As long as you’re not Catholic, that is…
Video:
Francis Doesn’t Care What Religion You Are
The following clip has recently been making the rounds. It is a brief excerpt from a video made in 2013 when Francis visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for World Youth Day. In it, he declares that it is not important to him whether someone lacking food and education receives a Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Jewish education, as long as he is fed and gets educated. We provide an English translation and a link to the full interview below.
The entire interview, which was broadcast on Brazilian television at the time, can be watched at this link (with English subtitles); the so-called Catholic News Agency has a summary of the conversation posted here. The part excerpted in the video above occurs at the very end of the interview. Let’s take a closer look at what Francis says (note in particular the words underlined):
25’40”
I think we need to foster a culture of encounter all around the world… all around the world, where everyone feels the need to give to mankind the ethical values that humanity needs and to defend this human reality.
26’08”
In this regard, I think it’s important that we all work for each other, to eradicate egoism… work for each other according to the values of one’s own faith. Each faith has its own beliefs, but according to the values of one’s own faith, work for the other people. Let’s all get together to work for the others.
26’35”
If there is a child that is hungry and has no education, what should matter to us is that he gets food and education. I don’t care if this education is given by Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox or Jews. What matters is that this child receives an education and ceases to be hungry. We all have to agree on that.
27’00”
Nowadays the urgency is such that we cannot fight among ourselves at the expense of the other people.
27’10”
First we have to work for our neighbor, and then we can have discussions about higher principles where each one of us expresses the reasons of our faiths, trying to reach mutual understanding.
27’25”
But, especially nowadays, [helping our] neighbor is more urgent. Come out of one’s self to solve the great problems of the world.
27’35”
I believe that religions… the many confessions — as I prefer to call them — cannot have peace of mind while there is a single child dying of starvation, a single child without education, a single young or old person without health care.
28’00”
However, it is true that the purpose of religion — of the many confessions — is not charity, but at least in our Catholic faith, in our Christian faith, we are going to be judged by these works of mercy.
The humanist indifferentism Francis unashamedly displays here is breathtaking. It is very apparent that the man sees Catholicism as simply one religion among many, one which he “believes in” and “prefers” perhaps (wink, wink), but one that objectively has no greater status or value than any other religion. Indeed, he encourages people to “work for each other according to the values of one’s own faith”, which “has its own beliefs”.
He then explains what he means: As long as we feed poor hungry children and give them some sort of education, “I don’t care if this education is given by Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, or Jews”. Hey, who cares if a child’s soul is put on the path of eternal perdition through the heresies of the Lutherans, the false teachings of the Orthodox, or the frightening Christ-rejecting blasphemies of the Talmudists, right? After all, the body is so much more important than the soul, right?! Let’s see what Holy Scripture has to say about this:
And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.
(Mt 10:28)
For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist. Look to yourselves, that you lose not the things which you have wrought: but that you may receive a full reward. Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you.
(2 Jn 1:7-10)
Now, before the usual Novus Ordo loudmouth bloggers start complaining, let’s be very clear about something: Of course we must feed the hungry. Of course a child who is hungry must first be fed before you instruct him in the Gospel and give him a sound education. Our Blessed Lord did the same thing — He first attended to people’s bodily needs, then taught them (e.g., see Jn 6, esp. Jn 6:26). The bodily need of food, though in itself not as important as the spiritual needs of the soul, is nevertheless often more urgent.
We’re not disputing this. What we have a problem with is Francis’ cavalier and indifferentist assertion that he does not care (“no me interesa”) whether a person receives a Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish education. He casually shrugs off the differences between the religions as mere “fight[s] among ourselves”, as though the difference between the true religion established by Almighty God and the diabolical sects that oppose this true religion were merely an academic dispute (“discussions about higher principles”) that is of much lesser importance than charitable deeds. (Can you imagine what he would have said about the Church’s fight against the Semi-Arians over — literally — one iota of doctrine [homoousion vs. homoiousion]?)
Let’s remember the salutary words of Pope Clement XIII at this point, as a stark little reality check:
In the Lord’s field, for the tending of which Divine Providence placed Us as overseer, there is nothing which demands as much vigilant care and unremitting labor in its cultivation than guarding the good seed of Catholic teaching which the Apostles received from Jesus Christ and handed on to Us. If in laziness this is neglected, the enemy of the human race will sow weeds while the workers sleep. Then weeds will be found which should be committed to the flames rather than good grain to store in the barns. However, St. Paul strongly encourages Us to protect the faith that the saints handed on to Us. He told Timothy to preserve the sacred trust because dangerous times were coming when evil and deceitful men would exist in the Church of God. The insidious tempters would use their work to try to infect unwary minds with errors which are hostile to evangelical truth.
