Francis expands the “People of God”:
Now it includes All Religions!
Logical consequence of Abu Dhabi heresy…
NovusOrdoWatch
The heresy superspreader Jorge Bergoglio — a.k.a. “Pope Francis” — held another general audience today. The topic this time was the Easter Triduum, that is, the three days leading up to Easter: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday.
Not surprisingly, the Argentinian pseudo-pope was busy shifting the focus from Christ’s Passion and Death onto “the sufferings of the sick, the poor, the rejected of this world; …the ‘sacrificed lambs’, the innocent victims of wars, dictatorships, everyday violence, abortions… the too many who are crucified in our time … who are the image of Jesus Crucified….” For Francis, such a shift of emphasis from God to man is typical and would not even be worth blogging about. It is simply par for the course.
However, a few lines later the false pope detonates the spiritual-doctrinal equivalent of a nuclear bomb. He asserts: “There are small ‘islands’ of the people of God, both Christian and of all other faiths, that hold in their heart the desire to be better.” This quote is taken directly from the English translation found on the Vatican web site. (Italian original: “Ci sono piccole ‘isole’ del popolo di Dio, sia cristiano sia di qualsiasi altra fede, che conservano nel cuore la voglia di essere migliori.”)
The import of this remark is easy to miss. In fact, the sentence itself is fairly inconspicuous, squeezed in between a waterfall of words. What’s the problem? The problem is with this part:
“…the people of God, both Christian and of all other faiths…”
That is apostasy!
Apostasy from the Faith is defined as “the complete and voluntary abandonment of the Christian religion, whether the apostate embraces another religion such as Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, etc., or merely makes profession of Naturalism, Rationalism, etc.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Apostasy”).
To identify the followers of all other religions as part of “the people of God” is not only heretical, it is a total repudiation of the Catholic religion, of any semblance of Christianity, and indeed of the very notion of revealed religion in general. How far that is removed from the Catholic dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church! “Faith orders Us to hold that out of the Apostolic Roman Church no person can be saved, that it is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever will not enter therein shall perish in the waters of the deluge” (Pope Pius IX, Allocution Singulari Quadam).
Francis’ “Interreligious People of God” heresy is the direct consequence of his heresy regarding God willing the existence of many different religions (we have nicknamed it the “Abu Dhabi heresy” because it was proclaimed by Francis together with a Muslim imam in Abu Dhabi). Remember? The statement they signed on Feb. 4, 2019, asserts:
Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.(Antipope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyib, “A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”, Vatican.va, Feb. 4, 2019; underlining added.)
This statement ruins the very foundations of the Christian religion. For if it is God’s will that there be Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Jains, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, etc., then Jesus Christ is not the Messiah, then He did not rise from the dead, and His religion is not the true religion. Then the Catholic Church is a fraud. For Christ said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6); and, “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk 16:15-16).
But Jesus Christ is not a liar! The liar, instead, is Francis: “Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son” (1 Jn 2:22). Instead of preaching the need to enter the Ark of Salvation when he visited Abu Dhabi two years ago, Francis preached the need to enter what he called the “Ark of Fraternity”:
It is no wonder that St. Paul warned against those who would promote a counterfeit gospel: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:8).
It is astonishing to see how boldly Francis slipped a softly-spoken but far-reaching “doctrinal development” into his Mar. 31 general audience. The incident provides him with the necessary footnote to use later down the road when he needs to show precedent for the changed teaching. That is what he did in 2017/18 with his “doctrinal development” on the death penalty.
At the root of this latest “development”, of course, is the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Whereas the Modernist robber synod still restricted the term “people of God” mainly to the Catholic Church, inasmuch as “the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 12), it also opened the door to an eventual widening of the concept. This it did by ambiguously declaring that “there belong to or are related to [the people of God] in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation” (Lumen Gentium, n. 13; underlining added).
So now Francis has expanded the “people of God” to include members of all religions, and that is something he accomplished via the Abu Dhabi heresy, according to which God positively wills a diversity of religions. This is only logical, for if God wills some people to be followers of other religions, then it must be true that they too are part of the “people of God.”
We can expect Francis to develop this new theme further in the months or years ahead. It lends itself perfectly to advancing his apostate interreligious super-church of human fraternity, and the notion of the Church as “people of God” has been front and center in his sect since Vatican II anyway. In the council’s constitution Lumen Gentium alone, the phrase “people of God” appears 41 times.
Certainly there is nothing wrong, in and of itself, with the term “people of God”. It was used, although not very frequently, before Vatican II. A quick web search reveals the term was employed by Popes Leo X, Leo XII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, to name but a few. It is found also in the Third Lateran Council under Pope Alexander III, for instance, and is used even in the Roman Pontifical for the ordination of priests (see Pope Pius XII’s Encyclical Menti Nostrae, n. 9). None of this is surprising, because it is actually a biblical term found in both the Old and New Testaments. Thus Pope St. Peter wrote to the earliest Christians that they “are now the people of God” (1 Pet 2:10).
What St. Peter didn’t know is what Francis just revealed from the god of surprises: that everyone else is now the people of God, too. Although, granted, Francis didn’t say anything about atheists, those with no religion. But surely one can detect a few people-of-God-ly elements in them as well, no? After all, the Jesuit apostate has already stated that the gates of heaven are always open to all people, and he has certified that “good” atheists actually go there. This shouldn’t be too difficult then. Let’s give Francis a few more audiences, and surely the thing will develop.
The idea of an interreligious “people of God” naturally implies the heresy of Indifferentism — that it does not matter what religion one professes, at least it does not matter as far as one’s possibility of salvation is concerned; and that has of course been roundly condemned by the true Church.
Pope Gregory XVI, for instance, wrote to his bishops:
Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism” may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him,” and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate.” (Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical Mirari Vos, n. 13)
Likewise, Pope Leo XIII condemned
the great error of this age — that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions. (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Humanum Genus, n. 16)
In the same manner, Pope Pius XI denounced
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, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion. (Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos, n. 2)
Naturalism is precisely what Francis preaches again and again; sometimes more, sometimes less overtly, as many of our posts demonstrate:
The notion of a “people of God” that consists of people from all different religions is thoroughly Naturalist because it does away with the necessity of supernatural Faith, hope, and charity.
However, all those who accept Francis’ blasphemous and heretical premise that God has willed a diversity of religions in the same way that He has willed a diversity of sexes, races, and languages, will not be able to escape the force of the logic: If God is basically the god of all religions, then all their adherents necessarily make up the “people of God.”
But this should give any thinking human being pause, because if virtually everyone is somehow part of God’s people, then who is left to constitute the kingdom of the devil? As Pope Leo XIII taught:
The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.” At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault. At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Humanum Genus, nn. 1-2)
There are two kingdoms, then, and they are both at war with each other until the end of time.
We know which one will ultimately prevail, but we also know which one “Pope” Francis is advancing — and it’s not the one steadfastly contending for truth and virtue.