Across the world, many people are beginning to agree that Francis is a curiously unusual Pope. Some writers have pinpointed the peculiarity. To quote from the Episcopal Cafe Website,
Pope Francis has launched nothing short of a revolution in the Catholic Church.... ‘Will he make it?’ or ‘Will he pull it off?’ ...everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer “a Catholic glasnost.”[1] ...In the late 1980s, Soviet Union Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev elevated glasnost into policy. Linked to “perestroika” or restructuring, Gorbachev used that double-blade to curb embedded corruption in the Kremlin and communist party. Francis’ lifestyle—from lodging in spare Casa Santa Marta quarters to spurning limousines—has rippled out. Cardinals are shedding titles and crimson-laced vestments. Work patterns in Vatican institutions, from the change-resistant Curia to the troubled Vatican Bank, have radically altered.[2]
Then there are metaphors used about Francis and descriptions of his actions that were never before used referring to a Pope. To quote the Opinion Inquirer Website,
Francis as a ‘Teflon pope.’ Nothing bad sticks. ‘Francis is giving rise to a ‘new culture of accountability.’ That means somebody actually gets fired. He accepted the resignation of two Vatican Bank officials. And he did not shield Msgr. Nunzio Scarano of the Vatican Bank from a $30-million laundering charge. Francis seeks to enhance the role of the layman—not just in ceremonial ways, but in the nuts and bolts of reforming and governing the Church. And he is repositioning the Church in the political center, after a lengthy period where it drifted to the right.[3]
In a blog post titled ‘This Extraordinary Pope,’ Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken homosexual Catholic, expressed the sentiments of many like-minded Church members: ‘What’s so striking to me is not what he said, but how he said it: the gentleness, the humor, the transparency. I find myself with tears in my eyes as I watch him. I’ve lived a long time to hear a pope speak like that,’ Sullivan wrote. ‘Everything he is saying and doing is an obvious, implicit rejection of what came before.’
On July 29, 2013, Pope Francis spoke to reporters on his flight back from Brazil. He was asked if there was a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican? He allowed the issue to come up and tackled it with his own question, which has become well known, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”[4] Pope Francis is very much aware that according to Catholic dogma,
The Supreme Pontiff, in virtue of his office, possesses infallible teaching authority when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful...he proclaims with a definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held as such.[5]
Then on August 28, 2013, at 4 p.m., Pope Francis spoke to the youth from the Italian Diocese of Piacenza. The Catholic News Website, Zenit, made an unusual statement concerning Francis’ improvised talk, “Pope Francis addressed the youth in an off the cuff discourse.”[6] He began his talk in this way,
Thank you for this visit! The bishop said that I made a great gesture in coming here. But I did it out of selfishness. Do you know why? Because I like being with you! So this is a selfishness. I wanted to tell you this, to tell you: courage, go forward, make noise. Where there is youth, there should be noise. Then, we’ll adjust things, but the dreams of a young person always make noise. Go forward! In life there will always be people with proposals to curb, to block your way. Please, go against the current. Be courageous, courageous: go against the current. And that there will be someone who says: ‘No, but this... I drink a bit of alcohol, take some drugs and I’m getting ahead.’ No! Go against the current of this civilization that is doing so much harm. Do you understand this? To go against the current; and this means to make noise, to go forward, but with the values of beauty, of goodness and of truth. This is what I wanted to tell you. I want to wish you all well, a good work, joy in the heart: joyful youth![7]
This “off the cuff” address of Francis gives insight into his own philosophy. Within the Vatican, he is seen as being courageous and as going against the current. Francis is the man who apparently is initiating a revolution in the Catholic Church; at least he is making some noise about it by disturbing superficial bits of the status quo here and there. Pope Francis has chosen the title “Bishop of Rome” in the Vatican’s annual directory,” instead of the large number of the formal titles normally given to the Pope by the Vatican. Then on Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women in juvenile detention, one of which was a Muslim. With this action, Francis broke the Vatican tradition that restricts the ritual to men. In the words of the AP Website,
No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis’ gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a ‘questionable example.’ Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.[8]
Do all these revolutionary deeds mean that Pope Francis may be a Martin Luther or a John Calvin in the making? He is anything but! What he has written regarding questions of Vatican doctrine is totally in conformity with traditional Roman dogma. An example of this is the new encyclical letter that he has published entitled, “The Light of Faith.” The language of the encyclical letter is not like the comments and talks that Francis constantly gives. Rather, the long sixty-paragraph document has the stilted Vatican expressions found in previous Pontiffs’ encyclical letters. Thus, Francis continues to present to his audience two persona, as it were. There is the flamboyant revolutionary from the New World who seemingly pits himself in opposition to the Old World Vatican: an outsider confidently shaking up corrupt insider alliances; a modern man from South America, confidently breaking the antiquated formalities and traditions, tossing them aside by speaking casually and moving informally among the ordinary people. All this shrewd acting is targeted toward the naive and the youth, in particular, in a manner presumably calculated to charm them into a malleable personality cult. What is the goal? Behind all this appealing drama, his first encyclical (his words that truly count) shows him to be the subservient-compliant-traditional servant of the Vatican Curia. With this in mind, we biblically analyze his encyclical.
