“Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.”

— Pope Francis, in an interview with avowed atheist Eugenio Scalfari, La Repubblica, Oct. 1, 2013

Below are astute Catholic commentators poised to respond to the interview. They will say he didn’t really say what he said.

— Comments —

Loren writes:

Sort of makes you pine for the days when the Medicis’ ran the church. When did we start picking existentialists for Pope? I thought you had to believe in Jesus Christ and his precepts.

Fred Owens writes:

“Bergoglio Bomb of the Day”

This is not good form. Calling Pope Francis by his last name is assuming the very familiarity that you decry. Please call him Pope Francis — that is his name by all the rites that we believe in. He may not measure up to the chair he occupies and your critical response to his interviews are very well-thought out and worth serious consideration.  But he is the Pope and his name is Francis .

You are right to point out that the Pope is not our “friend” and his hippie manners are not appropriate, but he was chosen by the College of Cardinals under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And this is the great thing about the Catholic Church — it will survive and flourish, good pope or bad pope.

Thank you for your good work.

Laura writes:

Normally, I would absolutely agree. These are not normal times.

Dan writes:

I am well and truly scared. This is everywhere. I am not Catholic (I have a different Christian denomination) but this looks like otherworldly destruction. Francis is having a good time yammering among his enemies who apparently known his doctrine better than he does and gleefully quote his heresies from the rooftops. I feel like I am going to a bad place just for living in this era and not doing more.

“Proselytism is solemn nonsense”?

No, it is actually the Great Commission. Let’s review that again.

The Great Commission

^{(Matt 28:16-20, NIV)}

¹⁶ Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

I sure don’t see any way to weasel out of calling ‘nonsense’ that which was Jesus’ great command. Can Francis repent publicly for saying that? Has a Pope ever done that? He wants to show us how humble he is, and now it is showtime. Because excommunicating the Pope would raise eyebrows.

Dan adds:

Francis said this about gay ‘marriage’ in Argentina as recently as 2010:

“Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Those are some strong comments. I think the man who said those things in 2010 would not have said the things Francis has said in 2013, if he had all of his faculties. Would he have bashed those who are activists for traditional marriage if he remembered that he was this activist? The mildly senile tend to lose memories of the recent past while still being functional and sounding coherent.

If Francis is facing senility, that will become clear in time. Still the Church doesn’t get a do-over.

Laura writes:

There are many other disturbing comments in this interview. It’s all too much and I can’t go into the entire thing now or closely analyze it at the moment. Among the other objectionable statements are this:

“I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being.”

And this,

“From my point of view, God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us. In the letter I wrote to you, you will remember I said that our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone.”

We know what he’s getting at when he says, “There is no Catholic God:” that there is only one God, who is the Creator and Lord of everyone. Still it is a shockingly coarse statement, especially when read in the light of modern relativism and ecumenism. The idea that at the end the light of God “will invade all souls” and will be in everyone suggests universal salvation and flies in the face of Revelation.

If Francis were suffering from senility, I believe he would show some physical symptoms and obvious confusion. Still, it is certainly in the realm of possibility. I pray for him. The problem is, much of his thinking corresponds to modernist heresies prevalent in the Church for more than 50 years. So though he may be rambling, he is expressing a coherent belief system.

Laura writes:

Francis spoke further on proselytism in a homily today. Here is an excerpt:

“Another spirit comes, that of that charity that suffers all, pardons all, that does not boast, that is humble, that doesn’t seek itself. Someone could say — and there are some philosophers that thing this way — that this is a humiliation of the majesty of man, of the greatness of man. This is sterile! The Church has wisely made this saint, humble, small, trusting in God, meek: she has made her the Patron of Missions.” …

“The Church, Benedict XVI told us, does not grow through proselytism, it grows through attraction, through witness. And when the people see this witness of humility, of meekness, of mildness, they feel the need that the Prophet Zachariah spoke of: ‘We want to come with you.’ The people feel that need in the face of the witness of charity, of this humble charity, without bullying, not sufficient, humble. Worship and serve!” …

Laura adds:

Also, there is this statement in the interview:

The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don’t even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present. You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

If this is senility, it is disturbingly close to “Catholic” socialist thought. Given the moral depravity that surrounds us, it is yet another shocking comment from the Pope.

Laura continues:

Again, if this is senility, it looks suspiciously like Vatican II orthodoxy. From George Neumayr at The American Spectator, regarding the Scalfari interview:

Under spirit-of-Vatican-II-style attitudinizing, the world enlightens the Church, not the Church the world. Anyone who is familiar with the cocky clichés of lightweight, dilettantish modern Jesuits will understand the import of this interview and hear all of its dog whistles: the praising of the late heterodox Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, the politically correct sniffing at St. Augustine (“He also had harsh words for the Jews, which I never shared”), the condescension to saints of the past as products of their unenlightened times (as if Francis is not a product of his liberal times and liberal religious order; self-awareness is evidently not part of his “humility and ambition”), the Teilhard de Chardin-style jargon (“Transcendence remains because that light, all in everything, transcends the universe and the species it inhabits at that stage…”).

Were St. Ignatius of Loyola alive today, he wouldn’t recognize Francis as a Jesuit. He might not even recognize him as a Catholic. For all of his chirpy talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Francis speaks like a subjectivist, for whom religion is not something received from the triune God but something created from within, which is the hallmark of modernism, from which the spirit of Vatican II sprung. How else to explain a pope who tells an atheist to seek salvation by following what he considers “the Good”?

Laura writes:

And one more whopper direct from the interview (as translated by the Vatican):

We need greater freedom, no discrimination, no demagoguery and much love. We need rules of conduct and even, if it is necessary, direct intervention by the State to correct the most intolerable inequalities.

Terry Morris writes:

Unbelievable!: Ann Barnhardt quotes Pope Francis at her site as saying that (paraphrase) each of us has a sense of good and evil, and that therefore people need to be encouraged to follow the good and fight evil AS THEY CONCEIVE THEM.

So if I conceive as good the murder of unborn children for the sake of female autonomy and her ability to pursue her dreams unimpeded by an accidental, unwanted pregnancy (or however I wind up justifying my conception), then no matter what the scriptures, nor what the Church, teach me on the subject, I am to follow this perceived good and fight the “evil” that is its opposite. Meanwhile he who is of the opposite persuasion is to do the same with regard to his conceptions.

So the Pope is sowing dissension within the Church, while simultaneously encouraging “free thinkers” outside it to bring it under their submission. He is actively trying to destroy the Church from within and without.

This man is an anti-Christ!

Laura writes:

As I said, there is so much in this interview.

The actual quote, from the English translation by La Repubblica, is:

“Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.”

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