A Pontifical Attack on the Passion?

The latest pontifical attack on Church teaching occurs in the heart of Holy Week just as Catholics throughout the world are focusing on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. On Wednesday, March 28, Pope Francis was interviewed again by his long-time friend and favorite interviewer Eugenio Scalfari, who heads Italy's La Repubblica daily. Scalfari, an atheist, asked the pope about his theories regarding creation and eternal life.

"Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer for eternity. You have, however, spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?"

In response, Pope Francis reportedly denied the reality of hell with these words:

"They are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and enter the rank of the souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent, and cannot therefore be forgiven, disappear. Hell does not exist; the disappearance of sinful souls exists."

In a statement issued Thursday, the Vatican tried to tamp down the firestorm generated by Francis' comment, saying the pope never granted Scalfari an interview, while saying the story was "the result of (Scalfari's) reconstruction," not a "faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father." Obviously, the pope did grant the interview. Note that the statement does not say that Scalfari's "reconstruction" is erroneous, nor does it deny that the pope said that hell does not exist. As for the Vatican's rebuttal of this latest report, we'll skip it this time. Each one of Francis’ "interview exhortations" since March 2013 have never been disproved and have shown themselves to have been accurately reported. If this latest report were false, Francis himself would repudiate it. And besides, what's new? Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia clearly states, "No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves." (AL 297) Formal heresy anyone?

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From the latest Francis-Scalfari interview—the fifth such interview since 2013—we see the Faith attacked on three fronts. First, there is the denial of the Church's dogmatic teaching on hell. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

"The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. 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 Athanasian Creed likewise teaches that "they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire." Holy Writ makes it clear that the torments of the dammed "shall ascend up forever and ever." (Apoc. 14:11) Secondly, Francis' statement that unrepentant souls eternally "disappear" is a blatant denial of the immortality of the human soul. The Church teaches that the soul of every person ever created lives on for eternity. St. Augustine demonstrates the immortality of the soul by showing that it possesses truth; truth is immortal, because it can never be untrue; therefore the soul in which truth dwells cannot die: "Therefore the soul is immortal; believe in the truth; it cries out with a loud voice that it abides in you, that it is immortal, and that, whatever the death of the body might mean, her dwelling (the soul's) cannot be separated from you." [4] However, what is particularly unnerving is the timing of this report. Here, just two days before Good Friday when people are refocusing on Christ's Passion and recommitting themselves to honoring Christ's Sacrifice, this freak flag is hoisted up before the Church. This should send up red flags when we consider that the purpose of Christ's Sacrifice was to save mankind from the fires of hell. If there is no hell to be saved from, it implies that Christ's Sacrifice was in vain. It's saying that Jesus made a mistake and wasted his time on the cross. And while people everywhere are commenting on this latest as being an attack on the Church's teachings on hell and the immortality of the soul, it appears that what we're really looking at is an insidious attack on the Passion of Christ, right in the heart of Holy Week at that!

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This seems to gel with Francis' idea that Jews do not need Jesus' Sacrifice to be saved, that they can be saved without the Savior. The Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews issued a statement in December 2015, excluding Jews from any need to convert to Christ.

"Although Jews cannot believe in Jesus Christ as the universal redeemer, they have a part in salvation, because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

We see a similar denial of the Christ evident in Scalfari's words to Francis on Wednesday, when he described Jesus of Nazareth as "a man and no more than a man." Be that as it may, the faint-hearted continue to argue that the 93-year-old Scalfari is not competent and that we shouldn't rely on him to transmit the pope's messages, but Francis apparently depends on this to escape censure. Each time he decides to send out these freak signals via Scalfari, he knows that subscribers to this argument will go to bat for him.    As for Scalfari's memory and coherence, all one needs to do is look at the questions he throws at Francis. He's as sharp as a whip and crafty as a snake, which should erase any doubts as to his faculties. The pope obviously trusts his recollections. Were it otherwise, he wouldn't repeatedly grant Scalfari these interviews.  Padre Pio was asked what he thought about modern-day people who deny the existence of hell. The saint replied, “They’ll believe in hell when they get there.” Sources: • Hell ‘does not’ exist…sinful souls ‘disappear,’ Pope Francis allegedly tells favorite interviewer • Pope Francis did not tell journalist "there is no hell," Vatican says