April 10 2018 – Click here to listen
Recently during the midst of the holiest week of the year, an avowed atheist, Eugenio Scalfari, stated that the Pope told him the following in a private interview: “Souls are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell — there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
If this is true and the Pope actually said that, it would be heresy according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states that “Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, ‘eternal fire.’” The Catechism does go on to say that “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.” but it is indisputable that official doctrine says inhabitants of hell are eternally lamenting this horrific separation from God while also burning in eternal fire.
If Scalfari is accurately reporting the Pope’s comments, it would indicate that Pope Francis is clearly uncomfortable with God being an “eternal torturer,” and much prefers the notion that the souls of those “who do not repent and cannot be forgiven” will simply be destroyed. In modern theological speculation, “Annihilationism,” is the formal name for this argument. But unless the Catholic Church changes its formal doctrine, it means that if this is true, the Pope was committing heresy.
An uproar raged throughout the religious world when this story came out and the Vatican’s communications department immediately mobilized to deny that he’d said it, issuing a statement that said that the Pope’s words had not been correctly portrayed. According to The Guardian, they did admit that Scalfari and the Pope met but said there wasn’t supposed to be an interview taking place. They added that the comments were “the fruit of Scalfari’s reconstruction” and not “a faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words.” They added that “no quotation of the article should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”
Oddly the Pope has remained silent and has not directly responded to dispute that he said that. Scalfari, now 93 years old, was the founder of the highly respected Italian newspaper La Republica and is still a practicing journalist. He is an avowed atheist but has been meeting Pope Francis in private for years for long conversations on religious matters.
I suppose that only Scalfari, the Pope, and God know where the truth lies. I certainly don’t know if the Pope said it or not, but many folks have a very hard time envisioning our God of love allowing someone to eternally suffer. It seems logical to look for some human way to elude this difficult subject by somehow trying to explain it away.
I went to a mega-church Sunday and the pastor tried to explain away the admonition of the Bible toward women becoming pastors, though the Bible teaches that women should not teach men in the church. Essentially, this pastor said the Bible was mistranslated and it doesn’t mean what it states. He went on a long rambling justification of his position. I saw the same thing happen at a mega church in Atlanta when the pastor there said the Bible was written by old men and views on homosexuality and so forth were outdated.
I’m not buying into any of it. The Bible is the Holy inspired word of God. If any part of it were proven to be false, then the entire Bible would collapse under the weight of one lie like a stack of dominos. Jesus graphically spoke of eternal damnation and described the horrific suffering in hell more than any other person. The instructions to the church about clergy were clear, and the same for marriage being between one woman and one man. The Bible says of itself that it will stand forever. This society, or one 1000 years from now, or one 1000 years ago cannot change it.
Pastors take the Bible and try to dazzle us with statements such as: “Now the Greek says so and so and therefore this passage actually means so and so . . . ” Blah blah blah . . . Or “if one were look at the culture of the day, this actually meant so and so . . . ” Blah blah blah . . .
The Bible was carefully and accurately translated by teams of scholars and linguists who agonized for years deciding upon each word. We can believe that Almighty God also had a vested interest in what was being portrayed as His word during this process as well. Now comes some preacher or religious leader who wants to appease today’s societal desires to twist it to mean something entirely different in order to appease his modern-day followers.
Call me old-fashioned or a fundamentalist or whatever, but I can tell you I have read the Bible for myself many, many, times and study it every day and have for nearly five decades. It means what it says and says what it means. The Bible warns us not to listen to false prophets, especially in the end times. I initially read the Bible because I wanted to know what it said for myself. I urge you to read it and test those who are saying all sorts of things that are simply not in the Bible. Then you can better decide what is truth.
2 Tim 4:3
For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.