Pope Regarding Hell: “Let not your heart be troubled.”

Excellent article by Christopher Altieri in the Catholic Herald. This should get through even to the "Pope Francis is just like Jesus who ate with sinners" people: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/com...es-pope-francis-still-trust-eugenio-scalfari/

Why on earth does Pope Francis still trust Eugenio Scalfari?

by Christopher Altieri
posted Friday, 30 Mar 2018

Eugenio Scalfari (Photo: PA)
The Holy Father's meetings with the 93-year-old consistently result in confusion and scandal

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.

About that last thing, Scalfari quotes Francis as saying, “[The souls of] those, who do not repent and [therefore] cannot be forgiven, disappear. A ‘hell’ does not exist: what exists is the disappearance of sinful souls.” If the Pope said that, or anything that fairly amounts to that, he would be a heretic. There were other highly problematic expressions, which Scalfari put in the mouth of the Pope, as well: talk of “divine nature” and inert creation brought to life by a sort of divine or semi-divine “energy” that sounds exciting and speculatively daring in the ears of hippies and devotees of the New Age, but that really come to hackneyed and sixth-rate rehashings of primitive cosmological speculation.

Knowing what they come to, however, tells us nothing about where they’ve come from: Scalfari’s head? Pope Francis’s mouth?

The Press Office of the Holy See issued a statement on Thursday afternoon, denying Scalfari’s report is a faithful representation of Pope Francis’s ipsissima verba — his exact words — but avoiding a repudiation of the Pope’s ipsissima vox — that is to say, the general sense, meaning or purport of his remarks:

The Holy Father recently received the founder of the daily La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without, however, releasing any interview. Everything reported by the author in [Thursday’s] article is the fruit of his own reconstruction, in which the verbatim words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No direct report of speech, therefore, may be considered a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

One has the impression they took great care to avoid such repudiation. That may or may not be the case. It is also neither here nor there. The statement is not satisfactory. To be perfectly frank, nothing in this situation is satisfactory, or even close to it. The headlines generated around the world declaring hell abolished and the Catholic Church changed forever are false. The story they headline, however, is not.

The universal pastor and governor of the Church is reported to have given expression to ideas that, should he be found to have expressed them, are contrary to the faith. Pope Francis must 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, the stronger the case becomes for believing he cannot.

For the record, Pope Francis has spoken of hell as though he believes it is real. The Pope has threatened Mafiosi with it, should they fail to repent, and explained to a Girl Scout at the Tor Bella Monaca parish he was visiting in 2015 that anyone can go there who clings to the delusion of self-sufficiency and refuses to beg God’s mercy (which God will not refuse anyone who asks Him it), and described it during the course of a November 2016 fervorino in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae as a place in which one exists deprived of God’s charity.

Why Pope Francis would continue to trust that man, Scalfari, is beyond reckoning. Nearly half a dozen times since Francis’s election, have we been treated to a round of Scalfarism, the circuit of which is predictable enough, but each time more pernicious in its effect. Even if Pope Francis believes that Scalfari’s soul depends on continuing their conversations and allowing Scalfari to take egregious license with his reportage of them, he must know that the inevitable results of his commerce with the man are confusion and scandal, hence that his persistence in it constitutes a failure in his mission to confirm the brethren.

It is easy to believe the Holy Father motivated in his continued commerce with Scalfari by genuine charity, by desire that Scalfari’s soul be not lost. If the Pope’s intentions in all this are blameless, his judgment is nevertheless —indeed all the more — appalling. If the Pope’s solicitude for Scalfari’s soul is indeed so great, and Scalfari’s protestation of friendship sincere, then let Francis resign the office and go talk with his friend all day long over vino burino and briscola.

 

Very relevant
Thanks for posting

 

I would like to see a fake news article claiming that the Pope had praised Traditionalists and the Orthodox in the church. We would see a swift, strong rebuttal from the pope or Vatican, like when Cardinal Sarah recommended Mass ad orientem; and the opposite of what we have now with this "hellish" issue.

 

They can be as clear as crystal and as swift as vipers when they wish to be.

 

Wow. Thank you so much for posting. It is like rain on parched earth.

 

Was Pope Francis Reprimanded By Cardinals?


Antonio Socci writes on his blog that Pope Francis was reprimanded for his hell heresies by a senior cardinal of non-Italian origin who contacted other cardinals and confronted Francis also in their name.

Socci points out that uttering heresies is one of the four reasons causing a pope to lose his office.

After the reprimand, Francis consulted with his follower, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the Substitute of the Secretariat of State.

