What Do We Do If Our Pope Preaches Heresy? – Part 1

The papacy of Pope Francis has been clouded in controversy since his election in 2013. From trying to stomp out the Latin Mass to approving the blessing of so-called gay couples to not properly dealing with priests who were sexual-abusers, our current pontiff has caused the biggest rift among the Catholic faithful of any other pope in more than 500 years. (See Pope Alexander VI in 1503.)  Showing no signs of halting the hullabaloo he seems to cause on a regular basis, Francis earlier this month performed perhaps his most egregious act when in a talk with a gathering of young adults in Singapore he denied that Christianity stands alone as the one true religion which God commanded to all people to believe and he negated Jesus’s own words that there is no other way to salvation with God than through His Son.

Pope Francis made the following remarks in Singapore on September 13:

“All religions are a path to get to God. They are – I make a comparison – like different languages, different idioms, to get there. But God is God for all. And because God is God for everyone, we are all God’s children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’ Is this true? There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to get to God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths. Understood?” 

Some may argue that the Pope was simply trying to be inclusive and inoffensive when speaking to citizens of a multi-religious country like Singapore – where less than 4% of the population of six million are Catholic; with 26% Buddhist, 18% Muslim, and 8% Hindu. Unfortunately, his comments are blatantly in conflict with the teaching of the Catholic Church and Christianity in general by asserting that all religions are essentially equal, that all present valid ways of approaching God, and that it does not matter which religion a person follows. This type of thinking is called “religious indifferentism.” 

Francis’s support of religious indifferentism is fundamentally at odds with Catholic doctrine because it believes in the idea that one religion is as good as another. If one believes this, then one must also claim that the Sacraments are worthless and the revelation that Christ was the Messiah is pointless. It has never been a Catholic belief that one could attain salvation regardless of one’s religion. Instead, the Church’s teaching has always been that Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and humanity; thus, any religion which does not preach that Jesus is the Son of God cannot provide salvation.  

It is a disgrace that our current pope’s thinking contradicts traditional Catholic doctrine and papal pronouncements throughout history, which all have condemned religious indifferentism. In the 19^th Century, Pope Pius IX instructed priests:

“You see how much vigilance is needed to keep the disease of this terrible evil (religious indifferentism) from infecting and killing your flocks. Do not cease to diligently defend your people against these pernicious errors. Saturate them with the doctrine of Catholic truth more accurately each day. Teach them that just as there is only one God, one Christ, one Holy Ghost, so there is also only one truth which is divinely revealed. There is only one divine faith which is the beginning of salvation for mankind and the basis of all justification, the faith by which the just person lives and without which it is impossible to please God and to come to the community of His children. There is only one true, holy, Catholic Church, which is the Apostolic Roman Church.”

Years later, Pope Leo XIII added:

“Again, as all who offer themselves are received whatever may be their form of religion, they thereby teach the great error of this age – that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.”

Then we have the pontiff who immediately preceded Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, who had a 180-degree different view than Francis when just a few years ago he explained what is wrong with downplaying both the primacy of the Church and the need to convert souls to Christ:

“This seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?…Even less acceptable is the solution proposed by the pluralistic theories of religion, for which all religions, each in their own way, would be ways of salvation and in this sense, in their effects must be considered equivalent.”

It would have been supportable had Pope Francis pointed out that different faiths must be respected, and that there can be some good found in other religions, such as how Muslims are very observant in fasting and Hindu families demonstrate firm ties of affection. However, it cannot be supportable that Francis basically validated all religious beliefs as being equally authentic. Some elements of truth and sanctification can exist in other religions, but there is only one true God, only one divine truth, and the fullness of truth lives uniquely in only one religion – the Catholic Church, which Jesus founded in the years 30-33 A.D.

Pope Francis should have instructed his Singapore audience that it is not valid to simply judge a religion based on if it has a few good elements in it. He should have recited the phrase found in the Catechism: ”Outside the Church there is no salvation,” and followed this up with St. Paul’s words: “Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” 

In his role as the “Vicar of Christ” – that is, serving as Christ’s representative on Earth – the Pope should have then gone on to explain to these young Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus the specific truths that are recited by Catholics, and Francis himself, at every Mass when we together profess our faith:

“I believe in one God…I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God…consubstantial with the Father…I believe in the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father and the Son…I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

Francis should have said all this, but alas, he did not. Instead he chose to spout the falsehood that any religion leads to God and therefore we do not need to bother finding the true one. 

• How can Francis insist that every single religion gets you to God when we have Hinduism asserting there are multiple gods?

• How can Francis insist that all religions follow the same path, yet Judaism rejects the notion of a triune God who exists in three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

• How can Francis insist that all religions are merely different languages to arrive at God, when Islam believes the divinity of Jesus Christ is blasphemy, and His crucifixion and resurrection are false events?

Not only was his September 13^th message in Singapore scandalous, but after no doubt hearing all the backlash from those remarks, Pope Francis astonishingly seemed to double-down four days later when in a video address to more young adults at an September 17^th Albanian seminar, Pope Francis said: 

“The diversity of our…religious identities is a gift from God.”

No, your holiness, no! Some religious identities are straight up wrong and blasphemous. Some religious identities are spiritually and tangibly evil. They are not gifts from God, and “diversity” is not always the fruitful, benevolent term you think it is. If God wanted to “gift” the world with a diversity of religions, then what all the Apostles did by evangelizing Christianity in the 1^st Century to the point of martyrdom was for naught. Moreover, what the Son of God did by appointing Peter to be the first pope of the Church, telling him, “You are Rock and on this rock I will build my Church” was a falsehood, done only for dramatic show. 

Unfortunately, whether it was his desire to be politically-correct, his hesitation to upset people of other faith traditions, or frankly his dissenting, nonbelief in certain Church doctrine, Pope Francis failed in his role as the spiritual leader of Catholics and the symbolic leader of all Christianity. He failed to exhibit both wisdom and courage when he refused to state that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one goes to God except through Him.

But as I started out saying, controversial and/or erroneous statements are not new to our latest pontiff. He regularly has spoken carelessly off the cuff, and more than any other pope in modern times his comments are either taken out of context, translated poorly from his Spanish or Italian, or needing to be corrected by the Vatican as “misspeak.” Sadly, because these so-called misspeaks are so chronic and because Francis fails to go back and correct his verbal “oopsies,” he seems to be confirming that his controversial comments aren’t mistakes or poor translations but purposefully radical remarks meant to send a message.

Even though the Catholic Church’s teaching on religious indifferentism has always been clear, firmly holding that not all religions are equal in their capacity to lead to salvation, Pope Francis discarded that teaching with his talk in Singapore, causing scandal to the Church and confusion among the Catholic faithful. Many are saying the current Pope is a heretic by knowingly and persistently denying something which he knows that the Church teaches to be revealed by God. 

So, is the Pope preaching heresy? And if so, what do we Catholics do about it? 

• Some say Francis should be removed or at least reprimanded by the world’s cardinals and bishops.

• Some say that lay Catholics now have reason to leave the Church and look elsewhere for a Christian denomination that better suits them? 

In my next article – part 2 of “What Do We Do If Our Pope Preaches Heresy?” – I will explore if indeed the Pope is a heretic and what are the best recourses for Catholics.