Francis Doubles Down – but Has He Apostatized?

I will leave the question of whether he has apostatised to those better versed in theology than I am, but in my opinion, he is no longer Catholic.

From One Peter Five

By Fr Brian Harrison, SThD

On Friday, September 13th Pope Francis delivered a speech to the youthful students at Singapore’s Catholic Junior College, a group which included many non-Christians. In it he fired a shot that has been heard round the world. Putting aside his prepared script, His Holiness began speaking spontaneously, with words that now, more than ever, we can presume to have come straight from his heart. With soft, grandfatherly tones and intently earnest body language, he led his young audience gently and persuasively down a very different path from the straight and narrow one marked out by his predecessors in the chair of Peter. 

Those previous popes had repeatedly censured and warned against religious relativism or indifferentism– the tendency to gloss over and deny the importance of the differences between Christ’s Gospel and other religions. After all, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me”. To the apostles he sends out as missionaries he says, “He who hears you, hears me; whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk 10: 16). Again, “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn. 17: 3). Countless other New Testament texts could be cited to the same effect. 

But a very different message was sent to those Singapore school students by none other than the earthly leader of Christ’s Church. Eliciting their smiles and applause, he led them down a wide and shining path whose smooth surface seemed to iron out all those troublesome, contentious differences between rival creeds. Comparing the world’s mutually contradictory religions to its different “languages” – none of which, of course, is ‘truer’ or morally better than any other – Francis affirmed bluntly, “Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio“. This was immediately rendered accurately by the translator at his side, who said loudly and clearly, “All religions are a pathway to arrive at God”. No hint of any nuance or qualification there.

Magisterial as well as biblical pronouncements against this kind of levelling of religious differences could also be cited in abundance; but two examples, one from two centuries ago and the other from Vatican Council II, will suffice here. Gregory XVI, in his 1831 encyclical Mirari Vos, denounced

indifferentism, . . . that base opinion which has become prevalent everywhere through the deceit of wicked men, that eternal salvation of the soul can be acquired by any profession of faith whatsoever, provided morals are conformed to the standard of justice and honesty.

And no. 846 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, citing Lumen Gentium #14, recalls that Christ

explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church. . . . Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it” (emphasis added).

If Catholicism is the “necessary” path to salvation – even supposing that to be a necessity of precept rather than of means – it clearly can’t be presented as just one path among others. The blood of countless martyred missionaries down through two millennia has testified to their conviction, based on the Lord’s clear teaching, that all human creatures need to know Christ the Savior. The purpose of preaching the Gospel to every creature is to save souls! (Cf. Mk 16: 16.) Accordingly, the sensus fidelium of Catholic believers down through the centuries has always reacted sharply and intuitively against the siren song of any preacher or teacher who lumps Christianity together with other religions as one among many paths that lead to a common transcendent destiny. 

Now, the Italian original of Pope Francis’ assertion, cited above, went up immediately on the Vatican website, as did accurate translations into six other languages. But with the English translation came a little silver lining to this dark cloud hovering over Roman skies: a sanitized version of the Holy Father’s key statement. Some English-language Vatican official was evidently so dismayed by Francis’ heterodox affirmation that he felt a duty to do some damage control. Mindful, perhaps, of Noah’s sons, who in filial piety covered their father’s nakedness after his lapse into drunkenness (cf. Gn. 9: 20-24), this official tapped out a bowdlerized version of the Pope’s words that turned them from an explosive theological statement into a bland empirical observation. He wrote, “Religions are seen as paths trying to reach God.” Note these three changes:  1) the sweeping word “All” is deleted; 2) it is said that these religious paths are only “trying” to reach God (and so don’t necessarily succeed); and 3) we’re told that they are only “seen as” i.e., believed to be, paths of that sort – a sociological statement that prescinds from whether or not said belief is true. One or two other relatively minor ‘improvements’ to the original also polished up the posted English version.

