Pope Francis’ room at Saint Martha’s House.
You see, the new pope does this crazy thing. He actually speaks off the cuff, away from the Vatican censors. In a parallel of his time in Argentina, Bergoglio has refused to live in the gaudy papal apartments in the Vatican. Instead he is staying in a room at St. Martha’s House, which has traditionally been reserved for the pope’s guests. Every morning Pope Francis says mass for the people in St. Martha’s, and he typically includes a short, improvised sermon. This is something that the previous popes did not do.
At one of these free-wheeling sermons (related to us by Vatican Radio) the pope said some stuff that probably convinced Father Gabriele Amorth that Bergoglio is possessed. Here’s what Vatican Radio wrote:
“They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”
“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can… “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!… We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Is this a pope actually acting in a christian way towards atheists?
Shockingly, I think the answer may be yes.
Of course the Vatican was appalled by Bergoglio’s behavior and immediately moved to quash any positive feeling generated by the man’s tolerant statement.
The tremendous uproar came from the fact that some interpreted the pope’s assertion that atheists and christians will “meet one another there” referred to a rendezvous in heaven. This is a place which atheists cannot get to because, when they met the good lady church, those heathen “refused to enter her or remain in her” – or at least that’s what Father Thomas Rosica, a hitman for the Vatican’s propaganda squad, said.
In the Vatican’s official condemnation of the pope’s tolerance, Father Rosica released a statement which contained this hilarious little chestnut:
“All salvation comes from Christ, the Head, through the Church which is his body… Hence they cannot be saved who, knowing the Church as founded by Christ and necessary for salvation, would refuse to enter her or remain in her.”
So salvation comes from the body of he, but the faithful must remain in her? Only the Vatican could be so entirely tone deaf and gender confused in the same statement.
