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Maybe there's hope for the Catholic church yet!

MaggieD

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Pope Francis Assures Atheists: You don't have to believe in God to go to heaven. I never thought I'd hear that from ANY religion -- much less from the Catholic Church. This is BIG, folks.

That's always been my problem with Christianity. The belief has always been: If you don't accept Jesus Christ as your savior? You will go to hell. What kind of a compassionate God would make THAT rule??


Pope Francis assures atheists: You don
 

Well, I was taught that only Christians who desert/reject Jesus go to hell automatically.
People who do not know about Christ don't go to hell, they will be judged by their deeds, if they were naughty or nice as it were.

But anyway, what do atheists care if they go to the Christian heaven or hell? They don't believe in those places anyway, so for them, the Pope granting them a "heaven or hell visa" doesnt' mean anything in truth.

It's like I would be offering you the chance to go and get blueberries but you don't believe in blueberries.

Also, God (the Father) is not compassionate. Jesus is. That's why Christians say: accept Jesus as your savior, because Jesus is compassionate and will forgive you. God, as per old testament, hates your guts. His only "good deed" was to promise to send His son to save you. That's it. Everything else was sending plagues, rain fire, drown the world, take away your immortality and generally giving all sort of orders and making all sort of tests on the go.
 
Trying to boost membership in your club by saying that you need not adhere to any "rules" makes membership in that club largely meaningless. We already have a Christian religion with no real rules, the Unitarian Universalists. As Groucho Marx said - I would refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations | UUA
 

It doesn't just apply to atheists, though. BUT the fact that the Catholic Church has said that even atheists can go to heaven is monumental to me. Jehovah Witnesses have hope beyond their 144,000!

I personally wasn't taught that people who don't know Christ are judged by their deeds . . . that no one was. I was taught that "By grace are ye saved through faith." But maybe I was absent the days they taught what you're saying.
 
That idea was what led to my leaving organized religion in the first place. I still have a belief system, but for something to ring true, it must make sense to me. The thought that everyone who had other beliefs was doomed to hell was not something I could reconcile. To me, it's a much larger picture than the christian (or any other) church presents.
 

The witnesses do not believe that only the 144K have an afterlife--just that is the # who will go to heaven. They believe that Jesus will recreate the earth and all the other souls will be risen to spend eternity on earth. Likewise they do not believe in hell as a place. The wicked just never get risen from the dead and are gone forever.
 

That actually makes me feel better. Ha! I have such compassion for the Jehovah Witnesses who trudge door-to-door in their thankless pursuit to spread the word. If you're polite to them, they're very difficult to get rid of. I've come up with a line that works, though:

I can't tell you how much respect I have for you for the work you're doing. But it's just not for me.
Click to expand...
*Big Smile* -- That usually does the trick. I don't accept their pamphlets either; otherwise they come back and give you a quiz. :rofl
 
MaggieD said:
Crap.
Click to expand...

Now, here is the question. It's my understanding that God speaks through the Pope, so if the Pope says something and then the Catholic Church goes against it, aren't they going against God?
 

I tell them I am a Satan worshiper and invite them in, that does the trick too.
 
TheNextEra said:
Now, here is the question. It's my understanding that God speaks through the Pope, so if the Pope says something and then the Catholic Church goes against it, aren't they going against God?
Click to expand...


Trouble in paradise, I presume.
 

I have a Witness lady that stops by once every 2-4 weeks. We chat for a bit, mostly about other things. she usually brings someone else, and I pass on plants to them and they give me their booklets, which I do read. I find some of them interesting. One of the two they give out has a lot of cultural stuff in them.
 

Very interesting.... a religion where you don't actually have to believe anything to be "Saved". Sounds pretty New Age to me. Definitely does not sound very Catholic. Catholicism used to teach Faith AND Works as the path to Heaven. Are they just going to teach Works as the path to Heaven now? That would be a very interesting interpretation of the Bible from what I've heard and read over the years.
 
MaggieD said:
Trouble in paradise, I presume.
Click to expand...