Francis’ Source and Foundation of ‘truth’ is Apostolic Tradition
Francis is forthright in presenting his perspective on how truth is known. He states, “It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.”[9] This same dogma is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
...the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.[10]
Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.’[11]
It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.[14]
Encyclical Lacks Essential Factor of the Gospel: Man is a Sinner
Francis never mentions sin in his encyclical. Moreover, he does not simply tone down the teaching of Scripture about human depravity; he completely fails to mention the issue. In contrast, the effect of human depravity is clearly expressed in Scripture as being “dead in trespasses and sins,”[15] and “...you, being dead in your sins....”[16] Because of Adam’s sin, each of us is born into this world spiritually dead. Thus the Apostle Paul clearly states, “As it is written, ‘there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God.”[17] Moreover, there is the universality of sin, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”[18] Thus, every person under the Law has fallen short of the glory of God and thereby is possessed both of an evil heart: because of one’s sin nature, and a bad record: because of one’s personal sin. Until the sinner repents and comes by God’s grace alone through faith alone to believe on Lord Jesus Christ alone, “the wrath of God abideth on him.”[19] The Apostle Peter speaks of Jesus Christ giving forgiveness of sins. “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.”[20] Until a person really beholds the destructiveness of sin, and his own in particular, he cannot comprehend his need for the Lord Jesus Christ’s great sacrifice for sin.
However, Pope Francis fails to even mention that it is both from one’s sin and one’s sin nature that an individual must be saved. He circumvents the centrality of this issue by stating the following,
The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed, experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: ‘By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Eph 2:8).[21]
Nor does salvation by faith mean recognizing “the primacy of God’s gift.” Justification by faith alone is a specific divine action by God alone. It means that God alone in His gracious mercy has given that individual a new heart so that he is alive spiritually, rather than dead spiritually as he was previously. He has called him out of the darkness of a depraved heart, mind, and will into the marvellous light of Jesus Christ so that the individual is as Ephesians 1:3 states, “in Christ.” To even frame the issue of justification in such obtuse terminology as Francis has, reeks of deception - particularly since the Ephesians 2:1-9 passage from which he quotes makes the issue of being dead in trespasses and sins totally clear.
Francis’ Church Mode of Faith
While Francis mentions the word “faith” 385 times in his encyclical, the focal point of his teaching is stated in paragraph 22. The heading for this paragraph is, “The ecclesial form of faith.” He begins by stating,
In this way, the life of the believer becomes an ecclesial [church] existence, a life lived in the Church. When Saint Paul tells the Christians of Rome that all who believe in Christ make up one body, he urges them not to boast of this; rather, each must think of himself ‘according to the measure of faith that God has assigned’ (Rom 12:3)... Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from within the body of Christ as a concrete communion of believers. It is against this ecclesial backdrop that faith opens the individual Christian towards all others...Faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion: it comes from hearing, and it is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed. ..Faith becomes operative in the Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our hearts to Christ (cf. Gal 5:6), and enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world.[24]
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.[25]
Faith is necessarily ecclesial...It is against this ecclesial backdrop that faith opens the individual...Faith is not a private matter... Faith enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world.[30]
It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith.”[31] As a result, the Catechism officially teaches, “Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother...[32]
‘Believing’ is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. ‘No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.[33]
...the Church our Mother teaches us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith.[34]
It is in the Church that ‘the fullness of the means of salvation’ has been deposited. It is in her that ‘by the grace of God we acquire holiness.’[35]
Church Sacraments and Eternal life
In the encyclical, Pope Francis addresses the Catholic sacraments, especially in paragraph 40 that is headed, “The sacraments and the transmission of faith.” He states,
Faith, in fact, needs a setting in which it can be witnessed to and communicated, a means which is suitable and proportionate to what is communicated. For transmitting a purely doctrinal content, an idea might suffice, or perhaps a book, or the repetition of a spoken message. But what is communicated in the Church, what is handed down in her living Tradition, is the new light born of an encounter with the true God, a light which touches us at the core of our being and engages our minds, wills and emotions, opening us to relationships lived in communion.[36]
There is a special means for passing down this fullness, a means capable of engaging the entire person, body and spirit, interior life and relationships with others. It is the sacraments, celebrated in the Church’s liturgy. The sacraments communicate an incarnate memory, linked to the times and places of our lives, linked to all our senses... While the sacraments are indeed sacraments of faith, it can also be said that faith itself possesses a sacramental structure. The awakening of faith is linked to the dawning of a new sacramental sense in our lives as human beings and as Christians, in which visible and material realities are seen to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.[39]
After a person is justified by the All Holy God alone, he is to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, taking His yoke upon him and learning of Him, so that he drinks deeply from His written Word and begins to follow what the Scripture teaches. Having been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, a person lives to do the good works for which he has been justified, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”[43] Therefore, we look to Jesus because He is the Author and Finisher of our faith, its beginning and end. True life is that which is lived in personal, intimate communion with Christ; as the Apostle Paul so eloquently stated, “for to me to live is Christ.”[44] In spite of this truth, Francis teaches that visible, material sacraments transmit grace. Thus, we see the lie of Pope Francis regarding the Catholic Church’s sacraments in his claim,
visible and material realities are seen to point beyond themselves to the mystery of the eternal.
