading them to fairly conservative positions.

But that's not the case in Protestantism.

Even Redeemed Zoomer, who I've had on the show before and had a great dialogue with, and hopefully will again in the future, he recently announced he will no longer engage in Protestant apologetics because he feels like Protestantism has to fix its own liberal mess first before it invites Catholics and Orthodox to it.

He wrote on X, Why did virtually every historic Protestant institution get hijacked by liberalism and Catholic, Eastern, and Oriental Orthodox ones didn't?

Some vaguely woke statements from the Pope are nothing like the majority of pastors in every mainline Protestant denomination being LGBTQ-affirming and universalist.

So, that's what I would say in regards to non-Catholics.

When it comes to Catholics, I would encourage you to not fall into despair every time a bishop or the Pope says or does something dumb.

When Napoleon Bonaparte threatened to destroy the Catholic Church, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi is alleged to have said in response, If in 1,800 years we clergy have failed to destroy the Church, do you really think that you'll be able to do it?

Many theologians, including Pope Benedict XVI, say the Holy Spirit only permits certain popes to be chosen and that God doesn't directly choose popes.

But in the Book of Judges, God directly chose Israel's leaders and some of them turned out to be awful, engaging in sins as bad as idolatry.

But God was able to use those flawed people to guide his chosen people.

So, I would encourage you to pray for the Pope, including that he will amend his behavior and be a better leader, and I just hope that this will not take your peace.

And look, I know that's not easy advice to give, but, uh, what else can we do?

Praying to God is always better than whining to ourselves or to others.

If you read the Psalms, you'll find all kinds of passages where the psalmist basically complains to God and pleads for help.

God is not a boss that you or I have to constantly please or be on our toes about.

We can be honest with God about our struggles.

That's what I love about our Lord.

And we can be honest about the things we struggle with, including the Pope.

First Peter 5:6-7 says the following.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you.

Cast all your anxieties on Him, for He cares about you.

For example, I am mad Pope Francis says Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both against life because Trump supports deportation and Harris is pro-abortion.

And he says Americans should vote for the lesser of two evils, but he won't say which is which.

But this gives cover to those who say that they are equally wrong on life, which just isn't true.

For example, the Pope says it's a grave sin to turn migrants away, but Harris says that she will secure the border, which obviously involves turning migrants away.

And the Biden-Harris administration deported more people than Trump did.

Does that mean Harris is bad on immigration and abortion, and so she's the greater of two evils?

And while direct abortion is always wrong and the Pope calls it assassination, deportation is not intrinsically evil.

I have a whole episode on that linked below.

The Pope even said in a 2024 interview with 60 Minutes that deportation, unlike direct abortion, can be justified.

The migrant has to be received.

Thereafter, you see how you're going to deal with them.

Maybe you have to send them back.

I don't know.

But each case ought to be considered humanely, right?

So, while Trump and Harris both want to turn away migrants and deport people, Trump wants to make it possible for states to protect the unborn and Harris wants to make it impossible for states to do that.

That should be very clear, but the Pope has made it anything but clear on these issues, and that angers me.

It's confusing on really important issues.

But in the midst of that anger, I remember what scripture says in Ephesians 4. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another.

Be angry, but do not sin.Do not let the sun go down on your anger and Give no opportunity to the devil.

Put away falsehoods and Don't hold onto anger.

The problem is that the internet teaches us to do the opposite of those things, and that's really bad for our souls.

For example, some people accuse me of being a Popesplainer or Popesplaining, or they say I'm naive because I won't just say the obvious, which according to them is that Pope Francis is a heretic trying to cover his tracks and this is all part of his plan to destroy the church.

And that I should say that or I'm being naive.

Well, I'd rather be a naive member of the elect than a calumnious member of the damned.

I see so many Catholics online making the worst kinds of accusations, calumny against other people.

That's a grave sin.

And they're saying this not just about the Pope but about all kinds of people.

For example, they'll say a certain non-Catholic apologist knows he's wrong, and so he lies to his audience about the evidence because he's too proud to admit that he's wrong.

Or they'll say a certain priest is soft on LGBT issues because he's gay or he's engaging in sex acts with other men.

Or they'll say the Pope says the things he does because the Pope wants to destroy the church.

It's easy to make these kinds of accusations online, especially when you have an anonymous account.

But you and I are not anonymous to God, which is why Jesus said, On the day of judgment, men will render account for every careless word they utter.

And James Chapter 3 says, The tongue is a little member and boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire?

And the tongue is a fire.

The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind, but no human being can tame the tongue, a restless evil full of deadly poison.

With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brethren, this ought not be so.

So let's take our anger, frustration, our fear.

Let's give that back to God in prayer and not turn it into calumny or into curses that we give online.

And we should graciously use technology though.

We can use things like email or responsible social media use to ask our pastors to give the faithful, as well as those who are inquiring about the faith, the clarity that leads to a knowledge of Jesus Christ.

So thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.