Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis has said in his latest urging that people of all religions, and none, work together.
The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics made his comments in the homily of his morning mass at his residence, a daily event at which he speaks without prepared comments.
He told the story of a Catholic who asked a priest if even atheists had been redeemed by Jesus.
“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.”
The Pope, curiously, made no mention of the daily temperature at this meeting point.
May 23, 2013 at 7:40 pm
Oh dear.
May 23, 2013 at 8:03 pm
You should read the actual text of the Pope's homily. He emphasizes that every person, Catholic or not, should do good and avoid evil. The reason is because each person (not just each Catholic) is made in the image and likeness of God. In other words, we gotta start somewhere to evangelize…why not start by agreeing that each person has a duty to do good and avoid evil?
May 23, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Nothing new. He simply reiterated the teaching of Vatican II in Lumen Gentium – a dogmatic constitution.
May 23, 2013 at 9:02 pm
Everyone is misunderstanding what the pope is saying because of a failure to distinguish between redemption and salvation… This doesn't depart from tradition at all…
Read my take here: http://www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com/2013/05/pope-francis-says-everyone-is-going-to.html
May 23, 2013 at 9:24 pm
If we meet at where people do good, the conversation about WHY we do good can start. Which was the point our celebrant last night took from the day's Gospel.
May 23, 2013 at 9:44 pm
I read the actual text and the problem is people are mistaking redemption with salvation, as has already been mentioned. The old Baltimore Catechism #4, Q109 says: "every human being in the world is a child of God and has been redeemed by Our Lord."
Furthermore, according to St. Robert Bellarmine in De Gratis et Libero Arbitrio, doing good is one way we become open to God bringing us to that faith, without which it is impossible to please Him. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once. If one actually does consistently do good, he should end up with the faith and among the elect.
May 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm
We Catholics must teach them all. Help them all. Feed them all. Educate them all. In the hopes that Christ is given the opportunity ( by each individual) to save them. Seem times I wish we would only help Catholics, especially in education circles to avoid nonsensical selfish issues from non Catholics or buffet style Catholics. But fortunately for me Catholics are here for the world. T do Christs work in the world for the world.
May 23, 2013 at 11:49 pm
Once again where the Secular Media is starting to turn against the Pope by taking his words out of context. We saw how much of this they did with Pope Emeritus Benedict. He said that we all have to an obliged to do good and avoid evil no matter what faith or lack of faith we have. Just a few days ago it was about the supposed "exorcism" that really was NOT. The Guardian and other secular media is making him something he is not.
May 24, 2013 at 3:17 am
…not second guessing the Pope,
…but, there is an understanding, that at the hour of death, an opportunity to provide (through prayers of the faithful) the intervention of Divine Mercy, to bestow the grace, of the "baptism of desire" to a person of such desposition as to be sincerely desirous of heaven.
As explained by the Blessed Mother, all people are equal, but not all religions.
At Fatima, she stated that poor souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them!
It is through "lack" of charity that they are lost!
As faith has shown us, the mysteries of the triune God are unfathomable!
May 25, 2013 at 8:03 am
Stipulating all of the valiant efforts to clarify the Pope's comments to the "choir", how can he not understand the confusion and misinterpretations his words have/will create?
How does this comment help, exactly? Without digging out Church encyclicals to justify it "legally", how does this not feed into the idea of relativism?
Also, after 500 years of antipathy from our Protestant brethren, how does this notion of "works" vs faith play out in their minds? I'm just waiting to catch !@#$ from my evangelical friends that don't need any more reasons to distrust Catholic apologetics as nuance.
After living through decades of JP2, while a great and saintly man, he often seemed oblivious to the disintegrating effects of the hermeneutics of discontinuity.
Pope Benedict's prediction that there will, in the future, be a much smaller Church, seems a more imminent reality than I had hoped.
May 27, 2013 at 6:45 pm
Never did I see Pope Francis use the words, "okey dokey". So what do you mean by "okey dokey" and what exactly are you questioning about our Holy Father in this phrase you have quoted?
May 27, 2013 at 6:48 pm
I'm pretty sure our Holy Father is emphasizing that we meet people where they are at regardless of their faith. Jesus died for ALL of us and he dined with the sinners.