Pope Francis: Even Atheists are Redeemed

reply to post by windword


As the late Notorious B.I.G. once put it

" When I die, f**k it I want to go to hell.
'Cause I'm a piece of s**t it aint hard to f**king tell.
It don't make sense; going to heaven with the goody goodies dressed in white.
I like black tims and black hoodies....".

Of course Biggy wasn't really into doing good deeds. Unless you consider giving KFC good business a good deed.

For anyone out there interested;

Pope Francis's statement is neither startling nor new if one reads the catholic cathechism

I present to you article 1260, which can be found here

1260 "Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

Quite simply what this means is that if a person has lived a good, moral life that has contributed to the good of fellow man, but for some reason or other had not had the chance to know God then God in his eternal wisdom may see fit to bring them into heaven when they die. This belief is based upon the belief that God alone is the Judge, he makes and breaks the rules as he sees fit. Therefore we as humans do not and can not know every single facet of God's character and wisdom.

What it does not and never will imply is that those who vilify God, i.e those who stand against him and / or consciously do not want to have any part of him will get to heaven.

An Atheist by pure definition of the word does not hate God, they simply lack belief in any God and therefore the possibility that Pope Francis speaks of is actual catholic belief.

The catholic church, despite all of it's faults has a lot going for it in it's interpretation of the bible. It has had some of the best minds pondering over every facet of the bible and christian writings for thousands of years now.

I am banking on heaven being filled with more atheists than
religious people lol if it actually existed that is, religion breeds
hate and contempt for your fellow man, maybe one day they
will figure it out, but anything that has to first convince you that
you are not good enough as a human then sells you the "Fix"
is just another con job.

Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
reply to post by LeatherNLace

 

Damage control! They can't let those pesky atheists think they're not going to burn and suffer forever! Because they definitely are.

Double standards here , cant discuss anything about 911 but boatloads of people are allowed here to wish miljons op ppl to burn in hell....

over what , A FREEDOM OF CHOICE ??

you people are the footsoldiers of the Dictatorship wich is your religion.

You religious fanatics make me sick.

TheGreazel

I have the ability to hang the pope at the end of a rope...sorry....ask me why.

Originally posted by Bone75
God is in the heart of everyone whether you want to admit it or not. You can all come on here professing to be atheists until you're blue in the face, but when your child is struggling to breathe or a crackhead has a shotgun barrel pressed to the back of your head, its in those moments that you're believers... we all are.

Have you been there and done that? I have. There was a crackhead who grabbed my best friend, had a gun to her head. The ONLY thing I was thinking was if I can get him to point the gun at me, if I get shot, I have a better chance of surviving than she did, and that I needed to draw his attention to me, and get that gun away from her.
No thoughts of god in my head at all at the time, not even when I was looking down the barrel of said gun when my vague thoughts became reality, and he'd tossed her away, and pistol whipped me, and then was demanding the money neither of us had.

Now I will admit that after he grabbed the bag of chinese food I was carrying and ran away, having been convinced that we didn't have any money, I did say thank god. BUT when the defecation was hitting the oscillating blades, there was no prayer in my mind towards some omnipotent being in the sky somewhere, just the sure thought that I needed to make sure my friend didn't get hurt, because she was tiny and frail and would probably die, where\as even though I too am tiny, I'm quite a bit more sturdy than she.

You may pray in a situation like that, but speak for yourself. I don't. Maybe after the fact, I breathe a word of thanks, but it's a reflex I'm sure, because thank goodness, or thank the spaghetti monster or even thank the light doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as thank god, when that's what you're raised with.
And that's not the first or even second time I've had a gun pointed on me. It's not the first emergency situation I have been involved in. Ever had a child die in your arms? I have. Sept 2nd 1998. His name was Joseuz Torres, we called him Chelo, and I breathed for him in the streets while his heart beat out his blood onto the ground, as his lasts breathes rattled in his throat. I didn't pray for God to do something, I hoped the ambulance to get there faster, for the cop standing around with her thumb up her rear like she was stuck on stupid to HELP me, while I knelt on broken glass wearing a bra, because I was using my shirt to try to plug the hole in the Chelo's chest.
So don't tell ME what I would have done, because like I said, I have been there and I have done that, and I didn't call on God. YOU call on him and more power to you if you're answered. I prefer to rely on something a bit more tangible.
And if you want to say maybe if I would have prayed, Chelo would have lived... Well, if that's the game your god plays, count me out.

reply to post by markosity1973


Your perspective is well thought and communicated.