It often happens that certain unworthy ideas come forth in the Church of God which, although they directly contradict each other, plot together to undermine the purity of the Catholic faith in some way. It is very difficult to cautiously balance our speech between both enemies in such a way that We seem to turn Our backs on none of them, but to shun and condemn both enemies of Christ equally. Meanwhile the matter is such that diabolical error, when it has artfully colored its lies, easily clothes itself in the likeness of truth while very brief additions or changes corrupt the meaning of expressions; and confession, which usually works salvation, sometimes, with a slight change, inches toward death.
The faithful — especially those who are simple or uncultivated — should be kept away from dangerous and narrow paths upon which they can hardly set foot without faltering. The sheep should not be led to pasture through trackless places….
(Pope Clement XIII, Encyclical In Dominico Agro, nn. 1-3)
Oops — looks like Pope Clement didn’t exactly share the Bergoglian indifferentism regarding doctrine as more or less “internal disputes between friends.” St. Paul, too, must not have known about Bergoglio’s soup-kitchen gospel when he wrote, “But without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6).
Francis reveals that he believes in some sort of “ethical values that humanity needs” that can be given by any religion and are thus independent of Catholicism, that can be said to “transcend” all religions. That’s why to him it does not matter whether these values are instilled by “Catholics”, Protestants, Jews, etc.
But of course this is utter nonsense, condemned by the Church long before Vatican II. The same God who created humanity also established Catholicism. The same God who made all people in His image also wills them all to attain eternal salvation in and through the true Roman Catholic Church, the only ark of salvation (not to be confused with the sorry pseudo-Catholic sect headed by Francis). This the true Church has always preached. Francis, on the other hand, preaches the Masonic doctrine of a brotherhood of man that is to be attained through a “culture of encounter” and that is intrinsically divorced from the true religion and religious truth. It is a prelude, no doubt, to the one-world religion that will at some point be presided over by the antichrist, seeking to “reconcile all religions” on the outrageous but immensely popular lie that ultimately all religions teach the same thing.
Let’s review how Pope St. Pius X condemned similar errors that were already rearing their ugly head in his own day, roughly 100 years ago:
And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
…
We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness.
But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.
He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body.
Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique; underlining and paragraph breaks added.)
This really speaks for itself. Francis preaches a false gospel, that very “impotent humanitarianism” condemned by Pope Pius X.
Nor will it do to point out that at the end of the interview, Bergoglio concedes that “the purpose of religion … is not charity” because he does not say what, then, the purpose of religion (true religion, we might add) is instead. In fact, he adds: “but at least in our Catholic faith, in our Christian faith, we are going to be judged by these works of mercy”, an allusion to Mt 25:31-46. While it is true that we will be judged based on the works of mercy we have shown, this is by no means the only criterion by which we will be judged, as though all that mattered in the end is how many hungry mouths we’ve fed and how much money we’ve given to charity: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk 16:16; see also Rom 1:17; Rom 3:26). Francis here seems to endorse the heresy of Pelagianism, which taught salvation by works and denied the absolute necessity of grace.
click to enlarge
What Francis says in this 2013 interview jibes entirely with the many other things he’s said since, such as when he told Protestants he’s not interested in converting them to Catholicism, when said that today’s Jews have a valid covenant with God, or when he said that Muslims can obtain “abundant spiritual fruit” through the observance of Ramadan and ought to share their “faith” using the Koran.
Furthermore, Bergoglio’s statement that in interreligious dialogue each of the parties “expresses the reasons of our faiths, trying to reach mutual understanding” is perfectly in line with his brilliant claim that “no one owns the truth”, as though divine truth were merely a matter of “opinion”, concerning which the purpose of doctrinal discussions is not the conversion of the other but merely that of “mutual understanding.” (Sound familiar?)
Ultimately, no one will take a “Pope” seriously who is so unimpressed by his own (supposed) religious convictions that he doesn’t really care if anyone else shares them. Obviously his religion isn’t worth looking into if he himself takes a “take-it-or-leave-it” approach.
Under the guise of love, brotherhood, peace, and harmony, and the corporal works of mercy, this bold heretic Jorge Bergoglio promotes a most dangerous indifferentism, which always leads to apostasy.
The danger to souls “Pope Francis” represents cannot be overestimated. He is a honey-mouthed spreader of pernicious poison that will cause unspeakable ruin to souls!
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