Just kidding, and F You

Wow, didn't have to wait long to be proven right about the Pope's latest PR ploy. A day after the Pope made his comment about atheists being redeemed a Vatican spokesman nullified the sentiment. That wasn't what surprised me. I was assuming they'd find a weasle-way to negate it without drawing too much attention to their intention. What did make me pause was the way Rosica attempted at reconciling the Pope's statement with it's correction*.

"[Pope Francis] is first and foremost a seasoned pastor and preacher who has much experience in reaching people...His words are not spoken in the context of a theological faculty or academy nor in interreligious dialogue or debate."

To me, that sounds like an admission that it really was a PR ploy. It also seems to imply that the Pope has little to do theological doctrines. Really?! Isn't he the top guy? "God's vicar" here on earth?

In comparison to a few other implications from the statements made by Rosica this is also of little consequence. Inadvertently, this spokesman has effectively admitted to a number of other points I, and others, have been making for years. He made it clear that the Catholic version of Christianity is by its nature divisive and bigoted. He justified his alterations to the Pope's statement by pointing out that the Catholic Catechism states,
"All salvation comes from Christ, the Head, through the Church which is his body,..."

If you stop and think about that for more than a minute it is a rather horrible statement. Essentially, only Christians can be "saved." It implies, at best, that everyone else is automatically damned. All non-Christians, whether atheist or theist, are wrong. It implies that billions of people are morally and ethically inferior to Christians. That is the theological equivalent of a big old Fuck You to the rest of us.


*Officially, the Catholic Church still maintains the doctrine that the Pope is infallible. They won't even admit that his statement was corrected since that would imply a mistake. They like to couch such corrections in terms like "clarified" or "amended."