Judgement comes one way or another for all souls, for God exists in all of us. Even if you choose not to place your faith in HIM, your own regrets, conscious, or lack of, will ultimately judge your own existence. Peace within must be achieved so as you will not torture yourself. God does not care who you did or did not associate with. The Eternal Spirit has a plan for all of us, and will give us the opportunity to repent before judgement. Only the wicked will deny HIM, for HE will not come to you as GOD and force you to abandon all you know or think you know. HE is aware that HIS SPIRIT is perceived in different forms by people.

I believe HE will be fairly straight forward and not bias. HE will ask us to do the same. Our hearts will be allowed to speak freely, and wicked hearts will gladly proclaim their beliefs, just as kind hearts will. Honestly, the wicked will be smug. The compassionate, although flawed, will be humble. Simple as that, I hope.

Under this judgement, GOD has already created a way around religion, for all humanity, just as it should be, because HE, not religion created life.

reply to post by windword


I am not a papist though technically I am a catholic but I do like this guy as he is what a pope is supposed to be or he has been so far.

reply to post by LeatherNLace

Vatican Representative: Just to Be Clear, Atheists Are Still Going to Hell

Had to laugh at this. Seems like Il Papa would say that - if that's what he meant :-)

Funny - they voted in a guy they now feel they need to interpret for the masses. Maybe they'll explain he's infallible, but also unintelligible. They should just start running subtitles under him as he speaks

Golly, wish I was infallible - luck of the draw I guess

:-)

reply to post by TheGreazel


You totally missed that 3NL was being sarcastic.
He's no "religious fanatic."

Post fail.
If you don't want to discuss religion then don't come to this forum!!

reply to post by windword
another peadophile in power catholosism is the closest religion to satanism afterall nothing can surprise as they invented satan and from a religion that was written 300 yrs after the so called fact where the gospels were cherry picked ,
i want to know does the new pope listen to gary glitter and has a jim'll fix it badge ha ha

reply to post by TheGreazel


Yeah.... that was sarcasm. I know it's hard to see over the internet, but looking at my posts within this thread before that would have cleared it up for you.

I'm far from being a fanatic, much less religious, but I do agree with your post about those types of people.

reply to post by blazingbrian


Non-Catholics and anti-Catholics aren't going to take anything the Pope says seriously anyway. I'm well aware of the accusations of evil against the church and the Vatican.

But, an "olive branch" is still an "olive branch" and an attempt to reach out and meet each other in the middle, and to find some common ground, in hopes of world peace.

A lofty dream, what else would you expect from the Pope?

From what I've read of people who have had near-death experiences, they found their past being "reviewed" in terms of how their actions affected other people. So it wouldn't matter if you believed the creator was "The Great Sky Spirit" or that every living creature was just one spiral on the great fractal curve of life, you would still get into heaven if you had spent your life helping others as a healer or making them happy through entertainment.

It must really take the wind out of the high priests and their followers that being pious doesn't simply attending church every Sunday, singing a few hymns and putting a few shekhels in the collection bowl, then going home and doing nothing until the following week.

reply to post by stormcell


Yes as from a Christian perspective (though perhaps I don't always live up to that very well at all) Jesus himself never really liked priests who made big ceremony's and called them hypocrite's, he also said you shall know a tree by it's fruit a good tree brings forth good fruit a good person does good and he it is that measures us.
The whole point about being a Christian is that he is merciful and redeems us to try to be good but only so far.

reply to post by windword


No the pope said that Jesus died to redeem all humans.

In order to be a candidate for heaven you must believe in Jesus Christ.

Just for the sake of throwing out this perspective, let me propose this.

What if this is not true, and in fact you have to be super religious, follow all the rules, be baptized and all that to get into heaven and this Pope Francis is actually evil as hell just pretending to some new awesome, good, cool pope, and by telling the world this, he is in fact causing more people to step farther away from religion/and or causing people to Not step toward religion, resulting in more and more people to be sent to hell when they die.

reply to post by WielderOfTheSwordOfTruth


A lot of Christians already think that.

reply to post by slugger9787


Thanks for clearing that up!

I don't know a single atheist that is disturbed by thinking they aren't gonna be there, in heaven. But it's interesting to see how many Christians get a thrill out of telling all us non-believers about our exclusion.

reply to post by windword


I'm sure they do, if you're a hardcore believer then that would make perfect sense. But then they would have to admit that the Pope and the Vatican are corrupted with evil, which would leak down to the churches and priests would it not? Which would mean everything their churches and religion is telling them is actually evil and inverted to what is truly following God, which would mean you would have to do the opposite, which would be believing in the statement of the Pope that atheists go to heaven, which then creates a paradox of beliefs, whooaa, what?