Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven (salvation, Mormon)
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I agree with the pope on this issue, I would go as far to say many atheists will get to heaven before many so call believers who preach a gospel of hate.
"For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother"
""Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, 10 but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. "
That pretty much removes the necessity of having a church at all.
Francis is going to wind up in trouble with the church conservatives, they will not tolerate this sort of diminishing of the authority upon which they have always relied to define their lives. He has basically just told them all that they are a redundant component of people's salvation. He is making enemies who will want to bring him down.
Francis was elected in response to the perception that Benedict was too regressive, but I suspect that most of the Cardinals had in mind replacing him with someone blandly orthodox to correct Benedict's harsh approach. Instead they have gotten a revolutionary on their hands.
I agree with the pope on this issue, I would go as far to say many atheists will get to heaven before many so call believers who preach a gospel of hate.
You know, I read his letter, and I came away with the impression that he specifically dances around saying that. He states that God is merciful to any that seek him, that sin is sin even for unbelievers, and that atheists should follow their conscience, and to not do so is a sin.
Nowhere does he actually connect the dots and say that following one's conscience is sufficient to receive God's mercy. The letter is so elegantly and precisely formulated, that I doubt this is a logical oversight. In several other places he neatly sidesteps questions to avoid having to give a definitive answer, so I imagine this does not mean what many want to infer...
I sincerely doubt you will ever get a blunt endorsement of universalism from any sitting pope, and while it is not antagonistic toward non-believers, it doesn't really say what the headlines are trumpeting.
It's taken a long time but even the popes are coming round to our way of thinking.
However, there is still a long way to go.
Fo example, the fact that, when talking about Heaven he is pointing upwards as though he believes it is still a vicus around God's throne perched on top of the sky -dome covering the flat earth makes one wonder whether he has any idea what he is talking about.
He would do well to read the first couple of chapters of Romans. It's clear that even though we know by creation who God is, we can't be good enough to please him. We'd rather go our own way. It's what we human beings do.
Having said that, I'm not all that surprised, as official Catholic teaching is that to please God we must do good works.
Did the pope say anything about bad mormon agnostics being let in too?
Cuz that's like 3 strikes against me, right there.
Just go all the way and disbelieve. According to him, if you have a clean conscience, you're in like Flynn
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