Unfortunately, this silver lining soon vanished. Our anonymous harm-limiting official was apparently rapped over the knuckles for misrepresenting the Holy Father’s statement, and the Vatican website’s English version was promptly amended so as to translate more correctly the words I have placed in bold type in the following citation of the Pope’s key paragraph. It is still not quite accurate because “a path” has become “paths”, and the verb “reach” (equivalent to “arrive at”) is included only in Francis’ second iteration of his novel claim. Nevertheless, the message is now pretty clear:

One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, ‘My religion is more important than yours…,’ or ‘Mine is the true one, yours is not true….,’ where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, ‘Destruction’.] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood? 

The significance of this swift correction should not be underestimated, because it is hard to imagine that Francis could have been unaware of it. English is the most widely spoken language on earth, and if millions of us round the world saw the initial sanitized version and learned of its discrepancy from what the Pope actually said, is it likely that he himself was left in the dark about this? Or that whoever ordered the correction did so without knowing that he (she?) would be supported by Higher Up? There has long been a reported consensus among Vatican insiders that Francis keeps close tabs on everything important that goes on in his curia.  

But if the Holy Father approved this amendment to the first English-language version of his speech, this shows that, far from wanting to clarify, correct, or nuance his spontaneous and unscripted assertion to the Singapore highschoolers, he is doubling down on it. He’s telling the world, “That’s exactly what I meant to say, and I still mean it!” And unless some contrary announcement on this matter comes very soon from the Vatican, I think we must draw this troubling conclusion. 

Is the assertion heretical? In its most natural sense I can’t see how it’s not. Indeed, the Church’s magisterium has condemned this idea as clearly contrary to Catholic faith. It is true that the Church has traditionally taught that since God wills the salvation of all, those who are invincibly ignorant of the true religion, but who persevere in trying to follow conscience and the precepts of the natural moral law, will be given enough grace and light at some point before death to enable (not necessarily produce) saving acts of faith, hope and charity. But that doesn’t mean non-Catholic religions are in themselves “paths” to salvation. On the contrary, the false doctrines mixed in with their true ones render these religions impediments to the salvation of their adherents. Indeed, since non-Christians like those in Francis’ audience deny the fundamental gospel truth that Jesus is uniquely the eternal and incarnate Word of God, they can be saved only in spite of, not because of, this heavy spiritual baggage that they’ve carried since infancy. Their journey is far more perilous, arduous and uncertain than it would be if they were travelling on the one Way that actually does lead to salvation. If this were not so, why on earth have Jesus and the Church been sending missionaries round the globe for two thousand years? And it’s not as if Francis nuanced his assertion in any way. For instance, he might have said (although this would still not be correct) that all religions are paths to God, but the Christian path is the best and safest. Indeed, the parallel he drew (twice) between religions and languages implicitly denies that, because no language is ‘better’ or ‘safer’ than any other.

In short, the message effectively sent by the Pope to the Singapore school students – intentionally or otherwise – is that their various non-Christian religions are paths to God that are equally as good as the Christianity professed by their distinguished visitor. Look at the above paragraph from his speech again and I think you’ll have to agree with my reading of it. And that message – on which Francis is now doubling down – is indeed heretical. It contradicts what has been proposed for two millennia by the universal and ordinary magisterium as divinely revealed truth taught in both Scripture and Tradition. The most recent authoritative condemnation of the idea that “all religions are a path to arrive at God” was in article 21 of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Declaration of 8/6/2000, Dominus Iesus, formally approved and ordered published by St. John Paul II. We read there:

[I]t is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God (emphasis added).

Please note that I am not calling the Holy Father “a heretic”. That would be to accuse him of formal heresy, and none of us is in a position to know whether or not he’s fallen that far. To make that call one would first have to ascertain: (a) whether Francis knows that the words he spoke, taken in their natural sense, contradict what the Church proposes as divinely revealed truth; (b) whether he really meant those words in that natural sense; and (c) whether he would be willing to clarify or correct his heretical words when confronted by the relevant teachings of the Church’s infallible magisterium. Even under the more severe regime of Rome’s earlier doctrinal watchdog, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, no one never was ever declared a heretic or schismatic without first being called up and given a chance to discuss, defend, clarify, and if need be retract, his troubling statements. (That happened again recently with Archbishop Viganò, who wasn’t declared excommunicated until after he spurned the Vatican’s summons to come and answer the charges of schism against him.) So one can only marvel at the breathtaking presumption of those who, without being able to hear what Francis might have to say in his own defense, declare him to be outside the Church and even an anti-pope.  

