Pope Francis is Totally Wrong
5/28/2024
Pope Francis 60 Minutes Interview on 5/19/2024:
Interviewer: "When you look at the world what gives you hope?"
Pope Francis: "Everything, you see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me alot of hope.
People want to love, people forge ahead, and people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good."
Martin Luther, the great reformer, was famously summoned to the Diet of Worms by the Roman Emperor Charles V in 1521, where he was called to recant or reaffirm his doctrine and especially what he had written in his famous 95 theses. If he chose to recant and repent of his doctrine, he could be welcomed back into the Catholic church; and if he refused, he would be labeled as a heretic, excommunicated, and could even be burned at the stake. When pressed for an answer on whether he would recant his words, he famously said:
“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason (for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic church, recently gave an interview on 60 minutes and alarmingly said the following: “people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good."
To that I respond: NO Pope Francis, people are not fundamentally good and the heart itself is definitely not good. The clear teaching of Scripture and orthodox Christian and even Catholic teaching for the past 2000 years has been the doctrine of radical corruption and original sin. This statement by Pope Francis is especially alarming given the sheer enormity of verses in the Bible that teach the exact opposite of what the Pope just declared.
Genesis 6:5 "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
Ephesians 2:1-3 “2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Jesus Himself talks about man’s heart in Mark 7:20-23:
“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
and in John 7:7, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.”
In case you need it spelled out for you even clearer: Romans 3:10-13 declares,
“10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
The thing is, you don’t even have to know the Bible to see that humanity is not fundamentally good, but rather fundamentally broken, evil, rebellious, and sinful.
Just turn on the news, read any newspaper, or learn about human history during any time period.
We do not learn to lie, we do not learn to steal, nobody sat us down and taught us how to be selfish, children do not take a class to learn how to be rebellious towards their parents, and violence has been an unstoppable constant in the history of human history ever since Adam and Eve. (Just one chapter after Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden of Eden, Cain murders his innocent brother Abel).
We are sinners both by nature and choice. We sin with our minds, with our hearts, and with our deeds. We commit evil by failing to do what God has called us to do and by doing precisely what God has outlawed.
There aren’t just “some rogues and sinners” as outliers, rather all of humanity has fallen under the curse of sin and are guilty of evil and rebellion against God.
So NO Pope Francis, you are completely and totally wrong.
I am especially passionate about this issue because you lose the Gospel of Jesus Christ if you teach that men and women are fundamentally good and that the heart is good.
Galatians 3:22 tells us, “22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
Unless men and women are convinced that they are great sinners, they will NEVER see a need for a savior. The whole point of the Bible is showing us that we are great sinners that need a great savior.
People who think they are moral, good, righteous people will NEVER come to Jesus in the same way that the pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day did not see a need for Christ.
Jesus told large crowds of people that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)
I don’t claim any sort of moral superiority over anybody; rather I claim that I am a desperate, needy, poor, rebellious, and evil man that needs a great Savior. Jesus didn’t come for fundamentally good people or people who believe they have a good heart. He came for the worst of us and therein lies all my hope and all the grace I could ever dream of. 1 Timothy 1:15, my favorite Bible verse says, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
Here Pope Francis has erred grievously and to the great harm of orthodox Christian teaching and doctrine. And so I say with Martin Luther, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason (for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God.”