The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class!
There are so many things wrong here, it's difficult to know where to start.
To put it simply: Mr Humility seems to have failed in making the due distinction between REDEMPTION and SALVATION.
Its the same screw-up which led to the mistranslation of "pro multis" within the words of consecration for the Blessed Eucharist.
It is not as if a proper understanding of the matter is difficult to grasp, To express it in my own unrefined words:
The blood of Christ has infinite merit; the sacrificial shedding of it at the Crucifixion released a power sufficient to save all men from their sins; with His own blood, Our Lord paid the price sufficient to redeem all men from the clutch of Satan. That is why he is called the Redeemer.
What the Redemption did not do was to strip men of their free will. Therefore, every man still has the choice either of accepting the salvation won for him by our Blessed Lord, or of disregarding and rejecting it.
Thus, all men have been REDEEMED, but not all men will be SAVED, and this latter result will be from their own fault.
You are correct, Sunbeam, and it is a good thing to keep this simple so it
is easily explainable to people, especially those who are not familiar with
Catholic doctrine.
What I'm about to say is not intended for such uninformed individuals.
After you have studied the faith, by way of catechism class, and asking
questions and paying attention to the answers, and have been baptized,
and have accepted the faith, and then you have taken some classes in
Thomistic philosophy a.k.a.
philosophia perennis (the continuous and
apostolic philosophy of Holy Mother Church most completely expounded
by St. Thomas Aquinas), then you would be prepared to know that in very
small nuances at the foundational level, tremendous differences can be
evoked at a more developed level. So that, for example a young sapling
only a few feet tall, if stepped on by a person or a wild animal such that
it is bent over to the side, and it then continues to grow, will grow into a
tree that is always bent over to the side. One small change at the early
stage results in a very dramatic difference in a later development. Or,
at the beginning of a journey, if one makes a wrong turn and proceeds
thereafter without correcting the wrong turn, one will end up far away
from one's intended destination.
As applies to the Faith, and to redemption and salvation and justification,
there are two kinds of being involved. The most common kind, and that
which is presumed by most upon hearing (or reading) a sentence, is
being in act. An example is, someone who has been baptized is so
baptized in fact, or "in act," as in the act of holy Baptism that makes
them baptized. Or, when you go to confession, and receive absolution,
your sins are forgiven "in act." The other kind of being is "in potency,"
which means potentially speaking. It is being, but it is not the same
kind of being. A catechumen, for example, is baptized in potency
before his baptism is done because of his intention to be baptized. Your
sins are forgiven in potency when you are standing in line for Confession
because of your intention to confess your sins, receive absolution, do
your prescribed penance and to amend your life by avoiding the near
occasion of sin and by freeing yourself from all your attachment to sin.
But the catechumen is not yet baptized and your sins are not yet
absolved, in act, even while the catechumen is baptized in potency and
your sins are forgiven in potency before you go to confession.
For someone who has not studied philosophy this can be very confusing,
and for a child, he is likely to entirely misunderstand. For example, to
say to a child that he may not have a cookie is something he can deal
with, but to tell him that he can have a cookie in potency but not in act
is something that he will have a lot of problems with, and unnecessarily
so! Who would do that to a child????
But that is precisely what Pope Francis is doing with his spiritual children
by saying what he said about atheists! He is telling a child that he can
have a cookie in potency -- but he is not explaining that he cannot have
the cookie in act!! On a spiritual level, this is
simply cruelty! The only possible result is that MOST PEOPLE HEARING THIS
WILL NOT UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH, BUT WILL BE DECEIVED
BY MISUNDERSTANDING.
Modernism does this to the Faith. A Modernist sees ambiguity and half-truths
as some kind of virtue, or good thing, or desirable state of affairs. To a
Modernist, to say something that can most likely be misinterpreted is a kind
of achievement. It is their objective to be vague, and it is their desire to
be misunderstood. For a Modernist, to engender misunderstanding is the
way to "progress" because then the new TENSION and CONFLICT that
results from two groups of people -- one group who understands properly
and the other group who has been confused by the ambiguity -- can have
their disagreements and by that they can work out a compromise or an
accommodation, by which there can be a "movement" into the future, and
a newness can then emerge, like what you get when you buy a new car,
that "new car smell."
A Modernist wants to put his "new car smell" into the doctrines of the Church.
Thus, all men have been REDEEMED, but not all men will be SAVED, and this latter result will be from their own fault.
When you tell this to a Protestant, for example, it's like Greek or
something, for they do not understand the difference between redemption
and being "saved." They think that all they have to do is "accept Jesus as
their personal Lord and Savior," and then they are "saved." I like to tell
them,
"You're Not Saved Until You're Dead." That generally stops
the conversation, because they can't cope with the thought. It's like when
you tell them that to become a "Doctor of the Catholic Church," you have
to have died and then you receive the title posthumously, usually at least
100 years later, and perhaps centuries, they say, "Oh, well, that's rather
unfortunate!" And I say, actually, it's a great honor to become a Doctor of
the Church, and it's not 'unfortunate' at all. They just don't seem to get it.
They go off thinking Catholics are a very strange lot.
When one does not understand the Faith, one is at a great loss to be able
to comprehend any of the details outside the context of the Church's
doctrine. This goes to exemplify the dogma that outside the Church there
is no salvation. For in ignorance of what the Church teaches, it is quite
impossible to grasp any particular doctrine without having some kind of
latent error.
And the Pope should know this. His words should be clear and solid, so
as to not mislead those who hear his voice. And
it is not any kind of
achievement to find words that just miss the edge of apostasy by
getting really close -- such that non-Catholics looking at it will then be
confirmed in their error by misunderstanding what he says, and a child who
is being told that he cannot have a cookie goes away thinking that he most
certainly CAN have the cookie. In fact, he might even go away holding the
cookie!
Topic: Pope Francis opens the Gates of Heaven to Atheists (Read 6337 times)