Nevertheless, while we can’t jump to those conclusions, the question remains as to whether the Pope’s words constitute not just material heresy, but something even worse – apostasy, i.e., the complete abandonment of Christianity. An influential convert from Anglicanism, Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, has reacted to Francis’ Singapore speech in this way, saying that the Pope is “not a Catholic”, but “appears to be a neo-Buddhist”. And indeed, we cannot forget that Pope Pius XI, in his 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos, condemned the liberal Protestant proto-ecumenism of a century ago in the following words (in which I have added bold type to key expressions): 

Certainly such attempts can no way be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little, turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them falls away completely from the divinely revealed religion (ab revelata divinitus religione omnino recedat). 

Well, Pope Francis has certainly made it clear that he holds “all religions [to be] more or less good and praiseworthy”, insofar as they all “in different ways” lead us to God. And his predecessor condemns this opinion with a warning that it will lead “little by little . . . to naturalism and atheism”. That end result would of course be apostasy; but, pace Dr. Ashenden, we have no warrant for presuming that Francis has reached that point. And the context of Pius XI’s words suggests that by “the divinely revealed religion”, he means Catholicism specifically, not that broader Christianity in which many denominations jointly profess the central revealed truths of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. And one could “fall away completely” from Catholicism while sliding down only as far as heresy or schism, i.e., without reaching the rock bottom of apostasy (“naturalism and atheism”).  

That said, it cannot be denied that the proposition, “All the religions are a pathway to reach God” is not only un-Catholic but un-Christian. It also makes traditional Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox cringe and roll their eyes. Pope Francis has unfortunately made other similar, if not quite so blatant, remarks; but, even cumulatively, do they constitute apostasy? I don’t think so.

The Church defines this grave offence as “the total repudiation of the Christian faith” – fidei christianae ex toto repudiatio (cf. canon 751, repeating what canon law has said for many centuries). And the reason I don’t believe the Holy Father’s indifferentist statements add up to apostasy is because he doesn’t utter them consistently. On the contrary, they’re like drops of un-Christian falsehood in an ocean of written and spoken interventions in which he has thousands of times affirmed Christian truth. Sometimes this contrast is found even in one brief intervention, as in Francis’ most recent (September 16th) video message to more young Christians and non-Christians who were meeting in Tirana, Albania. First he told them, “Contemplate the difference of your traditions like a richness, a richness God wants to be. Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God.” Definitely indifferentist. How could the abyss between affirming and denying the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth possibly be a “gift from God”? But a minute later the Pope concluded with words that are not only Christian, but specifically Catholic: “I commend all of you to Mary, ‘Mother of Good Counsel’. She had always turned her maternal gaze, in love as in sorrow, on the events of your land. You learn from her Immaculate Heart to be unresting pilgrims of hope and to follow the signs of God”. An apostate might well make the former statement, but hardly the latter.

Nor does Francis act like an apostate.For as well as his innumerable orthodox Catholic utterances he offers Mass daily, celebrates the other sacraments, prays before the Blessed Sacrament, and recites the Christian creed every Sunday. How could it plausibly be maintained that such a person has “totally repudiated” the Christian faith? My understanding is that by “ex toto repudiatio” the Church has in mind a baptized Catholic who no longer even professes to be Christian, stating openly that he/she no longer believes in Christ as the only-begotten Son of God and has become an agnostic, atheist, or convert to some non-Christian religion (which would probably include Mormonism or the Jehovah’s Witnesses).

To conclude: Pope Francis has, wittingly or unwittingly, sent a message to the students of Singapore which, in the light of the Church’s magisterium, must be discerned as not only materially heretical, but downright un-Christian. Nevertheless, we have no right to pronounce him a heretic or an anti-pope, and much less an apostate. The most charitable explanation of this scandalous message, and other similar statements the Holy Father has made, is that he thinks they can somehow be derived from the Church’s teaching about God’s mercy toward those who are inculpably ignorant of the Gospel and strive to follow the light of conscience. He certainly needs our prayers.