Wonder what kind of spin they will try on this to get the Pope and the Church back on the same page.
 
All people have to do is read James 2:14 on the subject and they would know.

Why listen to men when you can get it right from the source?
 
The Pope has it right. I don't see how Christians can justify saying that a non-believer will be punished by eternal damnation even if he does good his entire life, while a believer who sins constantly and then eventually repents will be "saved". It's crap like this that makes people leave organized religion and never look back. This Pope is more like Jesus than any Christian I've ever met.
 
Gardener said:
All people have to do is read James 2:14 on the subject and they would know.

Why listen to men when you can get it right from the source?
Click to expand...

Please to be kind enough to list the many contradictory verses.
 

According to John 3;36, John 8:24, John 14:5 and a whole lot more of the same kind of scriptures, the Pope is wrong. If everyone gets to go to heaven then who are all those people in Hell that Jesus taught about?
 

Well. in defense of Christians, they can justify it, as that is what they are taught, and for the Pope to come out with something like this could cause instability in the church itself. Although I agree with you, and it IS the reason I left organized religion in the first place, there are a great many people who prefer to accept what they are told, rather than challenge it, because there is comfort in not going against the grain of the majority. Regardless of what you and I, and others think about the church itself, it is a source of comfort for many. I don't mean to come across as argumentative, just offering my take on the questions you posed.
 

The Bible teaches that ALL have sinned (and thus need a Savior for the remission of their sins).

Nor is Jesus a liberal, which is what this pope is sounding more and more like.

Was Jesus a liberal? « The Righter Report
 
Logicman said:
According to John 3;36, John 8:24, John 14:5 and a whole lot more of the same kind of scriptures, the Pope is wrong. If everyone gets to go to heaven then who are all those people in Hell that Jesus taught about?
Click to expand...

Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Sadam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Marquis deSaad, Josef Mengele, Osama Bin Laden, Heinrich Himmler, Adolph Eichman, Nero, Caligula, Idi Amin, et al et al et al, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Vlad Dracula, Atilla the Hun, Emperor Hirohito, Nero, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, et al et al et al. And their millions of minions.

The list of evil people is endless.
 
The Pope made an off the cuff remark, that though true, is very easy to misinterpret. Much like with the Bible, a comprehensive understanding of the subject is essential to grasp the truth.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Since it rejects or denies the existence of God, atheism is a sin against the virtue of religion. The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances. “Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion."

In other words, as I have believed for a long time, we as Christians should have special consideration for atheists, because so many have turned from the Church because of the bad examples of people calling themselves Christian.

Is it possible for atheists to gain heaven? Yes. But the "intentions and circumstances" of the atheist bear very close examination. For example, I have read where some Holocaust survivors ceased to believe in God. I have no doubt that a human being can be so wounded by their circumstances in life that they can look out into the world and see no justice, and thus see no God.

Please note that Pope Francis did NOT tie gaining Heaven with good works. He explicitly said conscience is the wellspring of worthiness of Heaven. Attendance to one's conscience is an expression of faith, an unspoken and perhaps unacknowledged belief in the power of God, because God is the source of conscience.
 

The concept of most Protestant religions is that FAITH, not WORKS is the means to Salvation, and that forgiveness is immediate and requires nothing more than being heartily sorry for having commited the sins. The Catholic church has long taught the need for both FAITH AND WORKS as a means to Salvation, along with the need for Penetence (all those prayers and such the Father tells them to do) in order to obtain forgiveness of sins. The concept here is that to truly earn one's way into Heaven, one would have to be perfect, and scripture teaches there has only ever been one Perfect Person - Jesus. Therefore, no amount of good works can get you there. It requires Faith in the Life, Death, Resurrection, and Assencion of Jesus to qualify one to go there.

That is what they believe, just as people of the Budhist, Hebrew, Islamic, etc... faiths have their own takes on what is required to get into Heaven. Those of us who do not adhere to any particular organized religious faith also have our views on what happens at the end of life, and why.
 
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