This produced an ambiguous declaration of the Vatican that was not ambiguous enough, so that, instead of dispelling Francis’ heresy, it confirmed it.

 

Wow! Thanks for this, Jarg.

 

I hope this is not true because if it is, the implications of it are beyond shocking. How reliable is Antonio Socci? Has Sandro Magister reported on this?

We must step up our prayers for the Pope and his inner circle.

 

Yes, when saying the Morning Offering prayer, I both pray for the Pope's intentions for the as well as for himself in following Christ.

 

View attachment 7656

 

Double up on the prayers, then, because if the above is true we are back to the days of Arius where two thirds of the hierarchy were heretics or were willing to turn a blind eye to their brothers who believed and spread the heresy of Arius. Rather than following Christ, heretics distort His message.

If Pope Francis has shared heretical beliefs with Scalfari, it is very likely he has shared the same beliefs with others who may well have taken notes or have had tape recorders. He did a series of TV broadcasts in Argentina with a Presbyterian (later appointed editor to Argentina's Catholic newspaper) and a Rabbi. They were his friends too. Nobody in the Vatican can know what was said in off-camera discussions or whether those discussions were recorded. It is also likely that the Pope shared his beliefs with people like Fr. Spadaro, Fr. James Martin, Fr. Sosa, Cardinal Maradiaga, Archbishop Fernandez and many others who have made sometimes outright and sometimes borderline heretical statements. You may be sure that at least one of them has taken notes if only with an eye to writing his own memoirs in the future. That's why Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, who appears not to be among the Pope's clique can't say that Scalfari's report is a lie. The Vatican has had ample opportunity to say that Scalfari's reports are untrue, yet it fails to do so every time. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from that failure is that Scalfari's reports, while not direct quotes, are an accurate reflection of what the Pope has told him.

 

The question of what the Pope said to Scalfari is the most important question in the Church right now. Perhaps in all of history.

That is not me being overly dramatic. Scalfari has accused the Pope of heresy and abandoning certain basic tenets of the faith.

That is serious beyond all seriousness.

And all the Vatican has to say about it is that those were not the Pope's exact words?

 

The denial of Hell is a far greater heresy than Arianism. It is the rejection even of the fear of God. It is a placing of Man above God-it is an announcement that: "hey, God, you can't touch us, we'll do what we like". That it is irrational and absurd and simply cannot end well seems totally opaque to its adherents, God help them.

 

We must all pray very hard that Cardinal Burke (or someone else) deliver's a fraternal correction which makes it explicitly clear that portions of what are being taught in the Church now are heretical. This is the only way out of the current situation. That would take away any plausible deniability that the Pope could claim that he is unaware. If in some way the Pope is unaware of the confusion in the Church then at that point he no longer would be.

 

I do not expect Cardinal Burke or any other Churchmen to act at this point. (“Those who should speak will remain silent.”)

I expect it will only get worse (“The Church will seem to be in eclipse...”) until that time that God must directly intervene in human history, unfortunately.

 

It smacks of Teihard de Jardin. That heretical poison has infected many but especially Jesuits.

 

I hope and pray you are wrong, but you may be right.
If Cardinal Burke didn't follow through or doesn't intend to then I am at a loss as to why. Things have only gotten worse. They are much worse now than when the Dubia were first delivered.

My hope is that the correction has already been delivered in private and that is why Cardinal Burke is so quiet recently. Time will tell...

 

I beleven Pope Francis did say that there is no hell because if he didn'the he would have said so by now.

So therefore he is mostly certainly a heretic and a public blatant one attached that.

On Holy Saturday I was thinking of the phrase 'He descended into hell', in the Creed How could Christ have gone to a place that doesn'the exist?

As to this latest heresyou I know it is up to the Cardinals to deal with it.I am just left wondering what'should next from Francis?

 

Not sure how accurate it is, but the website, Canon212, has the headline “Sochi: A Powerful, Non-Italian Cardinal Threatened Francis with Impeachment over his Worldwide Scandal on Hell” which links to https://translate.google.com/transl...farlocca-e-il-rischio-impeachment/&edit-text=

 

I'm sure it is a translation error, but no Pope can be impeached.
Unfortunately for us Canon 1404 states “The First See is judged by no one.”

Judging is done by a superior to an inferior. Coming from democracies, we forget that the Church is a Monarchy.

The only One superior to the Pope is God (or perhaps a later Pope).

The only way I understand that a Pope could even possibly be removed from office is for him to depose himself by declaring himself a pertinacious heretic. In that case the Church wouldn't be judging him, it would simply be recognizing that he had judged himself by cutting himself off from the Church. Something this Pope is preternaturally (it would seem) able to avoid.