The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation. ‘Sacramental grace’ is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament.[45]
Francis’ Conclusion in Paragraph 60 Turns to Mary in Prayer
The final words of Pope Francis in his encyclical are a prayer to Mary. He prays thus, “Let us turn in prayer to Mary, Mother of the Church and Mother of our faith. Mother, help our faith!...”[46] The light of Francis’s faith is Mary. Rather than the Lord Jesus Christ, whose life is the light of men and is the object of the true believer’s faith, Mary turns out to be the object of “the ecclesial form of faith.”
Papal Rome encourages mankind to contact the dead, especially in prayer to Mary. The Bible forbids contacting the dead; this pagan practice is called necromancy. Despite this, the Vatican publicly teaches people to have communion with the dead, thus it states,
Communion with the dead. “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.” Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.’[47]
Conclusion
We have clearly seen that Pope Francis who portrays himself as a Reformer is just a clever traditionalist upholding the Papal system in his lengthy and devious first encyclical. True believers in the Lord Jesus Christ live in the world as He did. They are in the world, but they not of the world. In contrast, the Pontificate of Francis the Pope is very much of this world, as he allures the world and the media into portraying him as an appealing Reformer.
In contrast to Pope Francis’s statements, we rejoice that the Lord God is almighty; that there is good news for all those still “dead in trespasses and sins.”[49] In the light of God’s Word, we know “the gospel of Christ...is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth....”[50] Despite our sin nature and personal sins, the Lord God has given His beloved Son for all true believers. The Lord Jesus Christ declared, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life....He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”[51] The Lord will always be merciful to you who turn to Him in faith for the remission of your sins. Clearly the Lord Jesus Christ says to you, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[52] Before the all holy God, according to the Bible, you are made right with Him by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Following on this, all glory and praise is to the Lord God alone! “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits...Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.”[53]
Notes
- http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/leadership/pope_francis_and_the_catholic.html
- http://opinion.inquirer.net/58763/teflon-pontiff
- Ibid.
- http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/07/29/if-a-gay-person-seeks-god-who-am-i-to-judge-him-says-pope/
- Catechism of the Catholic Church Para 749
- http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-address-to-youth-from-the-diocese-of-piacenza
- Ibid.
- http://bigstory.ap.org/article/pope-washes-feet-young-detainees-ritual
- http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/lumen-fidei-40/
- http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a2.htm
- http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm
- II Timothy 3:16
- Hebrews 1:1-2
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 40
- Ephesians 2:1
- Colossians 2:13
- Romans 3:10-11
- Romans 3:23
- John 3:36
- Acts 10:43
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html End of 19
- Ephesians 2:1
- John 3:19-20
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html
- Philippians 3:7-9
- John 11:27
- Acts 16:30-31
- Acts 16:14
- Romans 10:8-9
- http://camdenlifejustice.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/life-justice-quotes-from-the-new-encyclical-light-of-faith/
- Catechism Para 168
- Catechism Para 169
- Catechism Para 181
- Catechism Para 171
- Catechism Para 824
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html
- Romans 10:17
- John 20:31
- enciclica-lumen-fidei op. cit.
- Genesis 3:5
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 40
- John 5:24
- Ephesians 2:10
- Philippians 1:21
- http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s1c1a2.htm Catechism 1129
- http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html 60
- http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p5.htm
- Isaiah 8:19-20
- Ephesians 2:1
- Romans 1:16
- John 3:16, 18
- Matthew 11:28
- Psalms 103:2, 4
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